- Lesson Details
- Transcript
- References
- Instructor
- Bill Perkins
- Subjects
- Drawing
- Topics
- Composition, Landscape, Light & Color
- Mediums
- Charcoal Pencil, Conté, Paper
- Duration
- 1h 26m 59s
In week 12, instructor Bill Perkins will teach you how to establish a value Matrix within a landscape drawing. You will learn to create two and three value matrices; this will allow you to design a powerful composition in your drawings and expand your ability to simplify values and shapes.
Throughout this course, you’ll have access to the NMA community for feedback and critiques to improve your work as you progress.
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I'll go back in.
Now that I planned out my pattern what I'll do is I may
go in and say okay, this is going to be my
my medium value,
so I'll go ahead and put it in my light medium value. Not
heavy dark, but I'm going to put in my lighter medium value.
All right.
Now I have a range in there to go with so but in this case,
what I'm going to do is I've got my lightest light my medium,
mid medium and I'll go ahead and put my darks in and again,
I'm kind of keying off of this
shape going up to the top of the mountain there.
And I'm putting in not the darkest dark, but I'm putting
in a pretty dark value.
Okay.
I'm going to go ahead and make this just a little bit darker
just so that I have more more contrast between the mid value
and this and if I do that it's going to give me a little bit
more latitude in my middle values. So I want to increase that
gap the most that I can just that I have more room to play
in the mid value range there.
Okay.
Okay.
There we go.
And I'm not worried about rendering grass, rendering
bushes, rendering anything other than defining my shapes
and edges.
All right.
Again coming down here.
Okay, this edge up here is
a cast edge little bit harder on the top up here and it's
form on the bottom down here. So it's a little bit softer
down there.
Okay.
Okay, so I have my three basic values laid in and now I can go
into my light area and I can say okay let me get some
clouds in here. I'm going to make sure that these clouds all
stay within just the lightest value group.
I create a shape in here pattern for the for the clouds
in shadow.
That's going a little dark, see it's starting to get a little
close to my mid value range. So I'm going to lift a
little bit of it out. Here we go, getting it back to that
lightest value that's really close in there.
Then what I'm going to do is I need to finish my shape down
here. Dog gone it.
Here I ask you to finish one thing at a time and I didn't do
that myself.
So
in order to keep myself honest here I'm going to have to
finish this up.
Okay.
Bring that up the outside.
Actually, I see a little bit more darkness down in here. So
I'm going to go ahead and add that to my matrix
because I want to get a little bit of dark on the bottom of
the frame here.
That's going to help me anchor the bottom of this to the
bottom of the frame.
Okay, so
now I have my three basic values in here. But now
what I can do is I can go in and I can look for where's my -
in my medium value there's areas that are a little bit
darker and those darker areas are some of the bushes that
kind of ride along in
here,
they're mixing into the shadow right at the transition from
light and shadow.
So that's that's one effect that medium value is going to
bridge there, just a little bit and then up here we get some
of those darker values that are the actual local value of the
bushes. So it's a combination of local value and their
position, where they sit.
Okay.
This whole region in here is a little bit darker
than some of the other areas.
Okay, this is light in here, but it's got some darker
bushes.
Then the shadows in between some of those.
There's the dark shape. I'm going to correct my dark shape
in here again, but there are some little bits of darks
in here that I didn't get. Just kind of break that up It's just kind of break that up
and see how I'm making them really dark as they merge with the
shadow shape. Okay.
Some of these are backlit bushes.
So I'm going to
refine this just a little bit.
Making more interest along those but I'm clear that these
are shadow shapes. So I'm going to make sure
that my darkest darks sit in there really dark.
Okay, and these - whatever shadows there are, remember this
one is about chiaroscuro.
And that's because your light and shadow here is a greatest
contrast. Okay,
so there's subtle areas in here where some of these bushes
are actually darker.
A few along the top up here.
Few in the little -
along the ridge of or you know along the turn of some of these
planes. There's some darker bushes in there,
but you can see now how the value of my value patterning is
really going to start to pay off because in this middle
range, I know I can only go so dark or so light
and knowing that helps me keep my values all in check.
Because your values can get out of control if you don't have a way
to manage them and this seems to be a really good way to
manage them from your matrix on
into
your full value. And when I say full value, I mean
bracketed value. I don't mean every single value. A full value
image can mean the full ranges, multiple ranges, eliminate has multiple ranges eliminate
those others. Okay.
Eliminate those others. Now, there's some subtle shadows in
here, some of the bushes, some of the bushes are little darker
but have some shadow in them, you see? So I can do that, some
of them the same.
And they have a little shadow on them.
So I can break into some of those, something back here.
You see so it's starting to come together. I'm starting to
get -
just by building this up and staying within my values, I can
see that some of these -
some of these values are some of these bushes sit together
because they have a similar value.
And I'm starting to get a lot of more dimension out of my
image because my values are
working and my local values are working a little bit more
clearly.
These bushes in the mid-ground here are a little bit darker.
So I'm going to go ahead and
darken these up just a little bit.
Then they get pretty light in here.
These values now are some of the shadow shapes, some
darker values and some shadow shapes. These are Shadow shapes
here.
And
these are shadow shapes back here, but they feed into these
little bit darker shapes like that.
Some of these shapes
of the grass
that you can see gives off a little bit more variety yet.
There's more in here.
Okay. Now I'm going to go into my darkest darks and I can see
behind this mountain here this gets into some my darkest
darks.
Okay.
Some of my darkest darks right in here in the foreground.
These really sit dark. So let me punch those up.
There we go.
And my darker darks over in here with us starts to turn.
Okay.
Now there's a
a lighter plane
It gets aimed up towards the sunlight over here and I see it
over here, too. So I'm going to just do a little I'm going to just do a little
subtle tone that's going to give me
a mid value. So it's going to feel like the sun's coming in
this direction. See I laid it in there, reinforced it in there,
here it is on this side over here.
It's just a subtle value.
But it's enough to turn that plane around.
And put a little shadow behind some of these things.
This area up here can blend a little bit more as it turns
over into the shadow there.
Like that.
Now there's an area in here that's a little bit lighter. So
what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a little bit of
the little bit darker groupings of some of the bushes
bordering this area
and again, I'm staying within my value groups.
Some of the bushes that are sitting on the edge actually
wrapping around.
Showing a little bit more of the form because it rolls over -
rollover into shadow there.
I made these shadows, now I need to make the value of the
bushes a little bit darker.
Their local value just a little bit darker.
There we go.
There we go.
And do that little gully area there.
Okay. Now you can see that this approach is a real simple basic
approach to going from a simple design into something as far
more representational without getting a hung up on all the
rendering and losing track of your values. This is an easy
way and it doesn't matter if you're doing something
simple still life or a simple landscape or a complex figure,
complex landscape, complex still life. It doesn't matter.
If you approach this the same way by identifying your
dominant valued shapes, keeping them distinctly different, look
at the value ranges that represent them or are
represented in those areas and then go back in and stay true
to those value groups or those value ranges here.
Okay, keep everything within those ranges.
You can get this whole thing locked down pretty good. And
it's not a case of how much rendering you've got in, its how
you've managed those values, the design, the shape, the patterns,
and then
maintaining the range of values in there and staying true to
those. You can get a nice nice composition and a nice lay in and
that's the important thing. Okay, so you can try this on
this image. This isn't an easy one because these middle values
are so close. I would suggest if you want to try something,
get a simple still life, take a landscape, go outside and look
at a landscape. If you have a good picture that clearly
breaks into three values, that's critical. So just to recap you
want an image, select an image,
select like a location or if it's a photo or image
that
into
two,
three, or possibly four values only.
Okay, only so if you squint at an image, a landscape or whatever,
see if you can't break it into two, three, or four values that
will become either two values or three values is going to be
your matrix.
It's possible that you'd see a fourth but what I want you to
do is I want you to do your best to determine is this
closer to the light group, the medium group, or the dark group,
so it might be a subgroup okay, but try to keep it to three
values. Okay, and then do your your more finished piece as a
value study.
Okay,
you want to make sure that you've separated in a bracket.
Okay, bracket your values, make sure that you have a gap in
between these so that you have distinct value ranges.
and value
Okay, so that's how to break this down from a simple matrix
and that's why your matrix is important. You break
it down simply there and then you stay true to these value
groups and you can come up with any kind of a design and even
strengthen it.
Okay. I want you to do some of these and do a handful of them.
Don't just stop with one or two. The more these you do the
better the more you're going to understand the better you're
going to do this.
I had read once that Howard Pyle had his students
doing these almost daily. They had to turn these in all the
time. His scholarship students. So they were always looking at
breaking the image down into just a couple values and be
clear and the clearer you can be with that image the more that
you're going to be able to express whatever it is you
want to say, this will - if you stay on track with that it will
keep you focused on saying what you want to say about the piece
and rather than just render the heck out of it
until you run out of time or you know, you'll know when it's
complete is because you'll get those distinct value groups and
the simple pattern and the design. If your design is
breaking down reinforce the shapes and make clear
distinction between the shapes meaning make sure there's a gap
when the - when you don't have a gap and everything smudges
together. That's when it all starts to fall apart. Okay. So
take it one step at a time and have fun with this.
Now that I planned out my pattern what I'll do is I may
go in and say okay, this is going to be my
my medium value,
so I'll go ahead and put it in my light medium value. Not
heavy dark, but I'm going to put in my lighter medium value.
All right.
Now I have a range in there to go with so but in this case,
what I'm going to do is I've got my lightest light my medium,
mid medium and I'll go ahead and put my darks in and again,
I'm kind of keying off of this
shape going up to the top of the mountain there.
And I'm putting in not the darkest dark, but I'm putting
in a pretty dark value.
Okay.
I'm going to go ahead and make this just a little bit darker
just so that I have more more contrast between the mid value
and this and if I do that it's going to give me a little bit
more latitude in my middle values. So I want to increase that
gap the most that I can just that I have more room to play
in the mid value range there.
Okay.
Okay.
There we go.
And I'm not worried about rendering grass, rendering
bushes, rendering anything other than defining my shapes
and edges.
All right.
Again coming down here.
Okay, this edge up here is
a cast edge little bit harder on the top up here and it's
form on the bottom down here. So it's a little bit softer
down there.
Okay.
Okay, so I have my three basic values laid in and now I can go
into my light area and I can say okay let me get some
clouds in here. I'm going to make sure that these clouds all
stay within just the lightest value group.
I create a shape in here pattern for the for the clouds
in shadow.
That's going a little dark, see it's starting to get a little
close to my mid value range. So I'm going to lift a
little bit of it out. Here we go, getting it back to that
lightest value that's really close in there.
Then what I'm going to do is I need to finish my shape down
here. Dog gone it.
Here I ask you to finish one thing at a time and I didn't do
that myself.
So
in order to keep myself honest here I'm going to have to
finish this up.
Okay.
Bring that up the outside.
Actually, I see a little bit more darkness down in here. So
I'm going to go ahead and add that to my matrix
because I want to get a little bit of dark on the bottom of
the frame here.
That's going to help me anchor the bottom of this to the
bottom of the frame.
Okay, so
now I have my three basic values in here. But now
what I can do is I can go in and I can look for where's my -
in my medium value there's areas that are a little bit
darker and those darker areas are some of the bushes that
kind of ride along in
here,
they're mixing into the shadow right at the transition from
light and shadow.
So that's that's one effect that medium value is going to
bridge there, just a little bit and then up here we get some
of those darker values that are the actual local value of the
bushes. So it's a combination of local value and their
position, where they sit.
Okay.
This whole region in here is a little bit darker
than some of the other areas.
Okay, this is light in here, but it's got some darker
bushes.
Then the shadows in between some of those.
There's the dark shape. I'm going to correct my dark shape
in here again, but there are some little bits of darks
in here that I didn't get. Just kind of break that up It's just kind of break that up
and see how I'm making them really dark as they merge with the
shadow shape. Okay.
Some of these are backlit bushes.
So I'm going to
refine this just a little bit.
Making more interest along those but I'm clear that these
are shadow shapes. So I'm going to make sure
that my darkest darks sit in there really dark.
Okay, and these - whatever shadows there are, remember this
one is about chiaroscuro.
And that's because your light and shadow here is a greatest
contrast. Okay,
so there's subtle areas in here where some of these bushes
are actually darker.
A few along the top up here.
Few in the little -
along the ridge of or you know along the turn of some of these
planes. There's some darker bushes in there,
but you can see now how the value of my value patterning is
really going to start to pay off because in this middle
range, I know I can only go so dark or so light
and knowing that helps me keep my values all in check.
Because your values can get out of control if you don't have a way
to manage them and this seems to be a really good way to
manage them from your matrix on
into
your full value. And when I say full value, I mean
bracketed value. I don't mean every single value. A full value
image can mean the full ranges, multiple ranges, eliminate has multiple ranges eliminate
those others. Okay.
Eliminate those others. Now, there's some subtle shadows in
here, some of the bushes, some of the bushes are little darker
but have some shadow in them, you see? So I can do that, some
of them the same.
And they have a little shadow on them.
So I can break into some of those, something back here.
You see so it's starting to come together. I'm starting to
get -
just by building this up and staying within my values, I can
see that some of these -
some of these values are some of these bushes sit together
because they have a similar value.
And I'm starting to get a lot of more dimension out of my
image because my values are
working and my local values are working a little bit more
clearly.
These bushes in the mid-ground here are a little bit darker.
So I'm going to go ahead and
darken these up just a little bit.
Then they get pretty light in here.
These values now are some of the shadow shapes, some
darker values and some shadow shapes. These are Shadow shapes
here.
And
these are shadow shapes back here, but they feed into these
little bit darker shapes like that.
Some of these shapes
of the grass
that you can see gives off a little bit more variety yet.
There's more in here.
Okay. Now I'm going to go into my darkest darks and I can see
behind this mountain here this gets into some my darkest
darks.
Okay.
Some of my darkest darks right in here in the foreground.
These really sit dark. So let me punch those up.
There we go.
And my darker darks over in here with us starts to turn.
Okay.
Now there's a
a lighter plane
It gets aimed up towards the sunlight over here and I see it
over here, too. So I'm going to just do a little I'm going to just do a little
subtle tone that's going to give me
a mid value. So it's going to feel like the sun's coming in
this direction. See I laid it in there, reinforced it in there,
here it is on this side over here.
It's just a subtle value.
But it's enough to turn that plane around.
And put a little shadow behind some of these things.
This area up here can blend a little bit more as it turns
over into the shadow there.
Like that.
Now there's an area in here that's a little bit lighter. So
what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a little bit of
the little bit darker groupings of some of the bushes
bordering this area
and again, I'm staying within my value groups.
Some of the bushes that are sitting on the edge actually
wrapping around.
Showing a little bit more of the form because it rolls over -
rollover into shadow there.
I made these shadows, now I need to make the value of the
bushes a little bit darker.
Their local value just a little bit darker.
There we go.
There we go.
And do that little gully area there.
Okay. Now you can see that this approach is a real simple basic
approach to going from a simple design into something as far
more representational without getting a hung up on all the
rendering and losing track of your values. This is an easy
way and it doesn't matter if you're doing something
simple still life or a simple landscape or a complex figure,
complex landscape, complex still life. It doesn't matter.
If you approach this the same way by identifying your
dominant valued shapes, keeping them distinctly different, look
at the value ranges that represent them or are
represented in those areas and then go back in and stay true
to those value groups or those value ranges here.
Okay, keep everything within those ranges.
You can get this whole thing locked down pretty good. And
it's not a case of how much rendering you've got in, its how
you've managed those values, the design, the shape, the patterns,
and then
maintaining the range of values in there and staying true to
those. You can get a nice nice composition and a nice lay in and
that's the important thing. Okay, so you can try this on
this image. This isn't an easy one because these middle values
are so close. I would suggest if you want to try something,
get a simple still life, take a landscape, go outside and look
at a landscape. If you have a good picture that clearly
breaks into three values, that's critical. So just to recap you
want an image, select an image,
select like a location or if it's a photo or image
that
into
two,
three, or possibly four values only.
Okay, only so if you squint at an image, a landscape or whatever,
see if you can't break it into two, three, or four values that
will become either two values or three values is going to be
your matrix.
It's possible that you'd see a fourth but what I want you to
do is I want you to do your best to determine is this
closer to the light group, the medium group, or the dark group,
so it might be a subgroup okay, but try to keep it to three
values. Okay, and then do your your more finished piece as a
value study.
Okay,
you want to make sure that you've separated in a bracket.
Okay, bracket your values, make sure that you have a gap in
between these so that you have distinct value ranges.
and value
Okay, so that's how to break this down from a simple matrix
and that's why your matrix is important. You break
it down simply there and then you stay true to these value
groups and you can come up with any kind of a design and even
strengthen it.
Okay. I want you to do some of these and do a handful of them.
Don't just stop with one or two. The more these you do the
better the more you're going to understand the better you're
going to do this.
I had read once that Howard Pyle had his students
doing these almost daily. They had to turn these in all the
time. His scholarship students. So they were always looking at
breaking the image down into just a couple values and be
clear and the clearer you can be with that image the more that
you're going to be able to express whatever it is you
want to say, this will - if you stay on track with that it will
keep you focused on saying what you want to say about the piece
and rather than just render the heck out of it
until you run out of time or you know, you'll know when it's
complete is because you'll get those distinct value groups and
the simple pattern and the design. If your design is
breaking down reinforce the shapes and make clear
distinction between the shapes meaning make sure there's a gap
when the - when you don't have a gap and everything smudges
together. That's when it all starts to fall apart. Okay. So
take it one step at a time and have fun with this.
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1. Learning Recommendation
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1. Introduction to composition
19m 42sNow playing...
Watch the whole lesson with a subscription
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2. Composing an Image Using a Matrix
13m 53s -
3. Learning Recommendation
24s -
4. Using a 3-value Matrix to Break Down the Values in an Image
18m 11s -
5. Creating a 3-value Matrix for a Landscape Drawing
10m 48s -
6. Creating a Chiaroscuro Matrix
23m 13s -
7. Assignment
24s
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