Value Self Portrait

To begin the assignment, we each took a photo portrait of ourselves modeling after an emotion. I chose melancholy for my pose. We then cropped and gray-scaled the images on Photoshop and placed a grid over our photo, to aid in the application of paint later in the project.

We created an 11 step value scale on a sheet of Bristol paper with acrylic paint (ivory black, titanium white). Middle gray is the unit in the center of the value scale, which acted as a border around the value scale. Our low and high key values were established via the digital image of our portrait, by finding the lightest and darkest values. The middle gray tone is a 50/50 mix of the tint and shade, and by creating a gradation between them, we form a specific value atmosphere.

On the final ground, a 12"x14" sheet of illustration board, we rendered a quarter inch grid to match that of the printed portrait image. We then used our 11 step value scale to identify and label the values in the grid of the portrait, with 1 being the lightest tint, and 11 being the darkest shade in the image. We applied the paint values according to the number on the scale, almost like a paint-by-number system.

By following  - and trusting - the values of our source image, each individual unit of the grid worked together to build the form and atmosphere present in the original digital portrait.