Describe The Technique The Artist Used In The Image Above.

Analyzing the Elements of Art: Four Ways to Think About Value

Jan. 3, 2018

Elements of Art: Value | KQED Arts Credit... CreditVideo by KQED Art School

Welcome to the final piece in our Seven Elements of Art series, in which Kristin Farr pairs videos from KQED Art School with current New York Times pieces on the visual arts to help students make connections between formal art instruction and our daily visual culture.

The other pieces in the series? Here are lessons on space , shape , form , line , color and texture .

_________

How does value create emphasis and the illusion of light?

Artists are able to create the illusion of light using different color and tonal values. Value defines how light or dark a given color or hue can be. Values are best understood when visualized as a scale or gradient, from dark to light. The more tonal variants in an image, the lower the contrast. When shades of similar value are used together, they also create a low contrast image. High contrast images have few tonal values in between stronger hues like black and white. Value is responsible for the appearance of texture and light in art. Although paintings and photographs do not often physically light up, the semblance of light and dark can be achieved through the manipulation of value.

How do artists produce and use different tonal values? To begin, watch the video above, on value, one of seven elements of art.

1. Emphasizing Portrait Subjects With Value and Contrast

Photography can be defined as drawing with light. Photographers often capture high-contrast colors to emphasize parts of an image, and low contrast colors to add dimension, foreground and background.

The photographer Jamel Shabazz is known for his photographs of diverse communities that serve as social commentary to broaden perspectives. In a Lens piece, "Jamel Shabazz's 40 Years of Sights and Styles in New York," Maurice Berger writes:

Mr. Shabazz uses his camera predominantly to challenge stereotypes and negative perceptions about urban life — and especially about New York's black and brown residents — by focusing on the vitality, diversity and dignity of his subjects.

People are the main focus of Shabazz's work, and the concept and emotional intention of his photographs are supported by the use of value and contrast to create emphasis. Subjects stand out when contrasting with their environment, drawing the eye to the person captured in the image.

In "Style," Lower East Side, Manhattan, 2002," the black-and-white image that begins the slide show above, there are many tonal values (shades from the gray scale). Which parts of the image are low contrast, and which are high contrast? What stands out? What's the first thing you see? What's the next thing you notice? Is your eye drawn to the high contrast or low contrast areas first?

In highlighting his community, Jamel Shabazz plays with value and contrast to make them stand out, emphasizing fashion and community aesthetics as a way to honor and document his New York neighbors. His memorable photographs communicate successfully in part because of his skilled approach to using value to create emphasis and meaning.

Click through the entire slide show and repeat the same exercise for each image. Which photos have high contrast colors? Which have low contrast colors, or a mix of both? Which areas are emphasized with high contrast shades? What do you think Mr. Shabazz wanted to reveal about his subjects?

_________

2. Value Creates Illusion

A detail from — Credit... 2016 Agnes Martin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Hiroko Masuike, via The New York Times

When colors have similar value and low contrast, they create the illusion of vibration or movement, as in the paintings of Agnes Martin, whose color choice often stays within the realm of a certain value to create subtle variation with a puzzling effect for the eye. In "The Joy of Reading Between Agnes Martin's Lines," Holland Cotter writes about the visual exercise of differentiating color and value in her work:

View her paintings from several feet away, and their surfaces — whitish, pinkish, grayish, brownish — look hazily blank, as if they needed a dusting or a buffing. Move closer, and complicated, eye-tricking, self-erasing textures come in and out of focus.

How does Martin use value to trick the eye and create subtle texture variation? Which of her paintings have a high contrast between colors, and which have colors of similar value? Look through the images shown in "The Joy of Reading Between Agnes Martin's Lines" and analyze her use of color value.

Then, compare and contrast Agnes Martin's use of contrasting color values with the work of the painter Julian Stanczak, known for his Op Art style that also boldly plays with the eye. Op Art is a type of visual art that creates optical illusions. In his Times review of the exhibition "Julian Stanczak Master of Op Art: Highlights of the Past 40 years," Kenneth Johnson writes:

Mr. Stanczak has been steadfastly devoted to using pattern and color to create striking and confounding illusions of movement and luminosity. In his neatly made abstractions nothing stays fixed: lines appear to vibrate, waver, rotate and undulate; color glows and throbs as if electrically generated; hovering, gridded squares seem to fade in and out of visibility. The effects are retinal but they feel almost hallucinatory.

In the Times writer Roberta Smith's recent obituary about the abstract painter Julian Stanczak, Ms. Smith detailed how the artist achieved these optical illusions and became a leader in the Op Art style.

He produced some of the most emotionally gripping paintings associated with the Op trend. This was achieved partly by his delicately textured paint surfaces and partly by the soft light that often infiltrated his forms and patterns, the result of an infinitesimal adjustment of the shades of one or two colors.

Browse through the Times slide show embedded above on "The Art of Julian Stanczak" and answer the following questions:

• Can you identify the techniques used to create optical illusions of depth, dimension and light?

•Which paintings have the most subtle adjustments between shades?

•Which have a higher contrast?

•Which kinds of value variants create the strongest texture?

•How do you describe the effect each image has on your eye?

_________

3. A Times Scavenger Hunt

Image

Credit... Justin Gilliland/The New York Times

Now that you've explored how value is used to emphasize subjects in art and creates the illusion of dark and light, and gained an understanding of the value of colors and how they affect each other, browse through features in The New York Times's Art & Design section; Lens, the Times site for photojournalism; or anywhere else on NYTimes.com, and challenge yourself to a scavenger hunt.

See if you can find photographs or images of artwork with the following characteristics:

•A high contrast photograph.

•A low contrast photograph.

•An image of a painting with colors of highly contrasting values.

•An image of a painting with colors of similar value.

•A photograph in which the level of value contrast affects the mood of the image.

•A photograph in which the value contrast creates texture.

•A photograph in which the value contrast emphasizes the focus of the image.

4. Your Turn: Photo Portraits and Op Art

Here are two ideas for experimenting with value in your own creative work.

a. Portraits With Varied Values

In 2014, The Times invited students to submit creative selfies that express who they are, and received hundreds, from college students to first graders. Marci Beene, who teaches digital photography at J.T. Hutchinson Middle School in Lubbock, Tex., turned the solicitation into an assignment for her seventh and eighth graders: "Do a selfie that goes beyond your face," she instructed, "and that represents something." Click through the photos above to see the results.

Take a portrait of a friend, or a self-portrait using the timer on your camera. Use an editing app on your phone like Instagram or Snapchat to create different versions of the portrait with filters. Create one black-and-white version with high contrast and one with low contrast. Do the same with a full-color version.

Which filters create the strongest value contrast and which flatten the photo with low contrasting light and color? Arrange the four versions of your portrait into one image and compare the mood of each. How does value bring about the feeling portrayed?

b. Op Art Collage

To create an Op Art collage, choose two colors of construction paper with similar values, like red and orange, or light yellow and light pink. Cut one color into thin strips or small shapes, and glue onto the other sheet with a glue stick. Consider the abstract compositions of Julian Stanczak for inspiration. Next, choose two colors that have a strong contrast, like blue and orange. Create another cut-paper collage using the same technique.

Sol LeWitt is another artist who experimented with color values to whom you can look for inspiration. View the Times slide show "Sol LeWitt at Mass MoCA," as well as the image above.

Hang your two paper collages side-by-side and critique the visual effect of each. Do they vibrate or create dimension? Which has a stronger effect? Which is your eye drawn to more?

Considering value in your own artwork will help you emphasize the focal points, create depth and texture and help determine the experience you want your viewer to have. Do you want to create a calming or jarring feeling? Value can help evoke an emotional response from your audience.

_________

Want to read the whole series? Here are our lessons on shape, form, line, color, texture and space. How do you teach these elements?