I hope you enjoy this refurbished post from four years ago.
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In the history of visual art, there was a time when tone values were used primarily for showing the effects of a light source on forms. But the early Abstractionists broke wide open the whole concept of the role of values.
Rather than being a tool primarily to interpret form's relationship to its light source, value for them became a tool for guiding the eye and for achieving unity, order and balance. In other words, value became a composing tool.
Early on into the movement, when abstractionists were beginning to break away from imagery altogether, a scene like this...
...might have been interpreted something like this.
Value (as well as color) became a design element rather than a descriptive one. As the abstract movement progressed, images in painting became less important unto themselves
and eventually totally disappeared. If an image stimulated an idea, very little to no evidence of the image itself remained. Instead, its shapes, colors and values became the content.
As a result, our image might have been interpreted as something like this where degrees of value (and colors) are broken into ordered parts, placed to guide the eye throughout
a design. They, not the image, along with the other visual elements, become the subject matter.
We can better see the role of value in this one by taking away the color.
ABSTRACTION BROADENED INTO EXPRESSIONISM
Just as abstraction removed all semblance of imagery, so did expressionism. Color and value became interpreters of emotion and carriers of movement. Our image might stimulate an expressionistic idea like this.
Today, artists who prefer total abstractionism or expressionism or a combination of the two still use value as a tool to help navigate the eye's movement throughout the painting, but those who prefer
painting realistically must deal with the influence of the light source on the subject as well as controlling the values to guide the eye throughout the piece.
Enjoy a weekend of discovery!
During my Language of Painting series, I explained the role of our visual elements. If you'd like to review those roles to better understand the behavior of elements, here are the links to each of those
discussions: Color --Value -- Shape -- Texture -- Size -- Line and Direction
You can access the archive of all my newsletters (as well as the Quick Tips and other stuff) at any time by going HERE.
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