Just realized my art looks flat because I never check my values

I was watching a stream from an artist named Sinix and he said 'if your painting looks off, turn it to grayscale.' I did that with my last piece, a cityscape, and the whole foreground just melted into one gray blob. I spent two hours yesterday just painting in black and white to fix it. Has anyone else had a moment like that where one simple tip fixed a big problem in your work?

3 comments

3 Comments

seth6832mo ago

Sinix's grayscale trick is a classic for a reason. I actually check values on a separate layer set to color mode, keeps me from just painting mud. That cityscape melting into gray is the exact problem, it means your color choices are doing all the work. Fixing the foundation in black and white first makes the final colors pop way more without extra effort.

robin_roberts842mo ago

Yeah, I was totally in the "color first" camp for the longest time. Thought grayscale was a boring extra step. Then I hit that exact muddy cityscape problem and my work just looked flat. Forcing myself to lock down the values first completely changed how my final pieces look. The colors actually sit right instead of fighting each other.

morganhill1mo ago

Oh man, @seth683, that reminds me of my buddy who paints. He was so stubborn about jumping right into color, said his night scenes looked amazing. Then he showed me one and the whole street just looked like a purple and blue blob, no depth at all. He finally tried the grayscale method on a new piece, just blocking in the streetlights and shadows first, and the difference was crazy. The final painting had this glow you could almost feel.