Values study - Glenfinnan viaduct

 Glenfinnan viaduct...

Last week, I was in Scotland and took a bunch of reference pictures (see my post here!). I also tried to paint the Glenfinnan viaduct (made famous by, among others, the Harry Potter movies). I was pleased with the colors, but not with the contrast in the painting. It felt quite flat. So, back home, I decided to try again, but focusing on the values.

Step 1: How to find the values?

I heard about the values when watching Youtube videos of other artists. One sentence that kept coming back was: "the colors don't matter, as long as you get the values right". Basically, from what I understood, values represent how light or dark your color will be. 

Reference picture

To help me understand the values on my reference picture, I put it in black&white, with the higher contrast possible.

Glenfinnan viaduct
Black&White reference picture

Value studies: fineliners and colored pencils

Once I have my reference picture in black and white, I made two small studies: one with fineliners and one with a single colored pencil. These two studies have different benefits: 1) better understand where are the darkest and lightes values of my subject; 2) learn to simplify my subject in simple shapes.

Value studies - Glenfinnan viaduct
Value studies: one in fineliners and one with a brown colored pencil

Step 2: Painting!

Once I have these two little studies, I move on to the "main" painting. I decided to start with my shadow color, a dark blue-gray. I used it almost as a value study, putting all my shadows and dark tones.

Glenfinnan viaduct - painting
A first layer with Payne's gray, a blue-gray

Then, I moved on to the colors. I didn't look at the "real" colors, but went with whatever colors inspired me to fill in the medium values (still staying quite close to natural and earthy colors). I kepts my lightest values white or very pale (still have to work on that part, though). 

Glenfinnan viaduct - gouache painting
Glenfinnan viaduct - final painting

Here is how the whole page looks like! I'm very happy with the final painting, as I feel it has more character than the first one. I will definitely try again to work on value studies before moving on to final paintings next time. And I would also love to try plein-air value studies!

Glenfinnan viaduct - painting
The whole page! Which painting to you prefer?


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