Value and Color: Why Value Does the Work

A painting with the right values reads even in unexpected colors. A painting with the wrong values looks flat or confused, however beautiful its colors. That's why painters plan values first.

Why value does the work

The neuroscientist Margaret Livingstone, in Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing (2002), describes two broad parts of our visual system. One sees color. An older one, which handles depth, motion, spatial layout and telling a figure from its background, is colorblind: it responds to differences in lightness, which painters call value.

So much of what makes a painting read as solid and deep, the turn of form, the separation of near and far, a figure standing out from its ground, is carried by value. Livingstone points to a striking consequence: when two neighboring colors have the same lightness, the edge between them can seem to shimmer or move, because the part of vision that fixes position can barely see it. She finds it in Monet's paintings of water, where it adds life; in a realistic painting it more often happens by accident and makes shapes look unstable.

Judging the value of a color

It's hard. A strong color pulls your attention to its hue, so its lightness is easy to misjudge. Some ways to check:

• Compare with a gray scale. Hold a printed or painted value scale beside the color and squint. The gray it disappears into has the same value. See value scales.
• Squint. Narrowed eyes see less color, so values are easier to judge. See why painters squint.
• Photograph it in black and white. A grayscale photo of your palette or painting shows the values directly.
• Know your paints. Straight from the tube, yellows are high in value, and most blues and violets are low. You can't mix a dark from yellow alone, or a light from violet alone.

Planning values before color

1. Make a notan to test the design.
2. Make a value study of 3 to 5 values from your reference.
3. When you mix each color, match its value to the study first, then adjust hue and chroma within that value.
4. Check the painting in grayscale as you go. If it reads in gray, the color can be freer.

The notan and value study maker shows your photo as a value study, in grayscale or as the photo, so you can compare them.

Sources

• Margaret Livingstone, Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing, Harry N. Abrams, 2002.
• Harvard Gazette, "Art that lights the mind", October 2015, on Livingstone's account of the "what" and "where" systems.