One of the most common issues with paintings is a poorly defined value structure. You look at your painting from across the room and it falls apart - that amazing passage that you worked so hard on, that you wanted to be the star of the image evaporates when you step back.

“Why isn’t my paint working?!”

Without a solid foundation, and a clear value structure, it’s almost impossible to create a painting that sings from across the room.

Without a solid value structure, even the simple sphere of an apple will break apart into seeming cacophony of unrelated patches of paint.

Trying to get that white vase to sit back in a shadow, but it keeps jumping forward? When you experience problems like this in your painting - You’ve likely chosen the wrong value for your composition.

“Value does all the work, color gets all the credit!”

Artists tend to  look at paintings past and present, and think things like:  “WOW - I love the way that artist turned the form on the far side of the cheek. I wish i knew exactly what color they used….”

So they go out on a hunt for the PERFECT pigment. They buy tons of colors trying to figure it out.

What they don’t realize is that color can impact the turning of the form, yes, but it’s the VALUES that do the heavy lifting.  Get the values right and THEN you can use color temperature to make those delicious subtle nuances in form. But if your values are off - I hate to break it to you, you’ll never get there by changing the hue alone.