PaintsightPlan in 3 to 5 values. Three show the main masses; four or five give you a plan to paint from. More than that brings back the detail a value study is meant to leave out.
What a value is
A value is how light or dark something is, whatever its color. Painters measure it on a scale from black to white. Two scales are common:
- The Munsell scale runs from 0 for pure black to 10 for pure white, with middle gray at 5.
- Denman Ross's nine-value scale names each step: White, High Light, Light, Low Light, Middle, High Dark, Dark, Low Dark and Black. Ross, who lectured on design at Harvard, set it out in The Painter's Palette (1919), and many painters still paint a nine-step chart from it.
Both describe what the eye can tell apart, not how many values a painting should use. A finished painting may contain dozens of slightly different values. The plan underneath it uses only a few.
Two values: the notan
Light against dark only. It tests the design: whether the big shapes make a clear pattern. See what notan is.
Three values: the masses
Light, middle and dark. Three values are enough to separate most subjects into sky, land and shadow, or the lit side of a head, its shadow side and the background. It's the quickest useful study, and a good habit before every painting.
Four or five values: the plan
Four or five values start to show form: the halftones where a lit plane turns away from the light, and the difference between a near dark and a far one. This is the study most painters paint from. In a landscape, it often means one value each for the sky, the distance, the middle ground and the foreground darks, plus an accent.
Six or more
Useful for a detailed subject, such as a portrait in soft light, but the study starts to look like the photo again. If a study with many values looks muddled, go back to three and check the big shapes.
How to choose
- Strong, simple light (sunlit landscapes, still lifes with one lamp): 3 or 4 values.
- Soft or overcast light: 4 or 5, because the changes are smaller.
- A loose or quick painting: 3.
- Where the photo's values are bunched together (a misty scene, a dark interior), let the split follow the photo's own groups of tones rather than equal steps.
Try it on your photo
The notan and value study maker splits a photo into 2 to 7 values. "Natural" grouping finds where the photo's tones naturally break apart; "Even" uses equal steps from its darkest to its lightest tone. Tap a value to see everywhere it falls, and read its range on the 0 to 10 scale.
Sources
- Munsell Color, "Munsell Value" (archived January 2025; the page now redirects to Pantone): the value scale from 0 for pure black to 10 for pure white.
- Denman Waldo Ross, The Painter's Palette: A Theory of Tone Relations, Houghton Mifflin, 1919, pages 1 and 2. HathiTrust.
