We can dissect the values from master painter's work and learn a lot about how they've used values in composing their paintings. One way to do that is ignore the
images and look only for the value patterns.
17th Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens is a good one to study. Let's do some detective work here and discover a part of his
composing code for the painting, Samson and Delilah.
Here's a photo of Ruben's painting.
First, I dissected the darkest darks--those areas in deep shadow.
Already we can see that darks dominate the right half and lighter values dominate the left half. We begin to see
a value structure. In one sense, this is his notan.
Using a flat brush, next I pulled out values one at a time, from dark to light and dropped them in place. Now we can see
what he did with that basic structure.
We discover a major balancing motif and a visual path strategy.
- Blue line: The arrangement of lighter values sets a diagonal direction from the upper left corner to the lower right. That alignment gives a
classic balance to the painting, even creating two major triangles on either side of the corner to corner diagonal.
- Green line: The placement of the lightest lights guide the eye in a C path, one of the major visual paths used by artists
for centuries
- Red line: The next lightest values guide the eye in a reverse C path. That serves
to bring the eye back into the composition from the major C path.
Here is a side by side of the painting and its analysis. Now look at how the images are placed within the strategies we just discovered. Pretty cool,
right!
Using this painting by Scott Christensen, try my method of dissecting values and discover how Scott uses value patterns to guide the
eye.
Have yourself a joy-filled weekend!
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