 Hello artist, I'm artist Susan Jenkins and welcome to Monet Cafe and my patreon page I'm making this video available on both platforms because I believe this content is just that important as an artist I talk about value all the time. This is a really neat gray scale and value finder I think you can find it on dickblick.com. It shows you the Degrees of value from black to white black being number one I used to get that confused and white being number 10 And you see those little cutouts that look like keyholes think of that keep that in mind when I talk about this What I'm showing here would be considered high key. Notice the value numbers are higher and it's lighter values What I'm showing here would be low key the value numbers are lower one to five That would be a low key painting. It's darker values So I'm gonna give you an example of both of these along with a mid-range value painting All right, often when I'll do a little exercise like this. This is really all this is to Give you instruction. I'll take a painting or a scene of mine. That's real familiar and quite easy to reproduce So that's pretty much what I'm gonna be doing here. I will give an example of a high key painting I'm gonna speed up this part a low key painting and a mid-value Painting again, these are just exercises and my patrons, you know, this is going to be your homework over the weekend This is your PE patron education, which we have on Fridays and once again I decided to open this up to the Monet cafe YouTube channel because I feel this lesson is really important I have a lot of beginner artists who say we need more beginner videos. So this is core to Understanding value and representing it correctly in your art. I find we often use too large of a value range We use something super dark and super light all in one painting and when we can learn to isolate and understand values That's gonna help us all as artists and again. I encourage you to do a very simple scene with these I'm just doing once again something very familiar some trees on a hill another hill in the background with some distant trees a Road kind of pulling your eye into the painting and so they're all gonna be kind of the same and I decided to do one Of them as a horizontal format as well for my mid-range example. So I'm gonna give you guys examples of each Value range low key high key and mid range I'll be using for this. Oh, by the way, this is just watercolor paper Okay, these aren't gonna be any fancy schmancy kind of paintings So I'll be giving you right now an example of a high key painting and It's that upper Part that I'm showing there and the darkest value is going to be somewhere between values six and seven Uh, maybe a little bit darker than just what you saw at the top there And I've decided I was going to use the unison 120 half stick set that I've had for a few months now and I love the set of pastels I'm going to show it to you guys I love the set of pastels because it's pretty all inclusive It has a very large range of values colors Neutrals and the neat thing is they're already organized in a way I'll be showing more of the set in a way to do this exercise to see the range of values within a certain color family Now I've moved my camera so you can see the whole range of colors I'm going to be using you see that row that I'm pointing to right there. They're all kind of topi mauve colors And I'll be using just the lighter values or the higher key values that one there It's a little darker than value six. So I'm going over a little bit into value five That's going to be my darkest dark often when we start a painting We like to grab the darkest dark like that you have in your whole set to represent the the trees Or things that are in the foreground And with a high key painting your dark is dark is not going to be that dark I will not get any darker than this now. I'll show you little examples of each color As I work and I'll also at the end I'm going to show you all of the colors that I used again So we know that vertical things like trees are usually darker So and especially things in the foreground There's that one color that I just used right there So I went ahead and got the trees in the foreground and the road Because it's kind of some deep grasses now the next value the next darkest Value is this It's more of a medium taupe value and I'm using that one for those Trees in the distance. They're going to be a little lighter in value Now my foreground grasses on the sides of the trail will be a little bit lighter in value But they can still be Darker in value than the rest of the painting because it's in the foreground things and the foreground are typically darker in value Things in the distance are lighter in value. So that's the color that I used right there So we've got two values in now I'm going with the third one and these are all kind of close and by they're just gradually getting lighter Now I'm going to add a little bit on top of the distant trees to lighten them up just a little bit And then I'm also going to use this value to get more of that hill Around the trail in the foreground once again, we're still dealing with the foreground, but These grasses are more flat with sun shining on them. So they're a little bit lighter in value than the Foreground grasses where you're maybe seeing the roots and the you know the deeper grasses So that's why I use the the middle value in my particular range here Now here's the next lightest value glazing it over some of the grasses on the hill And they will represent that distant hill because things get lighter in value as they recede into the distance And also you can control value A bit by just your pressure I am not giving as as much pressure or as much coverage To the distant hill as I did to the where it was closer to the viewer And this is the next lightest value. I'm glazing it over. I did glaze it over the background Field there to lighten it up a bit and now I'm just kind of reinforcing some of the darks once again that top Color that I put on the side there. This is my darkest value I'm going to give a little bit of a a hint of a trail kind of going back into the distance a little bit there And so that is really a very shallow value range for this high key painting I am going to be blending these with my little chamois cloth technique I've been using lately and once again, these are not going to be final finished paintings Um, or maybe I will go back and finish them But this is kind of a neat strategy to blend it in to kind of cover up a lot of the white of the paper And if you wanted to go back and do more pastel application, you could apply a coat of clear gesso You know, I've talked about that a lot if you've been on my channel It has a little bit of grit to it the clear gesso will allow you to see through it to this underpainting that you've created And when you apply it and let it dry the little bit of grit in the gesso Gives texture and it gives some more tooth for the pastel to hold on to I have a new recipe by the way A very neat video coming up very soon. I think you guys are going to love it. I'm using this new recipe For a lot of my homemade pastel surfaces So I can't wait to share that with you. It should be in the next day or two Now I just use the lightest value up in the sky The white of the paper is the lightest light by the way And often you like to leave a little light right behind the distant trees right above the treetops So I didn't give too much extra value. It's almost the white of the paper there now Time for the low key painting. I've flipped the value scale over I'm going to be working more with the darker End of the value scale. So let's choose some pastels for that Now I could have done all these with one color family just with all the different values But I thought let's get a little fun and creative for this one the low key the darker values I'm using reds and this is a deep This one's dark. This is really a dark pastel. That's that'll be my darkest dark And then I'm going to gradually go down Not to get too light because remember these are all going to be the darker parts of the value scale Okay, so here we go with the darkest dark that I I showed you it's not I never really use black I always just use a dark version of color and that one's pretty dark So that now will be my darkest dark and you can see how much darker that is When you compare it to the low key Um, I'm sorry when you compare it to the high key painting that's to the left Once again, it can seem confusing Because I think in our brains at least in mine I had a tendency to think of black as the higher number But it's flip-flopped the lower numbers the lower keys on the value scale are the darker colors So I'm doing the same general idea using this darkest dark and now gradually My values are going to decrease from here just like they did in the high key painting But they won't get all that light. Okay. I'm not going to go in a big wide range of values We're going to keep it real tight with darker values. Now. Here's my next Value and it's pretty much right there at value Two again, it's hard to to think of it backwards like this sometimes. So this is a lower value Um darkness. Okay, so it's just a little bit lighter in value than the first one that we use So I used that one for those distant trees Remember things that are vertical are usually darker in value But they gradually get lighter in value as things recede into the distance. So I used a little bit of that color now I'm adding the same value kind of to the tops of the trees there to kind of give a little variety And once again in the roots of the grass is in the foreground kind of surrounding the trail And now we're going to go with our next Lighter value and it's going to be more like value three reds are tricky patrons You probably remember we did a neat little exercise where we had to determine values We made a chart and um, I a lot of you I I loved it was the same thing for me when I first did it I loved your responses like whoa reds are darker in value a lot of times than you think Um, especially bright reds sometimes you have a hard time with bright colors determining Is that a dark values at a light value? By the way, if you have any trouble with Determining value take a photo of your pastels and convert it to black and white now. This is one of those ones That's brighter. Uh, it might not be that much lighter than the one that I did before It's pretty close. It might be a little bit lighter. It's definitely a little brighter So but I mean it can get tricky when you get in those really close ranges But once again converting things to black and white will really help you to see values All right, so you see if you just look at the ones I've used thus far I think I am going to grab one more You can see they're all dark To medium dark values now. This is going to be the lightest one that I use I think I may I may stretch it a little bit and go a little lighter But you see all of these values are more on the Lower key range Um of the value scale now once again, like I said before I'm controlling the value a little bit with pressure here I'm just not applying it as Thickly or putting too much pressure down. I'm just lightly glazing there. Oh, I did go one value lighter Okay, so that is definitely the lightest value and I'm just applying it glazing a little bit over the distant field there and I think I add a little bit in the Skies typically are darker at the heavens at the top and they get lighter as they come down I'm glazing it over the fields there, but they usually get Lighter just above the treetop. So I'm going to put just a little bit in the upper sky And um just kind of blend it in a little bit to give the sky a little bit of color instead of just being white After all this is a low key painting white is uh is too light of value for this painting So I'm going to use my chamois cloth again. I'm just going to do a little blending And also while I'm blending I'll talk a little bit more about How you would uh go about Painting this if you wanted to go further you have a couple of options You could blend like I'm doing with a chamois cloth You could uh blend with a piece of pipe foam insulation That's become a common tool for blending and usually this blending stage is just to cover the white of the paper All right. I don't blend a lot at in the later stages of a painting So you could use the chamois you could use a piece of pipe foam insulation You could also use a brush with some water or alcohol And do a more of a wet underpainting after all this is watercolor paper And I like that technique too. I I do a little bit of all of these so Um and then once you have your underpainting this is called The way you want it then you would apply the clear gesso or once again the new recipe that I've come up with I'll be sharing that soon. All right. I did add a little bit lighter to the value I didn't want that sky just totally white. So I went one lighter just to get the sky So this is definitely an example of a low-key painting We don't have any really light values in this other than the little bits of the light of the paper showing through This would be good a low-key painting for a Uh a scene that doesn't have a lot of light you already can sense from looking at these two one of them feels more like daytime and one feels more like Evening just as the sun's going down Then i'm going in and establishing some of the darks and I would probably not have done this here If I decided to go further with this as a painting I would have applied my clear gesso or something first and then Um moved forward, but I'm not going to I don't think I'm going to do any more of these little paintings These were just exercises now. Let's move on to more of the mid-range values I would say this is typically where most artists work is not super dark or super light and um What I'm going to do instead of the top or the bottom Horizontally, I'm going to do it vertically. I'm not going to be using any of the darkest darks or the lightest lights They're all kind of middle range values once again Let me show you the colors that I'm going to or the values and colors. I'm going to use I decided with this one to use some of the middle value greens. These are really pretty bright greens And once again, my lightest light is not going to be that light Not by any means towards the end of the spectrum with value And my darkest dark won't be nearly as dark as the one you saw in the low key painting And as a matter of fact, this is the darkest dark that I will use you see how it's It's not as dark as the low key darkest dark and it's not as light as the high key darkest dark I hope that's not confusing. It's a middle range dark. Okay So this will be what I will use just like the other examples for the vertical trees Especially in the foreground because they're usually darker in the foreground for those deep grasses and that little trail simulation that I'm making there Leading the eye back into the painting and then I will gradually go Lighter in value and because this is mid-range I'm not going to go nearly as light in value as I would in a high key painting So this is my next Darkest value again, just like the other ones. I'm using it The things that are vertical are usually darker But because these distant trees are further away They will be a little lighter in value than the trees in the foreground And the same thing the grasses in the foreground will be a little darker in value by the trail Gradually getting lighter as they go into the distance and also as the as things flatten out They usually get lighter in value like distant fields You can't see down deep into the grasses when it's far away. So you're usually just seeing the sun Shining on flat surfaces Now this is my next darkest value a really pretty green often I use values in a gradation From around a trail and almost simulating a hill, you know where a hill goes down The depths of a hill is usually darker and the crest of a hill is usually lighter So I kind of use that strategy when painting. This is my next lightest light Is this pretty bright green because it's a little lighter than the other green I'm going to glaze it once again emulating kind of a hill stroke Your directional strokes will give the illusion of what you're trying to paint And once again like the other ones using a lighter pressure back here I will use my blending tool again to blend all of this in But really what we're doing with value is creating an illusion Another neat thing to do is to paint in low light sounds crazy This is my final lightest value here But if you paint in low light you're kind of forced to see value because you don't see color all that well So it's a good way to Identify your values a little better giving a little bit of lighter values to the top So the trees in the distance going to go ahead like I said Yes, I'm putting green in the sky and give a little bit of value to that sky And I'll blend it in once again just a little bit because the sky is typically lighter than the ground And we've got our basic little mid-range value study I used my finger because my chamois cloth is getting a little dirty and dark And so I just blended it in a little bit with my finger. All right, here we go And also too this whole thing has been a real time So if you do this patrons as an exercise remember to share it in our homework album because you get credit When I do the drawing At the beginning of the next month and the more homework you do the better your chances to win the drawing and some free art supplies I give a gift card to Various so far I've been using dickblit gift cards. So it's a lot of fun So make sure patrons if you do this you submit it in the homework album Also, you can keep this as simple as what I'm doing here. You don't have to go and make it a final painting I always say I think we often get overly fussy thinking we have to create Some big great work of art when really we need to do more practice stuff Myself included. All right, once again, I'm just reinforcing a little bit of the tree trunks here also in Now this isn't on value but on With regard to how things behave in nature and with physics things get more detailed in the foreground So you typically give more detail to things that are closer Or areas that you'd like to give a little more focal point Or focal interest So I hope you guys have fun with this. I had fun with this. You you see this didn't take all that long at all It really doesn't have to take long But do you can pick the same general subject matter patrons that I did and If you want to do it exactly like I did it or you can pick a scene that's familiar to you Try to do the same scene for each of these Exercises though, so you're keeping it all consistent Now if you're not a patron of mine, I hope you learned a lot in this video I am trying to cater to you guys who are asking for more beginner content And even though this was a lesson on my patreon page I felt it would be really good for all beginner artists And if you'd like to become a patron, it's only five dollars a month You can cancel at any time and it is a a big help for me to be able to continue to bring videos Free videos to monnaie cafe. So bless you and thank you to all of those who have Supported my patreon page. I'm really really grateful Now i'm going to be showing you the actual pastels in the box that I used for these three examples You can see the ones that are sticking up. That's the High key values that I used these are the low key. There's the darkest dark remember the low key values Remember they're darker values And then for the mid-range values are the greens that I used you see them sticking up I've developed this little system to where I like this set because it has so much Available with color and value and neutrals and brights and darks and so it's really neat to be able to Do a lesson with this set. So here's the final high key painting Low key painting and mid-range painting So I hope you guys try this and you learn a lot and please subscribe to this channel if you haven't already Like this video comment become a patron and I can't wait to bring you lots more awesome stuff I've got so many videos to upload. So get excited happy painting