Black & White: The Bones of Painting

Black & White: The Bones of Painting

I am currently working on an upcoming series of 3 articles to be published early next year. In thinking about and preparing for these, I’d like to share some initial thoughts and processes with you.

This article is not just for artists, but for art appreciators alike. Learning about the fundamentals of design behind what goes into a painting can change the way you look at and appreciate more deeply some of your favorite works- and hopefully create an interest for appreciating new paintings along the way.

Today’s theme will explore the use of black and white in creating an interesting, engaging, harmonious and balanced painting. Before we get to color, the values are what create the real dynamic in a painting and hold it all together. When I say values I mean the different steps of black, white and gray along the gray scale. Without this fundamental structure and design all we are left with is color (which is all together another topic!)

An exercise that I almost always give to anyone who wants to study with me, and therefore one I do often myself, is to take a composition and break it down into first 3 values- black, white + a middle gray and then into 5 values of black, white + 3 grays (one in the middle, one closer to the white and one closer to the black).

To make this less theoretical, I will just illustrate an example.

This is a small black and white reproduction done by one of my favorite Italian painters Guglielmo Ciardi (Venice 1842-1917) taken from the complete catalog of his works.

Here I interpreted the painting by doing my own small copy and just simplified it into black, white and a middle gray in paint.

Next I did another painting with a 5 value range. You can see the 5 values I used painted below as a guide while working.

And finally I made a color value study, looking for the value first and color second. The best part about making this color study is that I have no idea what the original painting looks like in color. I do not have a color reproduction of this painting and cannot find one anywhere on the internet and have never seen it in person. It is amazing how much value sets up the structure of a painting and should be followed first before thinking about and diving into color.

The most valuable lesson that I took away from this exercise and particular painting was in observing and understanding by copying, just how a master takes the big shapes and then from the big shapes breaks them down into smaller shapes. Also, any given large shape has a dominant value, but is always broken up by another value, which creates variation, depth and a sense of space.

The lessons are many in learning to create and master value structures in a painting and are what make it sing!