VALUE
in drawing
Georgia O’Keeffe, Shell Drawing
Chuck Close, Portrait of Phillip Glass, fingerprints.
What is value?
Cup your palms.
Light and shadow define form. Shadows, highlights
and mid-tones allow us to see objects in their three
dimensionality.
In drawing, we use gradations of tone from light to
dark to create the illusion of form and to describe the
direction and flow of light. Value refers to the relative
lightness or darkness of a perceived surface.
Looking into your cupped palms, where are the
darkest darks? The lightest lights? Can you find a
mid-tone?
WARNING!
The enemy of value is a harsh outline.
A strong, unbroken outline will flatten a sphere into a circle.
Beginners usually rely too much on harsh outlines. Outlines
just define the visible edge of a shape; they don’t tell us about
the effect of light
To shift away from outlining and shift toward using value:
•Try beginning with soft and/or wide media such as charcoal, conte crayon
or pastel chalk.
* Use the softest pressure you can when first sketching out a shape.
* Seek compositions in which the form is not completely isolated on the
paper, but emerges from the sides or completely fills the paper (thus doing
away with edges).
There are no lines here.
Volume as pure tone can
provide a sharp distinction
of figure and ground.
George Seurat, charcoal
Usually it Is best for the student to first explore their ability to make a wide range
of tonalities with a particular medium (ink, charcoal or soft pencil.) For your first
experiment use pressure and density of stroke to establish a light tone, mid-tone
and dark tone. Now you are ready to try a drawing using three values.
Student drawing with three values. When working with a small number of
values it is useful to divide the form into value shapes. You can usually see
these shapes of value in objects if you squint. It helps to use a single light
source.
Value shapes can be soft rather
than hard edged. Chalk or
charcoal can give you soft
fields of value like these
achieved by Marvin Cherney
Chiaroscuro
is an Italian term dating from the Renaissance that literally
means “light dark.” It is commonly used to describe a
drawing technique in which dramatic light establishes a
broad range of tones that gradually transition from light to
dark. Chiaroscuro shows the roundness of forms and is
considered the most sculptural style of drawing.
Leonardo da Vinci: Study of
the drapery for the Madonna
With Saint Anne, High
Renaissance.
Light
Artists have experimented with a wide variety of lighting, from candles to full
sun. Leonardo da Vinci wrote that the perfect way to illuminate the head of
a young woman was to seat her in a courtyard with high walls painted black
and direct sunlight diffused by a muslin canopy. We don’t know if Leonardo
ever followed his own advice and created such an environment, but his
drawings suggest such an idealized setting. Light sources can be observed,
created or even imagined.
Students should experiment with a variety of
light situations, but do keep in mind that a
very bright light flattens forms. You should also
avoid ambient light (light that appears to come
from all directions). Ambient light, such as that
from fluorescent bulbs, washes out forms.
Leonardo da Vinci, Head of a Young Woman,
charcoal and chalk, High Renaissance
To introduce students to chiaroscuro drawing teachers often direct a single soft light
source onto simple white shapes such as spheres, cones or square boxes. In such a
controlled environment, the area of the object directly in the path of the light
source (perpendicular to the light source) will be the lightest tone. We call this area
the highlight. The areas blocked from the light source are usually the darkest.
Blocked light = shadow. The areas parallel to the light source are usually mid-tones.
Because objects usually exist in relation to grounds or other objects, reflection also
affects value.
Claudio Bravo
Craneo de elefante
In more complex forms,
texture and irregular
surfaces create a range
of shadows, highlights
and mid-tones.
Several factors affect the amount of light reflected off a surface. The first is the
amount and quality of illumination on a surface. Another factor is the texture of a
surface. A smooth surface will have brighter and more clearly defined highlights than
a rough surface. A toilet lid will have a strong highlight. A dead deer’s fur will have a
more diffused highlight.
Antonio Lopez Garcia
Andrew Wyeth
Chiaroscuro emphasizes form with little respect to color. A red dress looks the
same as a white dress in a chiaroscuro drawing. In the 19th and 20th centuries
artists became increasing interested in using value to depict color. Artists
recorded impressions of both form and color in sketches that depicted
transitory moments. Looking at this pencil sketch by Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1930)
we can tell that the subject’s dress and hat are darker than her skin. The
handling of value Is also much looser suggesting not sculptural permanence
but a fleeting moment. In the more lengthy 1875 study by Edgar Degas to the
right we clearly get a sense of the tonal palette of the sitter’s clothes and hair.
A dark, saturated color will reflect less light than a pale surface. This inherent
tonality of an object, separate from the amount of light or the effects of texture,
is called: local value.
Squint at this photograph of a green pepper, a tomato and an onion. The
green pepper, except for the highlights and shadows, will register as a dark
mid-tone. A tomato may fall right in the middle of the value scale and the onion
will be among the lightest mid-tones. Each vegetable has a distinct local value.
Student study of fruit showing local value
Nine Part Value Scale With Mid-Tone Core
A wide range of values may be required for nuanced drawings that take
into account the local value of color or that attempt the dramatic effects
of chiaroscuro. Below is a nine part value scale. The middle tone has
been extended across the range of tones. Note how much lighter the
middle tone appears when set against the darkest value. The same midtone will appear significantly darker against the lightest value. Every
value is relative, defined by its relation to other values. Try making your
own nine part value scale with a mid-tone stripe.
Charles Sheeler,
Feline Felicity, 1934,
black crayon on
paper.
Sheeler’s drawing
uses a wide range
of values to depict
the interplay of sun
and shadow on a
striped cat.
Tonal Key
After you have the ability to make a wide range of values, you
may want to experiment with using a portion of the value
scale.
A high or light tonal key ranges from white to middle gray
A middle tonal key selects from within the middle range of the
value scale.
A low or dark tonal key takes from the dark half of the value
scale
Accents of strong darks or lights can be added to limited tonal
drawings to express extreme highlights or shadows.
A silverpoint drawing in a high (light) tonal key that ranges from white to middle
gray, John Wilde, Design For Parade V, 2002.
A low (dark) tonal key
drawing with strong
lights as contrast.
Gustave Courbet, Self
Portrait, charcoal on paper.
Use high contrast of light and dark to push a form forward.
Use closely grouped values (low contrast) to encourage a form to recede.
Claudio Bravo’s drawing divides
the skull almost in half, with the
right side depicted in a high
(light) tonal scale and the left in a
mid to low (dark) tonal scale.
Areas of low contrast between
light and dark tend to recede,
therefore the back of both sides
of the skull which show closely
grouped tones recedes while the
front of the skull where the two
tonal keys meet and contrast
extends forward.
Now it’s safe to come back to line.
Optical Grays
With pastel, charcoal or ink wash the artist can make solid gray tones.
Other media, such as pen and ink, pencil, silverpoint and markers can be
used to create optical grays. Optical grays are the result of hatched or
crosshatched lines that the eye involuntary blends to produce a tone. Try
making a crosshatch and linear value scale.
Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675), red chalk drawing showing the
use of hatched lines to create a range of value
Gestural Crosshatching
Cross hatched lines need not be straight or
evenly applied.
Curving, massed crosshatched lines like
these by Henry Moore can create an
illusion of texture and rounded forms.
Henry Moore, The Artist’s
Hands,c.1974, carbon line,
charcoal, colored crayon,
chinagraph, and ball point
pen.
Henry Moore, Women Winding Wool, 1949, watercolor,
crayon and brush
Curvilinear value
lines.
Nicola Hicks, Love Me
Like A Rock, 1989, chalk
and charcoal
Direct observation of
value can lead to more
Imaginative and
metaphoric drawings
that have a convincing
sense of light and mass.
Value as solid tone is often combined with gestural marks and hatched lines.
Your final project will combine tonal and linear value and use at least two media.
You may complete this assignment on ArtRage or with your hands and tools.
Conclusion
Robert Arneson, The French Connection, 1991, conte on paper