Painting Successful Landscapes: It's All About Value

1. Introduction: Hi, thanks for joining me for another class painting successful landscapes. It's all about value. Accurate value is the key to making a painting feel believable and life-like. As a beginner, it can be tricky to see values, let alone mix them accurately. This class is designed to help simplify the process and get you feeling confident with value in no time. First, I'm going to give you some examples so you can see y-value is such an important part of painting. Then you'll create your own value scale, a useful tool to help you recognize and mix accurate values more easily. And for your class project, you'll put your new knowledge of values into practice by painting a beautiful mountain landscape along with me. This is a great way to practice using value to create depths. By the end of the class, you will know how to use value to create more successful landscape paintings. And feel confident to apply your new knowledge to all of your future creations. Have fun. 2. Understanding Values: Value is basically how light or dark something is. I actually think that value is more important than color in a painting. Accurate value is the key to making a painting feel believable and life-like. First, I'm going to give you some examples. So you can see y-value is such an important part of painting. Here's a painting by photo-based artist Andre during the colors aren't at all lifelike. And yet we're still able to make sense of the image because the values are correct. The lights and darks are still in all the right places, despite the unrealistic colors. When we make this image black and white, you can see the values clearly and it suddenly feels like a more realistic representation of the scene. The same is true of his portraits. The colors here are exaggerated and not at all true to life. There are no skin tones, but yellows, green for the shadows, and bright pinks. However, when we make this painting black and white, you can see how accurate the values are. You can see the highlights and shadows that make up the shape of the face. And because those values are correct, we're able to make sense of the image regardless of what colors are actually used. Value is what brings your subjects to life, giving them form, depth, and believability. It's important to be able to see and recognize values in your subjects and then accurately convey those values in your paintings. This example by Manet, the strong contrast between lighter values in the background and darker, stronger values in the foreground really creates depths in the painting. Getting accurate values in your landscapes is what will give them a real sense of distance. It can be difficult to recognize values sometimes, especially when color is involved. One tip is to squint your eyes. Squinting at the subject will help to mute the colors you're seeing so you can better see the values. It gets rid of the details and merges colors of similar value into bigger shapes. Try squinting at this image and you should see that it clearly divides the areas of light and dark. Now of course, you wouldn't squint your whole painting, but it can be helpful to help pinpoint your values before you begin. 3. Introducing The Value Scale: Recognizing and depicting values is something that you'll develop with practice. The more you start to look out for these things, the easier it will become to see them. But for now we're going to start by creating a value scale like this. You'll need your paint in black and white for one scale that I'd also recommend trying it with some other colors to choose two other colors you'd like to make a scale with as well. I chose red and blue. You'll need a medium flat brush, your water palette, and some tissues. Before you start, you'll need to prepare a strip like this one here for each of your value scales. I've just cut mine from some acrylic paper and then used a ruler to divide them into nine sections. When you're all set up, head to the next video, we will practice mixing those values. 4. Make Your Own Value Scale: A value scale is a useful tool to help artists identify light, mid tones and darks more easily. We're going to just use black and white to create a scale from light to dark here. Let's fill in the first box in the scale with pure white. Then the last box on your scale with pure black. Then we want to mix up the other values. Black and white are both quite powerful pigments and we want a nice even transition between the values. So we'll start by making a midtone by mixing equal amounts of black and white and then adding this to the middle box in our scale. With these three values in place, we have a good structure to help us fill in the rest of the squares. For the lighter values start with a base of white and then add a touch of your main gray. This will give you a really pale gray, which will sit next to the white on your scale. The aim is to get a nice gradient which transitions from light to dark. For your next block, you'll want to mix in more of your mid tone into the gray to darken it. Keep adjusting the mix bit by bit until it feels like it's a shade darker. Next, what aiming for a value which sits in-between all paler gray and our mid-tone. So again, just keep adding a mixing in the mid tone gray until you get the right kind of shade. That's the first part of our scale finished. Now we'll start working on the darker values. This time you'll want to begin with a base of the mid gray. If you don't have enough of this, mix up some extra Before we start adding the darks. Add a touch of extra black to create that next shade up on the scale. Keep going, adding more black each time to build those darker values. That's our scale in black and white. This is the one you'd usually keep for reference, but colors will also have a value. This exercise really helps with your mixing technique. I want you to practice this twice more in color. Start with your base color as your mid tone. Then you'll be lightening and darkening your color to create its different values. I'll start by mixing the palest version of my blue here. Then I'll gradually mixing more of the blue as we continue up the scale. We're aiming for a nice even transition between the values. So you can adjust these if you need to. For the darker end of the scale, use your pure color as the base. And then gradually mixing black to create your value shades. Keep building the darker values step-by-step until you reach the end of your scale. I'm going to repeat this process one more time with my second color of red. You can choose whatever color you like. Repeating the process with different colors is a really good practice for color mixing. And it will help you become more accurate when you come to painting highlights and shadows in your artworks. 5. Seeing Values In The Real World: Now you have your value scale. Give your eyes a bit of practice with recognizing different values. Take your black and white scale around your house and hold it up to different objects to see what values you're seeing around. You. See if you can see where on the value scale that object would fit can make it harder to recognize values. If you aren't sure, try to squinting trick and see if that helps you pinpoint in the object's value. You might feel a little silly, but it's all good training. Keep your value scale somewhere safe as it's a handy tool you may want to refer to later on. If you have any questions about value, just drop them in the comments. And in your next class we'll be painting a mountain scene. To really put those skills into practice. I'll see you then. 6. Class Project Introduction: Hello, It's time to paint another full painting along with me. This time we'll be putting your new skills for painting values into practice with a mountain IC. This is a great way to practice using value to create depths. Notice how we have lighter, less intense values towards the background, and more intense dark about using the foreground. This is very common in landscape paintings as colors tend to lighten and get more muted as they fade into the distance. Believe it or not, I only used one brush for this painting, my half inch flat brush and just four colors, blue, red, black, and white. So get yourself setup with your usual supplies and when you're ready, head to the next video and I'll show you how to paint the scene step-by-step. Have fun. 7. Mountain Landscape - Part 1: To begin, mix up a pale blue. You're aiming for a very light sky blue color. So just a small amount of blue mixed into your white will be enough. You'll be using this blue to cover the whole of your background. Just fill your whole surface with this color and we'll get rid of that scary white page. You don't need to be super neat about this, but do try to keep your brushstrokes or going in the same direction, moving horizontally across the page. Even though this is just a flat color, keeping your brushstrokes consistent will make your painting feel calmer and more unified. If you have lots of brushstrokes all going in different directions, it will look a bit messier and more energetic. Sometimes you want that kind of energy. But here we're painting a nice calm landscape scene. So we want our brushstrokes to be nice and calm too. Next, we're going to mix the color for our most distant row of mountains. Will keep the pale blue as the base, but we'll add to it to create a pale gray. Now this is going to be the lightest value for our mountains. It's important not to go too dark. I'm adding a touch of red just to give it a warmer tint. Then I'll also add the tiniest touch of black. If you do go too dark, just keep adjusting your mix until you've got about the same shade as mine. This color is going to form our most distant row of mountains. You'll want these to sit near the top of your scene. I believe, about a third of space for the sky. And then paint in some loose mountain shapes. You can use your imaginations for the mountains themselves. Just imagine there are some distant peaks on the horizon. And paint in those shapes. Once you're happy with the shapes of your mountains on the horizon, you can continue that pale gray down the page. You don't need to go all the way down, perhaps just about halfway. When you finished your first row of mountains, you'll be adding another row and these will be slightly closer to you. This means that value will need to be slightly darker as they were coming forward from the horizon. Will use the same base color but mix in more of our other colors to strengthen the value. Think back to creating your value scales and imagine you're mixing the next step along. You want to color that is a shade stronger and more intense than your first. Then you'll be painting another row of mountains slightly further forward than your first set. Again, you can use your imagination for the actual shapes. Just paint in this next row of mountains, exactly like you did before. Beneath the mountains you're going to have some water. And this water will reflect the colors of the mountains. Before we add our next row, I'd like you to use this same color too quickly block in some of the water. I'm thinning down my paint to make it flow better than I'm just brushing this watered-down color over the bottom section of the painting. You can be really loose with this because we'll work on top of it later. But it's just a good idea to get this base color down while we still have some of it mixed. This has helped to fill in that space at the bottom. And because we've watered the paint down, we have a nice transparency which will help give the illusion of water later on. When you felt this section with color, we'll paint in the next row of mountains. Our third set of mountains will be further forward again. And this means that they need to be darker in value to create depth in our painting. I've started with a darker colors of blue and black here. Then I'll add a touch of white just to soften it as I don't want it to be too big a jump between the values. We're aiming for. A nice deep blue. As before, this set of mountains is going to be further forwards again, it will overlap the others. I'm going to start this set a little higher up just to add some variation. Then I'm going to paint in the peak shapes just as before. If your other layers aren't quite dry yet, you might get some of the lighter color sneaking through. I don't mind not too much actually. It looks almost like snow and it gives some extra texture. But it's up to you. You can dry the layers off or let them blend into each other a little. As our mountains are now getting closer to the water, you'll want to start knitting up the bottom edge. This time we'll create a straighter line along the bottom of our mountains as they meet the water. Just keep working and adjusting your own mountains until you're happy with the way they look. You can see how we've now built up these three values as the mountains fade out into the distance. This is starting to give our landscape a nice sense of depth. To finish this stage of the painting, we'll just add some darker reflections to the water. Thin down some of the same color so it's nice and watery. Then just brush in some darker areas. I'm keeping this to the left-hand side of the painting just underneath where our final mountain will sit. You can see I'm getting these nice marks from the bristles of the brush. As the brush dries out at the end of the stroke. I'm going to leave those edges like that because it already gives a sense of ripples on water. At this stage, the painting's still looks a little bit strange. There's always this or quit halfway point in any painting. But stick with me and your piece will start coming together as you add detail in the next stage. 8. Mountain Landscape - Part 2: Now it's time to paint our final mountain. This one is going to be the furthest forward, coming right up to the water. This means we want it to be the darkest value. And to create real distance in this piece, we're going to go all out and just paint this one in black. So it's like a silhouette against the paler background layers. This is just one mountain and it's going to be coming out from the left-hand side down towards the water. I'm going to start by brushing in the base for the mountain. And I want it to come out to about just over halfway across the piece. I'm still using my flat brush here. But if you find yourself struggling to get a neat edge, you can switch to a pointed brush to give you a little more control. Notice how the base of my mountain comes out slightly into the water. This will help give the illusion of depth because some of the water will be sitting and going around the edge of this foreground mountain. I'm going to bring the side of the mountain down from about here, imagining that we are quite close to this one and it's coming out of the edge of our frame. Then I'll just fill in the rest of this shape. To neaten up at the edge at the base of the mountain, you can use some more water on your brush so that you'll get a smoother flow of paint. Now, we're going to add a reflection in the water beneath the mountain. Water down your black paint exactly like we did with the colors before. Then lightly brush this across the water beneath that, the dark mountain. You might need to add some more water as you go because black is such a strong pigment. Then you'll have the base of your water. All it needs is a few extra ripples to bring it to life. We'll start with the shadows. You can keep using your watered down black paint. Make sure it's watered down enough that it really flows from your brush. You don't want any resistance. The flat brush is surprisingly good for painting ripples. Make sure you're using just the tip of the brush and palate horizontally across the page to create thin lines. You will not try to get a nice variation in the width of the stroke, which works really well for painting water. Your brush should really just skate across the page. If you find it too dry or you're getting blobs of paint, keep adding more water to your mix until it flows. We're going to repeat this same process, this time using our deep blue water, the paint down until it's nice and thin. Then add another layer of ripples in the same way. As you paint your report, you want to get a mix of short and longer strokes. Try to mix it up so it doesn't become too uniform. We're going to brush these all over in both the darker and lighter areas of your water. Finally, we're going to add some highlights. So I'll use white to mix a pale blue and then water it down until it's nice and thin. Then simply repeat the same process as before. Brushing in those highlights. You don't want too many highlights in the dark area of the water. Here. I'd keep them more spread out and just add a few of them to give a hint of the ripples. Just keep working back and forth, building those ripples up until you're happy. We have our finished mountain landscape where you've used different values to create that sense of depth and distance. 9. Well Done!: So big, well done. I hope you enjoyed painting that mountain scene along with me. How did you get on with painting those different values? Do share a photograph of your painting in the comments, and I'll take a look and I can always give you some pointers. Just click the Create Project button to share your painting. If you enjoyed this class, I'd love for you to leave a review to help other students find it. If you'd like to keep building your skills. To take a look at my other classes here on Skillshare. Take care and I'll see you soon.