Painting with Limited Values -195

This concerns the importance of understanding the major value units of a ‘scene’ and how to grasp and maintain them in a painting. Blurring the eyes is always a key to organizing the values.

In response to Gail

QUESTION: I don’t know whether you’ve addressed this issue in one of your videos, but I’ve read in several sources that Sargent advised using a limited number of values: three in a drawing and no more than five in a painting. Do you have an opinion on this? Would there be an advantage? Apparently the human eye can detect 400 values so it doesn’t seem that having a larger number of values in an artwork would be confusing or wasted on the viewer. After studying the values in some Sargent works I’m not convinced he held himself to that standard anyway, except perhaps in his murals. Do you consciously limit the number of values in your own work? I don’t remember you discussing this in the studio.