08-20-2016, 07:36 AM
Hey, Kimonas! Appreciate the comment. You know, I used to really be afraid of tight drawings and paintings. When I started learning I tried to do the whole lasso tool thing to get everything super tight and I just felt as if the tightness was like putting chains around my arms because it got difficult to work with. Then one of my instructors at the atelier really helped me realise that there was a way for me to be specific with my work without making it so tight it's impossible to work with and change.
This specific way of thinking about values isn't something I've seen too much about online, at least not in-depth. Oh, and you can wait two years until I publish my book on drawing and painting, then it will be available ;P
Anyway, a lot of rembrandt paintings have this effect but the best thing is if you can see them in person, they look a little weird sometimes on photos because of the dark values. I decided to make an example for you.
In this image we have basically two ways of doing something. On the left, a high key and the right, low key. I used the same limited value scale on both examples. The difference being that on the left, I grouped together the brightest bright and bright mid-tone to give me more room in the value scale to show how the eyes are very dark and to show the dark accents in the hair and pit of the neck. On the painting on the right we have the opposite where the darkest dark and next to darkest dark have been grouped to be able to show how bright the highlights are on his forehead, noes and chin. You can also design it in a way where you say "I want the head to stand out" and adjust your values accordingly, something Rembrandt also has done a lot.
On both of these, it is not only that the value scale is shifted but also that the accompanying values have also moved closer together to give that extra bit of push to the light values. Look at some of Rembrandt's paintings and consider how dark the people's clothes are compared to the background.
You could just have lowered the contrasts until you could have gotten both of the light and dark areas but there is more than one reason why value compression is useful. It is also something we can use as an anchor in our image to orient ourselves properly. A reference point we can base our value judgments on and without a good compression, it becomes very difficult to properly place your values in your work.
I hope it helps ^^
This specific way of thinking about values isn't something I've seen too much about online, at least not in-depth. Oh, and you can wait two years until I publish my book on drawing and painting, then it will be available ;P
Anyway, a lot of rembrandt paintings have this effect but the best thing is if you can see them in person, they look a little weird sometimes on photos because of the dark values. I decided to make an example for you.
In this image we have basically two ways of doing something. On the left, a high key and the right, low key. I used the same limited value scale on both examples. The difference being that on the left, I grouped together the brightest bright and bright mid-tone to give me more room in the value scale to show how the eyes are very dark and to show the dark accents in the hair and pit of the neck. On the painting on the right we have the opposite where the darkest dark and next to darkest dark have been grouped to be able to show how bright the highlights are on his forehead, noes and chin. You can also design it in a way where you say "I want the head to stand out" and adjust your values accordingly, something Rembrandt also has done a lot.
On both of these, it is not only that the value scale is shifted but also that the accompanying values have also moved closer together to give that extra bit of push to the light values. Look at some of Rembrandt's paintings and consider how dark the people's clothes are compared to the background.
You could just have lowered the contrasts until you could have gotten both of the light and dark areas but there is more than one reason why value compression is useful. It is also something we can use as an anchor in our image to orient ourselves properly. A reference point we can base our value judgments on and without a good compression, it becomes very difficult to properly place your values in your work.
I hope it helps ^^
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