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If you slightly squint your eyes, you will see that at least 2 and possibly 3 values of color make up any object in the natural world. Practice creating entire paintings with no more than 3 values on any object. Paint a few of those and you'll discern a rhythm between areas of 1, 2 and 3 values. It's a fun game. (Cristina Acosta)
Your darker colours will be the ones that pull the picture together and they will also be the time-defining ones – the shadows that indicate sun direction. (Greg Allen)
Establishing the two most extreme values as soon as possible helps me take note of all other values that will fall somewhere between them. (Kenn Backhaus)
For a strong composition, you want the values to be in quite different amounts, not similar. Try this rule to start: two thirds, one third, and a little bit. (Marion Boddy-Evans)
In painting, as in life, you can get away with a great deal as long as you have your values right. (Harley Brown)
The great paintings are the ones with the most subtle value relationships. The closer you could bring your values and still distinguish between them, the stronger you were as a painter. (John F. Carlson)
Value (or the use of light) is our best ally as a painter. Don't think for a minute this is not in the artist's control. (Steve Childs)
In preparing a study or a picture, it seems to me very important to begin by an indication of the darkest values... and to continue in order to the lightest value. From the darkest to the lightest I would establish twenty shades. (Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot)
When beginning artists understand and use values for the first time, there is usually a quantum leap in the quality of their painting. (Paul deMarrais)
Known by most of us as value sketches, most of us are too lazy to do them, yet we know they can strengthen our work. (Lorna Dockstader)
Values created need not be those that were present at the time. They are imposed upon an image and can all be the result of personal choices. (Lorna Dockstader)
I prefer to limit the number of colours on my palette and focus instead on value and temperature contrasts to enhance the rhythm and drama of my paintings. (Sergei Forostovskii)
Variations in degrees of dark and light can provide an effective way to emphasize the important areas. Light areas in a composition appear larger than dark areas of the same size and shape because of their reflective qualities. (Britton Francis)
White when it shines with unstain'd lustre clear, / May bear an object back or bring it near: / Aided by black, it to the front aspires; / That aid withdrawn, it instantly retires: / But black unmix'd, of darkest midnight hue, / Still calls each object nearer to the view. (Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy)
Value choices are intuitive... It's fun to see how much you can get without leaning on contrast. (Sara Genn)
Once you sophisticate the in-betweens, your blacks and whites can take their solos and shine. (Sara Genn)
Value, whether the result of massed lines, broad strokes, or washes, is the necessary and (except for color) only tool for modelling form with light. (Nathan Goldstein)
Value gives the artist the means of showing subtle changes in a form's surface-state, and it helps clarify the relative distance between forms. (Nathan Goldstein)
Read values relatively. Find the lightest light and compare all other light values to it. Do the same with the darks. (Irwin Greenberg)
Shadow values must be convincingly dark, especially at their edges. Do not hesitatingly 'whisper' a shadow shape. (Tony van Hasselt)
The overall pattern of value shapes is the skeleton on which a painting is built. The eye needs this structure to create movement and excitement underneath the subject. (Jane R. Hofstetter)
It's impossible to make a picture without values. Values are the basis. If they are not, tell me what is the basis. (William Morris Hunt)
By working in a low key, the variation of light tones is far greater and can be used effectively to make the tonal pattern strong. (Raymond Leech)
Edges must be held by tone values, not lines. (A. C. Leighton)
Value is as important as hue and often more difficult to pin down. (Dorothy Lorenze)
Those watercolourists who work from light to dark know that the darks do the damage. (Bill Luff)
The best way to show depth is to have variation in values. The best way to learn this is to paint without color... (Tom Lynch)
Put a strong dark in early, near your center of interest, to serve as a value scale, nothing can be darker. (Tom Lynch)
The best part about being an artist is that you don't have to copy the values found in your subject. Your job is to... decide how you can go beyond the references to alter or enhance the values. (Tom Lynch)
Bowing to value can liberate color options, so color can waltz in the back door and right on down to the front row while value is being courted at the front door. (Emily Moore)
It is the relationship of value and intensity that is essential to using color well. If you master value and intensity, you will go a long way to expressing any mood you desire. (Stephen Quiller)
Make the mid-value shape the biggest one and make the light and dark shapes smaller, but never equally sized. One or the other should dominate. These light and dark shapes should also touch or overlap if possible. (Ron Ranson)
Many of the most powerful paintings have the simplest value structures. That is to say, they only use two, three, or four major values. (Barry John Raybould)
Combine your darks to create a simpler stronger design. (Richard Robinson)
My paintings cannot be a negation of what has always been and always will be necessary – drawing and search for values. (Theodore Robinson)
Color is an inborn gift, but appreciation of value is merely training of the eye, which everyone ought to be able to acquire. (John Singer Sargent)
You get your color with your eyes open, your value by squinting. (Martha Saudek)
You can stick with a few clear-cut values, which are stronger than a multitude of values and will obviously yield a stronger painting. But not all subjects or light conditions appear that way... be sensible and paint with values that are appropriate and faithful to your subject. (Richard Schmid)
To me, painting – all painting – is not so much the intelligent use of color as the intelligent use of value. If the values are right, the color cannot help but be right. (Joe Singer)
There are painters like Ingres who know how to dispense with hues and saturations. There is no painting which can dispense with values. (John F. A. Taylor)
Value does all the work and color gets all the glory. (Author unknown)
I prefer to paint on a toned ground as it makes it easier to establish values in the early stages. (Ray Ward)
Values create dimension, but color usually receives all of the attention. When painting with oils, placing dark and light pigments next to each other can be an accident waiting to happen. (Robert Warren)
Learn to look at shapes and values, not things... switch over to the right brain's understanding of spatial relationships, instead of depending on the left brain technical skills. (Laurel Weathersbee)
Problems with color are almost never problems with color. They are almost always problems with value. (Eric Wiegardt)
Black seems to make a colour cloudy, but darkness doesn't. A ruby could thus keep getting darker without ever becoming cloudy; but if it became blackish red, it would become cloudy. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)
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