My last round of figures for Love Life Drawing triggered the instructor Marek to challenge me to do a value study of a clothed person to demonstrate a fundamental painting technique of dividing the subject into just 2 values. I had taken that literally, dividing the entire scene into 2 values, but he suggested using 2 values per material. A light patch on a red shirt is probably going to have a lower value than lit skin, for example.
He got an early look at this piece and said I shouldn’t be feathering my values this much, but for the time being, I don’t have the confidence to do his style of blended edges, so feathering is what we get.
This is a value painting of Anya Taylor-Joy from a still of the movie Emma. I didn’t want to go nuts on detail. The point of the exercise is simplification, with an eye to making textures feel distinct using just value tools.
