Jean-Honoré Fragonard [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Roman Park with Fountain, 1774 Albertina, Vienna
In the last post, I discussed how Rembrandt used value, (the lightness or darkness of an object) to create both a sense of form and drama. Some of you may be wondering “so just how does an artist begin to learn to use values in their drawings?” In this post I’d like to share with you the foundation of drawing with values: the 5 step value scale. Even if you are not planning to be an artist, you may find it fun to “play along” with the exercise below and create a value scale.
Learning to see values the way an artist sees them will help you appreciate better both the visual world that surrounds you and the many beautiful paintings that you find in galleries and museums.
Our eye is a very sensitive instrument, and we are capable of seeing many, many values. But for the artist’s purpose, breaking values down into 5 categories (steps) is very helpful. The amount of steps can vary—some artists like to use 5 step scales, some use 10 steps. The amount of steps is not very important--what is important is that the artist begins to think in terms of recognizing values and simplifying them so that they can be replicated in a drawing or painting.
Honoré Daumier [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
The Third Class Carriage,1864 Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland
To do the following exercise, you will need a ruler, heavyweight drawing paper, and 3 artist drawing pencils: HB, 3B and 6B. (These numbers indicate the softness or hardness of the graphite lead. The higher the number, the softer the lead, and the darker the line created by the pencil.) If you don’t have access to artist grade pencils, you can experiment with a #2 pencil. In this case, you will have to concentrate on using heavy or light pressure on the pencil to create the darker and lighter pencil strokes.
- Along the edge of the longer side of a heavyweight paper, use your ruler to create 5 squares that are 1.5” (or 3.8cm) each with your pencil, and number them 1 thru 5. The picture above shows how your boxes should look. Be sure to draw the boxes right at the edge of the long side of the paper. Also, keep your pencil lines very light. (In my example, I used heavy black lines just for illustration purposes.)
- In square 1, use a black marker to fill up the square. We use a marker because the darkest shade that you can get with a pencil is a dark gray; you cannot get a true black with a pencil. Leave the #5 square white.
- Now we are going to use the pencil. Use your 3B pencil to begin shading in box #3. Color in the box until you consider that the shade is halfway between white and black. It is not important if you are exact—you are just training your eye to start noticing how dark or how light something is.
- Color in square # 2 with a 6B until the shade appears to you halfway between the black and midtone gray of square #3.
- Color in square # 4 lightly with an HB pencil. When you are finished, your scale should look something like this:
Again, you are not trying to get perfection, you just want to observe and compare to help you see values better. After doing this exercise, you will find yourself noticing more the darks and lights around you. For example, look at the two drawings at the beginning of this post again--do you now notice more how the artist used value to create these beautiful drawings? Practice “seeing” darks and lights as you go about your day. A little trick that artist’s often use is to squint while looking at an object. When you squint, the color of the object is diminished and it is easier to determine whether something is a light, mid, or dark value.
In future posts I will discuss more ways to use value and shading in a drawing. In the meantime, we would love if you would share any comments and let us know if this exercise helps you see a little more of the interplay of values in your visual world.