Kitty Wallis emphasizes the importance of understanding and mastering values. "Value" means the darkness or lightness of a shape or pastel.
"Value" does not mean color intensity, saturation, purity or anything else.
"Value" has nothing to do with your preference for a color.
One exercise she has her workshop students do is to create a playful value palette using different color families in an evenly stepped progression of pastels from dark to light. Next, she has students use that palette to render a black and white photograph.
In the top photo you see my photo reference and my painting. Isn't it amazing how the color is not important when the values are right?
The bottom photo shows the renderings from all of the workshop participants. Notice that different artists sometimes chose the same reference to work from -- with different results!
Time for a good night's sleep. More workshop tomorrow!
