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The expression 'value trap' is much more commonly used in the language of the financial world than in the language of painting, yet it can still apply in a similar way. In financial speak the term refers to a stock that has fallen in price and now appears to have a lot of potential growth -- but that potential could very well be an illusion. In trying to capture our impressions of the world in paint, there are situations where notes of light or dark appear at first glance very obvious and easy to see -- a slam-dunk. These are tempting to go for right away but often end up overstated, weakening the illusion of light and shade while also emphasizing contrast in places that don't serve the painting well. These painting 'value traps' are so common that as a teacher I would often look at those areas of a student's painting first to get a sense of how well somebody was observing values and respecting the limitations of their materials. 

As I mentioned in last month's blog, values are far and away the most difficult thing for most people to learn to observe well and definitely the aspect of painting I consider the most challenging to teach. Our eyes fool us in some situations, so learning to watch out for these 'traps' can make the difference between capturing believable light and shade vs. an image with distracting notes that jump around a lot.  Coming up in the next blog or 2 (or as many as it takes) I'll be pointing out some of the situations to watch out for and advice on how to interpret them so that the painting as a whole maintains consistent light and shade.

Above is an optical illusion that illustrates some of these situations I'll be talking about. Although the wide gray stripe in the middle appears to be darker on the left, gradually fading lighter toward the right, it is in fact the same value all the way across. When a value is surrounded by lighter notes it will appear darker and the reverse is also true --- a light spot out in the middle of an area of darkness will appear lighter. The thing to keep in mind is that you can still trust your eyes but you can't trust your brain or your instincts. If you tried doing a replica of this illustration with your paints and related everything correctly, faithfully painting the notes up against another on one side and then the other, the values on either end of the middle stripe would turn out to be very close to each other. Where things get muddled is when the brain is convinced one side is lighter than the other, tempts us to overstate the contrast and then we don't double-check to see if it matches the actual effect in our vision. When a false note get put on the canvas and is not corrected right away, the next note will look wrong up against it so that gets 'corrected' --- and then the one after that, and the one after that. Pretty soon the artist is moving in circles trying to adjust everything to fit in with the note that went off track and then when they slam up against the limits of their materials, hope against hope that a new tube of color will appear in their paint box and pull them out of the ditch.

Working within the value limitations of pigments is key to preserving an illusion of light and form, so slowing down and double-checking every stroke in situations like this can save hours upon hours of grief.

In my workshops I've always started my students off painting pears, and for many of them it was much to their chagrin. One or two pears however, is a ideal study to begin understanding the phenomena described above and eventually those lessons can then be applied to any subject matter. Posted below are some of the examples I created for my workshops to help students comprehend visually what the objective is in terms of values.

Once people acknowledge the value limitations in their paints and then accept the idea that there are situations where the temptation to overplay values is present, painting becomes a lot more understandable. Look carefully at the string of color notes below each pear. The point of these examples is not to notice the differences, but to notice the similarities. In each example the notes on the light side, in the halftone, and on the shadow side are kept distinctly separate. It does not matter one bit whether the first pear is painted with 7 steps in value and the other has a few more incremental value steps with lots of color changes. What matters is that on both pears, NOTHING on the light side is as dark as any note on the shadow side and NOTHING on the shadow side is as light as anything on the light side. There is a strong temptation for most people starting out to want to overplay any small interruption in the form on the light side by making it too dark. These smaller forms or interruptions can often be eliminated or minimized without hurting the strength of the original statement but it takes a conscious effort to do that. Another common 'value trap' is the reflected light within the shadow. Lighter planes can appear in shadow areas due to the primary light source bouncing off the floor or off of another object and reflecting into the shadow side, but these secondary sources of light can't be as high in value as the primary light hitting the object directly. In addition, by their nature, reflected lights are generally surrounded by darker values (the shadow notes, and the cast shadow), so as with the gray stripe illustration above, they will appear much lighter than they actually are in relation to the larger value patterns. A quick double-check by looking in a black mirror can correct any errors before they compound and destroy the larger effect of light and shade. 

Artists like Sargent respected the limitations, and therefore the power of their palette and never sacrificed a step in value unless it was important to the painting as a whole. Because the value range we have is so precious, every value change needs to be considered in this context. Yes, you do want to paint what you see, but you also have to be clear about your objectives. The range of your palette is not going to expand so you have to learn to work within it --- respecting that every value change added will to some degree, diminish the impact of the statement of light. Acquiring the discipline to not jump at every nuance just because it is there, but rather to choose the subtleties that will pay off the most and keep them in context with the big picture is where all the effort comes into play. Just as with anything else in life, individuals will make different choices consistent with what they are hoping to express, so there is no exact formula to follow but developing a good eye and solid understanding of values will go a long way in making those decisions the most effective they can be.

P.S. -- I have disabled comments on my blogs due to frequent spam posts but always welcome suggestions for topics artists would like to hear more about. Please email comments or suggestions to [email protected].