Checking values of your painting

One of the most difficult tasks for any artist that wants to paint realism is to get the right values. Without getting the right values, painted objects will remain flat. Value change in colour is what gives the illusion of form. Certain colours have a high or low inherent value, that is naturally they are either dark or light.

What is value? Value is one of the three dimensions of colour. A simple description of what is value will be whether a colour is dark or light. On a black and white scale it is the range of variations between white and black. In a 3 scale value we only have white, black and a middle-tone grey. Most artists especially those painting impressionistic and more modern approaches uses a 5 value range while if you want to paint realism you will need to go up to at least 9 values in order to depict the illusion of the 3 dimensional form.

In order to start seeing value changes and mix colours of the right values one needs to first understand the basic concept of how light affects various shapes. Starting from simple geometric shapes one can move to more complex objects. One needs to train the eyes and brain to see these subtle changes in values sometimes not that obvious to the untrained eye especially when it comes to light coloured objects. There are various ways how you can check yourself while painting to see that you are mixing the right colurs of the correct values, or to check whether you have the right values on the canvas. The easiest way to do it is to move back and to look at the canvas from a distance. Most of the time you will immediately observe a darker area that looks odd when compared to the adjacent values.
The other way is to move back and squint at the painting and objects. Squinting your eyes will filter the amount of light entering your eyes and the colours in front of you will become grey and hence easier to judge their values.
Another way which works for me is to compare to a grey scale. You can prepare one yourself from your own paints and keep it as a reference. When doing a still life like above I place the grey scale next to the object and compare the darkness of the coloured object with the scale. By squinting you should be able to judge well. I compare in a way like bracketing in a camera, where I compare to a lighter and a darker tone to confirm the real tone. With time your eyes will immediately judge the values correctly. Taking a photo of the finished painting and converting it to black and white using software will also help you to check your values. Both the apple and the landscape were checked in this way.
Finally if you want to develop a sensitivity to colour and to judge values (and chroma) correctly when mixing paint you will need to do a number of exercises using simple still life objects and trying to match the exact colours as you see them. Even half an hour every couple of days should be good enough. You will be amazed how the body quickly learns what to do.