2-D Art- Value Terminology

Unit: Value Applied to Form

Goal: To introduce the student to selected techniques that promote the accurate rendering of value applied to form in order to aid in the creation of illusionary 3-Dimensional space on a 2-D picture plane. 

Focus concepts and related vocabulary:

Aesthetic:  A given definition of visual beauty.  Aesthetics are both personal and social and they change often and dramatically from person to person and culture to culture.  What is visually pleasing today will not be tomorrow.  (i.e. Mullets. No offense if you have one!)

Technique:  A specific practice an artist applies to achieve a selected visual expression.  Specific techniques are directly influenced by the types of tools and material utilized.

Medium:  A selected type of tool or material used to create a visual image.  Medium varies from wet to dry, hard to soft, and monochrome to multicolor.

Direct Observation:  Drawing what you see not what you think it may be.

Subject Matter:  Anything an artist chooses to represent in a work of art.

Composition:  A specific selection of subject matter, point of view, medium, and style by an artist in a work of art.

Picture plane:  The area contained within the boundaries of a selected size and shaped 2-D surface on which art will be created.  This area contains a recreation of a specific subject matter from a specific point of view. 

View Finder:  A drawing aid that allows the artist to more effectively designate and define the borders of a composition as captured from direct observation.  The view finder is a small window with a rectangular shape similar to the shape of the picture plane.

Value: A visible range of lights, mediums, and darkness that is caused as light strikes and is blocked in varying degree by specific parts of a form.  This disturbance of light causes shadows that range in intensity from barely noticeable to the complete absence of light.  As color is concerned the diminishing of light is known as shade.  By applying techniques to recreate the visible ranges of value on form the artist can solidify an illusion of a forms existence in 3-Dimensions.

 

What Value does for a work of Art?

Value reveals and defines space, shape, form and specific surface characteristics. 

Value effects mood and feeling and can become an active narrative within a composition. 

Value designates levels of importance between objects within a composition.

Modeling: Refers to the application of value to create the illusion of form.

 

Gradation: The application of pigment to recreate a visible transition from dark to medium value to light. 

 

Ways to create Gradation:

1.  Applying more medium/pigment to create dark and less medium/pigment to leave light values.  This may also be explained in terms of opaque to transparent layering of paint or pencil.  Opaque layers mask under layers and transparent layers allow those under to remain visible.

2.  Pressure verses a lighter touch, some art mediums will get darker if pressed hard.

3.  Varied tool size, some tools have wide surface areas that allow for a thicker application of medium.

4.  Fusing or blending with finger or other paper

 

Ways to use line to create value:

Contour line, using descriptive lines that give enough information to represent specific subject matter.

Hatching, repeating lines in close proximity

Crosshatching, crisscrossing lines (like a chain link fence)

Stippling, using a multitude of dots in controlled spacing

Eraser, using an eraser to create light by removing applied value