How do you meassure value/color ?

[Virgil Elliott]

Originally Posted by Marvin Mattelson

I don't know what the point is to learning tricks. It can create a crutch. I think the point is to find the best way to train ones eyes to see color values accurately.

Marvin is right. The way to develop a good eye and judgment is to rely on your eye and judgment, not some device.

Setting aside for the moment the limitations of paint versus light in Nature, which makes creating the illusion of reality a more complicated matter than merely matching the colors we see at the values they actually are, suppose we're using one of these devices, and it tells us what color things are. After we know what color is there, how do we determine whether that's the best color to paint it in order to make the best possible work of art?

Virgil Elliott

[Allan Rahbek]

Virgil,

I was actually hoping that we could explore the possibility of how to understand the relativity between the limited paint values versus the wider scale of natural light.

I have often wondered why some painters are better to express light while others never manage to. The answer, it seems, is primarily in the value range.

So, if I see a value on an indoor motif and choose to use it on the painting, would I not simply mix the value/colour in question and compare it to the motif before I use it?

Would it make any difference if I compare it by eye on the palette, hold up the brush or painting knife or hold up any other device with a sample of the mixture, as long as the paint sample is seen in the same light?

When the motif is seen outdoors and the painter is also outdoors in the usually stronger light, the relative difference between paint and daylight values must be the same as indoors, I guess, and the possibility to compare directly between the motif and the paint sample is also the same.

I don

[Virgil Elliott]

[QUOTE=Allan Rahbek]Virgil,

I was actually hoping that we could explore the possibility of how to understand the relativity between the limited paint values versus the wider scale of natural light.

I have often wondered why some painters are better to express light while others never manage to. The answer, it seems, is primarily in the value range.

So, if I see a value on an indoor motif and choose to use it on the painting, would I not simply mix the value/colour in question and compare it to the motif before I use it?

Would it make any difference if I compare it by eye on the palette, hold up the brush or painting knife or hold up any other device with a sample of the mixture, as long as the paint sample is seen in the same light?

When the motif is seen outdoors and the painter is also outdoors in the usually stronger light, the relative difference between paint and daylight values must be the same as indoors, I guess, and the possibility to compare directly between the motif and the paint sample is also the same.

I don