Understanding the concept of values and learning to mix values accurately are perhaps the most challenging aspects of learning to paint landscapes. Here are five tips that will help you master your values! Think planes. When looking at the landscape, don’t try to ascertain the value of individual objects first. Instead, think in planes–sky, ground, […]
Values are like Vitamins, Color is Dessert
Often I hear teachers, including myself, describe values as the structure, framework or foundation of a painting. And it’s true, they are. But, how excited can we get about that? It sounds more like something we have to do or should do to get to something more exciting or interesting. Sort of like taking your […]
Value, Color and Movement
One of the most powerful compositional tools we have as landscape painters is our ability to move the eye of the viewer around the picture plane and even create the illusion of movement into the picture plane by creating the illusion of depth. Movement is a visual pathway through the painting that the artist creates […]
Sky Values- The Key to Big Atmospheric Skies!
One of the most important ingredients for painting big atmospheric skies is getting the values right. We know that generally speaking the sky will have the lightest values in the landscape because it is the source of light (think Carlson’s Theory of Angles- if you don’t know about that you should!). The value of a […]
Mixing Blues For Skies
When mixing colors for skies we concern ourselves with the three attributes of color: value, temperature and chroma. As we know from Carlson’s Theory of Angles, the sky will generally be the lightest value in the landscape–a range of values actually, as the value of the sky grades from lightest at the horizon to darkest […]
Learn to Key Your Landscape
Landscape painters need to have a good understanding of the importance of value in successfully depicting the landscape on a two dimensional surface. In order to have our painting ‘read’, that is to show the planes of the landscape as well as its depth, atmosphere and scale, proper values are essential. As we’ve previously written, […]