learning a valuable lesson — today in particular, a valuable art lesson
Almost every book on drawing or painting stresses the value of
values [lights and darks], and they are an aspect of art I have long taken for granted. But, now that I've started painting [and working in colour as opposed to the black and white of my comics work], the whole concept of value becomes more challenging for me. Learning to see the lightness or darkness of a colour is not always trivial for me. But all my recent lessons have been emphasizing the importance of this learning, so I finally reached the point where I am trying to pay more attention.
Almost every painting book recommends the exercise of painting a
value scale, which looks something like this:
However, since my art skills are surpassed by my procrastination skills, I have never done so. I always handwaved and said yeah yeah I get it. Until today.
I approached the problem logically, and figured that a half-and-half mixture of black and white paint should give me a middle value like 5.
Not so.
It was with considerable consternation that I discovered a 50-50 mixture gave me a result barely distinguishable from 9. In fact, a 90% white - 10% black mixture gave me a result much like 7.
Up until now, when I painted, I mixed what I needed but never paid too much attention to how much of what I used. I just mixed til it worked. But today, by approaching this in a systematic fashion, I have learned a new appreciation for the darkening power of paints. That's gotta be worthwhile knowledge to have, right?
