Finished my entry to OPA this weekend. I submitted “Sunset at Pine Tree Forest” and this painting of a mountain man.
For this painting, I knew that the powerful value contrast was very important. I wanted to keep the colors muted (staying in the grey and brown range) and exaggerate the values. So I did a value comp in Photoshop.
Working Out the Values with a Comp
This time I simplifying the values to only 4. Sometimes I will go to 5 values organizing it like this:
1. Shadow – Reflected Light
2. Shadow – Core Shadow and Dark Accents
3. Light – Dark Halftone
4. Light – Light Halftone
5. Light – Highlight
If you’re not familiar with some of the terminology, reference my tutorial on Direct Light.
So, with this value comp I decided to combine the highlight and light halftone values to get a simplified 4-value study.
Detailed Close-ups
