Squint at a painting until the details blur. What is left is a few big shapes of light, middle and dark. That simple arrangement of values is the value pattern, and it often carries the whole composition.
Key idea
Squint to see the three or four big values. A strong value pattern reads clearly from across a room; a weak one looks muddled, however good the details are.
Why it works
From a distance, or at a first glance, the eye takes in big light and dark shapes before it sees details or even colors. Painters plan these big shapes first, often in small value sketches (see Thumbnails and Viewfinders).
Caravaggio and his followers built many pictures on a value pattern of mostly dark with a few brilliant lights, called tenebrism (see Caravaggio and Tenebrism). Impressionist landscapes are often the opposite: mostly light, close values.
Worked example: A sun that disappears in gray
In Monet's Impression, Sunrise (1872), an orange sun hangs over a blue-gray harbor. The neuroscientist Margaret Livingstone has pointed out that the sun is almost the same value as the sky around it. What happens if you look at the painting in black and white?
- In gray, only value is left.
- The sun and sky are nearly the same value.
- So the sun nearly vanishes. It stands out in color only, which may be why it seems to shimmer.
Answer: The sun almost disappears, because it differs from the sky in hue but hardly in value.
Common mistake
Studying the colors and details first. Many compositions work, or fail, at the level of three or four big values. Before you judge a painting or start one of your own, squint, or view it in gray.