 Welcome to Monet Café and my patrons on my Patreon page. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and this is a lesson on value, taking your art to the next level. That might sound like a bold claim, but it truly is the fact that color often gets the glory. But value does the work and is so important for good art. Now I stress value all the time in my videos and I have some videos on the importance of value, but this is a very in-depth video at the request of my patrons and there's going to be a little teaser because part two to this is me literally painting in the dark. It's fascinating. So stay tuned for another video on that. But I want to thank my patrons for this video. They did a poll and requested, they had a choice of like four different topics and they chose the importance of value. So this lesson is the most in-depth lesson on value I've ever done. So thank my patrons. They will get the full extended version of this video, but don't worry Monet Café fans and subscribers, you're gonna get some great content right here as well. Welcome artistic friends to Monet Café. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and today's lesson is going to be on value. Now I know I've done a lot of videos on the importance of value in painting and I guess the reason I've done it a lot is because it is that important. But this particular time is because my patrons on my patreon page patreon.com Susan Jenkins suggested requested this particular video to focus very heavily on value. I gave them a poll to choose what my next lesson would be and I would say the majority of the people voted for a lesson on value and I really want to break it down because I talk about it a lot while I paint but I'd like to give you a little bit more of the science behind value and kind of some of the optical illusions of value and how you can make that work while you're painting or to create stronger more beautiful artwork and also join me too. This will be limited on the Monet Café channel, the YouTube channel. We'll have limited content. The full content will be for my patrons because they requested this and it's just a little something special I can do for my patrons but Monet Café YouTube channel will get some great content as well. What I'm going to be doing I have wanted actually I've wanted to do this for a while. I've actually done it. It wasn't that long ago where I literally created a painting in the dark. Okay not totally pitch black but I had incredibly dim lighting. It was nighttime and I came in and I had some pastels laid out already and I wanted to paint and I knew I had done it before but not as dark as I did at this one time and I knew that that's one of the best ways to see value instead of color. It kind of cancels out the color. I'll be talking more about why that's important and I'll also be creating the painting in the dark. I'm going to take my I'll probably do it at night in here but if it's not dark enough I have another room I'm literally going to take my easel into and record myself painting in the dark and the neat thing is you get really exciting results because you're not focused on color you're focused on value which is the most important thing. They always say value is king but color gets the glory. So let's have fun with this lesson and we're going to learn a whole lot about value and hopefully you will learn a lot and it'll make your artwork even better. All right let's do it. All right I've zoomed in here so you can see things better and oh by the way I'm wearing my Monet Café designers artist series. It's called Bracelet with the little Monet Café charm. This one is the Monet Café style. There are three styles and I just love it so if you want one I'll provide a link at the end of this video or within the description section of the video. They're so fun they kind of go with everything. All right so in talking about value this is a nice little tool. It's really inexpensive. I think you can get it on most of the art stores or online options and it's called a grayscale and value finder and it's a great tool especially when you're first getting started in helping you to see value because sometimes some of those middle values can get kind of hard to see. It's got these neat little keys they're called in here. There's multiple reasons for this and then being called keys that I'll talk about in a minute that sometimes when you have a color, color sometimes is distracting you're like oh what value is this? Well we we know it's not totally white on this side of the value and we know it's not totally dark but where where where does it fit into these values. So I'm going to give you some tricks of finding that but these little keys are a good way to just kind of hold it up and also to hold it up to your reference image or photo. It's nice that you can just isolate it like that. So that is a very helpful tool. Now let me explain this scale and how it is organized. I was under the misconception and I think as any novice artist would be that there are ten, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten values or gradations of value and wouldn't you normally think that one would be white and ten would be the darkest? No no no that's not the way it is with the value scale. Ten is called value one because it's a hundred percent black okay and now is there really ever a hundred percent black okay value is relative we're going to be talking about that too. So on this in relation to this scale it's the darkest one value two three four five and all the way up to value ten that is why I will talk about it's not the focus of this video but I will talk a little bit about high key paintings again the little keys okay these are called keys and so the higher keys are these higher numbers high key paintings are usually your lighter values okay if you've ever heard that term that's why. Alright so this is our handy-dandy little tool very helpful but as I was saying value is relative what do I mean by that? Well let's take an example and find out this is going to be a neat way for you to see what I mean I say this expression all the time when I'm painting value is relative and color is also relative that will be another video but these are fun kind of things I love the science of color and some of these optical illusions and I know you guys do too because my patrons I've shared some little color tests and you guys always respond so well to those color tests they're fun right and and it is really kind of like an illusion of the eyes so let's let's show how that works all right I've got three pieces of paper here this one happens to be just copy paper okay so it doesn't really matter these two are drawing paper so we've got a light okay we would call that a high key it'd be the whitest white in the scale then we've got a middle value that's probably more like this value six right here and then we've got a high key I mean I'm sorry a low key value value one black okay closest to black so let's take a look at what I mean by value is relative let's take okay I'm gonna show you some pastels now and I'll show you a picture too because I can't hold them up so good here like this and I am also going to be showing you a picture of the same pastels converted to a black and white image okay we'll use that later we'll talk about that later but it is a really great little tip I wanted to recommend it now in seeing value if you're new with painting and you're having a hard time like I said some of these middle values get kind of hard to tell where they fall in the value scale converting your pastels take a picture of your pastels convert it to black and white and you can you're not as distracted by the color and you can more easily see what value they are by the way I you know I've been assuming what value is it is basically the lightness or darkness of a hue a color and so I think that was pretty obvious but alright so let's take one of these I've put the black is black that I could find in my pastel palette on the top here I've put the whitest white I could find I think that's like probably a true white according to the pastels that I have have you ever noticed that when buying paint colors like for walls or ceilings you say I want white well there's a million different whites okay so again it's all relative and and there really isn't a true black or a true white it's just based on what it's surrounding so we're also going to be looking at these values that I've selected in the middle I purposely chose ones that are a little more neutral okay a little more calmed down in color so to speak I didn't want color to be so distracting probably the boldest in color of all of these is probably going to be that one right there this green's pretty pretty saturated with color not too bad though okay so I thought that'd be better than being distracted by color so what I'm going to do here other than the black and white see if you can find in this middle that middle range of pastels here in the middle of my little tray see if you can find I'll show the picture again I'm going to show it in color if you can find the darkest value I think you'll probably pretty easily and pretty quickly identify the darkest value is this here now I'm not sure about your computer monitor because sometimes that changes things but it may look black but it's actually a green okay can you see that I've got a pretty decent light to show here so it's actually a pretty dark green all right so let's see is let's see how dark this is how dark is this value well let's go ahead and let's just put a little sample of it right up here on the wife wow it's dark right look how dark that is man it almost looks black on that paper doesn't it you guys are probably already figuring out where I'm headed all right let's take a look at it on the middle value all right isn't that funny how all of a sudden if we could just zoom in and I think I will all right now look at that all of a sudden it doesn't look quite as black well let me if you can't tell that now let me go over here look can you see the difference that one is so high contrast and contrast just so you know it's just where light and dark meet okay you see the same color on the white looks much darker than on the gray all right now let me zoom back out a little bit and now let's do it on the darkest color that I have up here all right same pastel and let's just do that over here now this is what I was discovering especially when working this is black drawing paper and I've been doing some paintings on black drawing paper and it's really I stay in front so my voice doesn't change in the video it's really quite a great exercise in value in understanding how value is relative all of a sudden this is not doesn't appear black or even dark anymore correct let me zoom into this one all right I actually pulled this off so that you could see it better and my lighting makes it a little difficult so but can you see now that all of a sudden it doesn't look that there's a better angle of it right there with the light shining on it can you see how all of a sudden that doesn't look dark anymore again compare it to the swatches that are up here so value is relative or dependent on what is surrounding it or what it surrounds now let's play around a little bit more with these examples in the same little set of pastels let's see other than the lightest light that I have and the darkest dark surrounding them let's see if you can find which one in these middle pastels is the lightest value without me desaturating it or taking the color away I would say you probably would choose between these two right here the lavender kind of in this minty green but actually if you convert it to black and white you can see that this one is other than the white is the lightest value of the choices all right let's take a look at this pastel which is a Terry Ludwig pastel it's actually one that dropped one time it didn't get too bad damage but it's a little bit of damage there all right we're obviously getting the hang of this and know that whoa that is a light value right so we've got a really light value this could actually serve as your lightest light on this if you on this black surface if you were doing a painting on a dark surface because it reads as light so easily and on this middle value drawing paper let's take a look at it we can kind of see when I put it up here it's similar to the same value of the paper it's perhaps a little bit lighter than the paper now look how I'm gonna look through my viewfinder to see the difference of its shows look at the difference of how it shows up on the black versus the middle value paper here all right now again you probably already know when we put it on the lighter paper it's going to appear dark all of a sudden can you see the difference it's dark on the white surface but light on the dark surface I hope that this little example that I'm doing is showing what I mean about value being relative a color and a value is not really determined until you put it on something or surround it with something all right let's do let's just do another one here I'm gonna take kind of this dull green here this is almost the color of this paper so let's just start with that right there okay this is a night I really like this color okay it's a little bit darker in value than the paper and now let's take it and put it on the white okay it appears like a pretty medium darker value on the white and then let's take it and put it on the dark again a very very light value so let's get let's go even we did our darkest darker the middle values and we did our lightest light let's go ahead and do the black and the white the highest in the range of pastels that I had all right we're gonna take the black I'm gonna put the black let's go since we did the darkest over here I'm gonna put the black here obviously that's a little darker than the screen what might not be obvious from the screen you're looking at but it is a little darker than that green I put down we're gonna put the black here again pretty dark but it doesn't especially with my actual vision looking at it you know not through my camera it is it appears much darker here than it does here now let's take it and put it over here let me make sure that's in the camera yes let's put it next to here it might not be in the camera actually and again you may not be able to see I'm gonna zoom out a little bit oh yeah you can you can see it actually it is darker than the paper so the drawing paper that I'm using is black but it's not as black as this pastel all right so pretty interesting now let's take the actual white pastel and I'm gonna put it on this side here let me see how that reads on the camera can't even see it really yeah same thing I can kind of see it's it's showing up a bit brighter than the paper but let's do it here I think this is a Jack Richardson a lot pastel sets don't even come with a pure white but this particular set did okay do you see that right there it appears obviously the lightest thing on this paper let's look at the the white on this one wow look at that white pops again high contrast here no contrast here again to contrast is something that we want to keep in mind when we're painting that is something as artists that we have the power to choose where someone's eye goes with the contrast in the painting and we want to keep that minimized or reserved for the parts of our painting that we find or want to be the most dramatic or impactful find out what the reference photo or the image is what you find moved you about it make that the focus and then have everything else more low contrast in the painting and I thought contrast was important to talk about because we're talking about value and value high contrast is where light and dark meet now in your particular painting you may not have a range from this is probably the easiest one to see here from white to black as a matter of fact it is a good idea to not use the entire value range when creating a painting now let me add just a few more of these middle values in here just so you can get an idea I didn't get these in order unfortunately but here's an example of kind of this pretty sagey kind of more of a cooler green it appears as light on the black surface it appears as darker to middle value here and it's going to appear quite dark here isn't that interesting and I hope this is really going to help you when you're painting to get an idea of a color isn't really dark just because you pick it up and look at it you know you might look at that and go oh that's kind of a darker value or you might compare it to what other pastels it's laying around be sure you don't do that you're comparing it to whatever surface you're working on and you may even tone your surface you know if you've seen my videos I don't like working on white unless I'm doing a watercolor under painting and so it's going to be dependent on what you've toned your surface it's also going to be dependent on what you've already laid down so you don't just grab a dark value I think that's probably one of the mistakes as early artists is we see something in our reference image that's dark and all of a sudden we think oh grab my darkest dart or use like the maybe the roots down near the bottom of a tree or not the roots the base of a tree or deep grasses and you grab almost a black and then for the sky you grab your lightest light for the sky now let me share a little bit about why that's not the best way to paint well first of all let me just describe what is contrast contrast is basically the difference between the blacks and the whites and high contrast means your blacks are really really dark and your whites are really really white or your lights are really really light high contrast would be the two opposite ends of the value scale this is high contrast you notice that in the way the value scales laid out it makes a little easier to see that let's come down to value 5 and 6 do you see how the contrast is not that stark or not that dramatic and that would be a low contrast type of painting if you painted more with those middle values instead of high contrast high contrast paintings if you paint all high contrast everywhere your painting can get too busy and too much going on everywhere but at the same time again contrast is relative to what you choose what value scale you choose in your painting I'm gonna talk about that in just a second but I would recommend not choosing the extremes for your painting unless you're just really trying to create something very high contrast for dramatic influence however mostly in our landscape paintings and I'd say the people that are typically on Monet cafe and we like a little bit more of that subtlety and beauty that we see in nature inherently you don't usually see a lot of high contrast unless the lighting is just right on a particular day alright so let me share with you what I meant about some examples of the different keys that you can paint in this and I'm gonna pull up the image on the computer would be the first one number one the full value range you're using a value scale like I just said it's not a good idea of the entire gamut of your pastels you're using your whitest white and your darkest dark and any kind of value in between basically you're gonna have too much going on and it's just a just too big of a range for you to have a more of a true impact or subtlety to your work it's just going to be a little bit too crazy now low key range would be what I was saying before low key let me hold up the value scale again if high key is here okay a high key painting and I'm going to show you some examples of that low key painting would be here okay there are the lower numbers value 1 2 3 again it seems a little backwards kind of like if you know anything about photography the aperture setting always seems backwards the larger number is the smaller hole of the aperture and vice versa so low key painting is going to be these lower keys darker okay a high key paintings going to be these so a low key range is more of this example number two a high key range is example number three now let me show you some paintings that I think are fabulous in the high key range and wouldn't you know it none other than our Monet that our group is named after he has some of the most beautiful high key paintings now with a high key painting one thing that I think is beautiful about that and again I don't want to make this video this is on value but it's all about value here it's not about high and low key paintings I want to do another video that focuses more on how to do those but it's worth mentioning here that when you paint in high key the focus obviously doesn't become contrast as much because we don't have as much contrast going on the the values are closer together we don't have a large scale of contrast so what we do as artists it color becomes more important and color becomes the star and the play between colors and the harmony between colors as Monet has so beautifully represented in many of his high key paintings I'm very drawn to high key art I think it's absolutely beautiful now this is the middle value range example well it says number three here it's actually number four the middle value range so we're not going to the whitest white we're not going to the darkest dark and I would say most of your artwork is going to be better you you might add one more on each end or one more you know choosing on which side instead of one two three four five of these middle you may have six and choose you know which side you want to add to but I say a painting is more natural feeling that's the word I've been trying to find it feels more representative of nature to be more in those middle range values and not have the full value range also to I just think it's easier on the eyes and it keeps our eyes from flitting around all over the place now one thing I will say with regards to value and contrast you want to reserve your areas of contrast for your focal points because if you have high contrast or contrast you don't have to say high contrast again we don't want to use the whole value scale or the the extremes the black and the white but if you use a middle value scale for example this one here your areas of high contrast would be this juxtaposed to this so you're going to be using those where you want the center central focus of whatever your subject matter is and the rest of the painting should be more mid values the best art that I've seen or the ones that I'm more drawn to are ones that don't have so much going on with contrast and many middle values more and neutral colors and then preserving your high contrast and your more intense colors for your focal points okay now let's do another little example of an actual little landscape to get an idea this is the end of the content for Monet cafe YouTube channel and this is the portion where my patrons are getting the full version but I am going to go ahead and speed this up what I did I created three paintings from the same reference image picture of my backyard again and on the three separate colors using the same principles that I spoke about before so I'm going to speed this up a bit for you guys in Monet cafe so you can see what I'm working on and you already had the first part of this lesson so I'll add some music and you guys enjoy and again if you'd like to become a patron and always get the full content of my videos you can do so at patreon.com slash Susan Jenkins it's only $5 a month you can cancel at any time and it's a lot of fun I also have a special private group for my patrons on Facebook and we have contest I'm going to be giving away a Monet cafe artist series bracelet this week and so anyway lots of fun enjoy the rest of this I hope you learned a lot and please watch to the end for the teaser of the next coming video oh that was fun and a lot of information but I hope and pray some great information for you and like I said in one of my post I was hoping you guys would have an aha moment if you were questionable about value and the importance of it in good art so I'm concluding this video now with a teaser this is a photo I took in my backyard yesterday and this morning I got up early to do a painting in the dark that is one of the greatest way these are the pastels that I sat beside me to choose from one of the greatest way to see values to turn the lights out so I turned the light out in my on my big lamp that I use and in my studio and it was dark I even turned my iPad off it was oh and now you can see all of a sudden you can see value better now my camera compensates for the dark so you're actually seeing more in this recording than I saw it was darker than it appears here so I was pretty close to painting in the dark just super low lighting and I am excited to bring you the video I did the original part of the painting in just 15 minutes I wanted to limit myself it's on a piece of pastel matte and I worked quickly and just grabbed color according to value I could not see the color and it has some pretty interesting results that I was very pleased with so get ready for part two to learning about value literally painting in the dark so until then practice these techniques on value please subscribe to this channel if you haven't already liked this video comment I love to get your comments also if you'd like to become a patron to get the full content of all of my videos you can do so at this clickable link at the end of the video and get yourself a Monet cafe artist series bracelet in the link in the description of this video all right artist happy and blessed painting