Doing A Value Study
Tips from Today’s Session
Students, following are a couple of things to remember as you develop the value studies and plan for your final canvas:
- Begin working your idea as a sketch, on sketch paper
- Ideally, put a ground on your intended painting support (canvas paper, poster board) to begin your “value study” before you apply glaze washes of pigment
- If you began by sketching your idea on the support (no sketch paper, see 4) without putting a ground on it you need to seal the pencil drawing by putting a glaze wash of pigment/water on the support before you can begin to place darker values on to the line study. If you don’t you will obliterate your image.
- Don’t try to put the glaze wash on sketch paper—the paper is not a sturdy support and your image is likely to be washed away and the paper will become crumply’
- If your support is water color paper use 140lb cold press, size it with water, dry it and tape it flat
- Once you have your image secure under a transparent glaze wash of pigment, begin adding value changes (shading) in the areas that you wish to be darker and/ or a different pigment color. Keep the glaze washes transparent, even if they are dark.
- If you get to dark in an area, put a white transparent glaze wash over the area, or the entire support if required, and go at it again
- Once you feel satisfied with the value ranges established on that support—have another support ready to draw on and begin a different combination of glaze washes using the color charts you made to select your color scheme from.
- You should try three or four color schemes and possibly a rearrangement of your original sketch idea to fully develop the plan for your painting.
Tags: Acrylic Class Info