Why Value Trumps Color
from Colley Whisson
Colley discusses the significance of values in creating effective light effects and depth in your paintings. He explains that color can be visually pleasing, but it does not necessarily contribute to the overall impact of a piece like values do. Colley emphasizes the importance of tonal changes and how adjusting the value of a color can enhance the light effect. He further explores the relationship between color and value in different settings, highlighting the use of exaggerated color and value to improve a scene.
Colley has always believed a range of value is more important than a range of color. It’s very simply proven because we can have great use of color, but that doesn’t mean we get a great light effect or get the depth we are aiming for. Take the example below where the element is circled. If the plants were painted all in one green color, it would make it seem like they were on the same, one-dimension plane. It would give us a visual of a flat surface rather than one behind the other. This is why Colley loves to stress value over color, all of the time!
You can also see the tonal change on the house from the top to the bottom (where the arrows are). If we use too much color, we can easily oversaturate and make it look too sweet. We can achieve the amount of light that we actually have in the scene by making it a lighter value in the same color family. This makes the actual light effect in the painting even stronger!
“We can have great use of color, but that doesn’t mean we get a great light effect or get the depth we are aiming for.”
The last example below is where you can see the color outside is actually more powerful than inside. When we look at it in the photo reference, it is not overly warm. But, Colley has exaggerated the color and the value in the painting to be warmer. This is mainly to improve the scene as a whole since it is quite grey and monochromatic in the photo. Wherever you push and adjust one thing (like making the color and value warmer), you need to make sure you achieve stronger values in a different area. This will give you a way to show the actual light.
Whenever Colley is painting, he is always asking himself if a value is dark enough, light enough, warm enough or cold enough. Nine times out of 10, if we ask ourselves this and follow this, we will end up with a painting that does have a great deal of visual excitement. It will have light, movement, and most of what we are aiming for. Forgetting to learn and focus on values can be the number one weakness for beginning artists. We tend to think more in terms of color than value, we just need to catch ourselves in this!
Tip from Colley: Once you finish a painting, photograph it and edit out the color so it’s black and white to see how good your values are! This is the perfect way to finish a painting off.
Most of the time, Colley is getting questions on what the color is he using. It is normally red, yellow, blue and white in some regard. It is not a special ingredient or color. It is just those colors being tempered to how dark, how light, how warm or cold Colley needs to make them. This is why Colley places so much importance on values and why he continues to do still life work. Still life’s keeps his brain thinking in the correct process. Colley is more of a colorist than a tonalist, so he needs those little reminders of values. Most likely, we all need this reminder!
With his distinctive style characterized by bold brushstrokes and captivating compositions, Colley Whisson invites you to explore the depths of your creativity while honing your craft: