Stephen Bennett Portrait Painter

I used this photo in my beginner oil painting class last night to illustrate the importance of values to my students. Showing students gets through to them more when they can see examples of what you're talking about. I'm only halfway through the class and I'm quite sure I've already worn out the word values. I explained to them that you can be off with your colors but you really need to get your values down pretty close.  I use Stephen's paintings to illustrate the point that you can change the colors all you want as long as you get the values correct. I showed them how he replaces hues in his paintings with these vivid colors but because he keeps the values correct, you can still recognize forms as a face.

If you're not familar with Stephen Bennett's work, please visit his web site. A strange thing happened a few weeks after I discovered his work. I was driving to my painting class with Stuart Dunkel and I was stopped at a intersection and as I looked to my right, I saw one of Stephen's paintings or perhaps a reproduction on the wall in a business. Really strange coincidence!

http://theportraitpainter.com/web/index.html

Here's one of my all-time favorite paintings by Stephen:

Djalu Gurruwiwi,

Caretaker of the Yidaki

Acrylic on canvas

80 x 64 inches

Getting Values Correct: Simple Steps to Getting Values Right.

1. First get a photograph or setup a still life with a light coming from side.

2. You need to squint your eyes in order to simplify the photo or still life.  You want to squint so you see the large masses of light and dark values.  You want to break down what you see into two areas: light and dark.  If you don't then you need to squint harder.  You should see two main areas of value: light and dark. If the light and dark areas are not obvious to you, squint harder.

3. Draw or Paint in your dark value shapes.

4. Draw or Paint in your light value shapes.

5. This will leave the remaining values that are left when you stop squinting.  These are all the values that are in between the darkest and lightest values or the middle values. 

6. You now must determine whether each of the middle values belongs on the dark or light side of the value scale.  Value scales are usually divided into 10 values with black being at one end and white on the opposite end and 8 middle values increasing in range from light gray to dark gray.  Therefore there will be (4) values leaning toward the lightest value and (4) shades leaning toward the darkest value.  Some value scales are simplified even more by only including 5 middle values to simplify the learning of seeing values.

7. It's easier if you use a value finder tool which you can purchase cheaply or you can make your own value finder with some heavy stock paper or cardboard and white and black paint.

There are some other tools you can purchase or make yourself.  You can make your own black mirror or Claude Glass or make your own value finder viewer.