"you are much better off starting with a four value scale" like literally YES! thank you so much, i was having difficulty with shading and the idea of simplification and just 4 value made a lot of sense. "High contrast pulls forward, Low contrast pushes back" more contrast will grab our attention." also i learn new thing. thanks^^
Awesome! So glad to hear that Rosa 😊simplicity is so important, especially for learning! We designed our entire program with that in mind, to make sure our students are learning the right information, at the right time, so that they can easily digest the knowledge. And then we guide them to convert that knowledge into application and skill! It's incredible how quickly artists can level up their skills when those things come together 😊~ Daniel
Huh...This explains why my embroidery work seems to be more vibrant than my actual drawings. Because I subconsciously picked out only 3-4 values for each color and work with only those where I dont have that same physical restriction when I'm drawing.
Fabulous. My first time seeing Evolve Artist. Short and to the point with many visual examples. I am teaching a teenager with developmental challenges and I am going to share this, at MANY of our sessions. I've helped her with shadows a lot and this will be useful to advance her understanding of values and their impor tance. You do not talk down to anyone. I enjoyed it and although more advanced, I definitely will remember this simplifying approach when I'm overloading my brain with too many choices. Thanks. And yes, I subscribed!
Daniel, these are so informative. I am watching as many as I can until October when I will join Evolve, but it is making it hard to be patient and wait. LOL. Thank you for the videos and the helpful information.
I should thank you ❤ As I started teaching art to my students, I got a lot of confusion about how to simplify the learning for the beginners. I searched for good tutorials here. I found the one ❤ Thank you
I had been painting for quite some time but had to give up due to failing eye sight and, being self-taught, I had difficulty understanding values. The method of breaking values into 4 grades helps and re-inforce my understanding of the subject. While intuitively knowing that the value of objects in the background always recedes, I didn't quite realise that by intensifying the contrast brings the objects forward (without altering its size!); I probably do it by trial-and-error, anyway. What an eye-opening tutorial! I have watched the beginning of this video numerous times, just to make sure the foundation is sound and I understand the definition. Many thanks for such a great video.
That's awesome! Simplifying a vast amount of information into just a few, critical things is powerful. The same can be done in edges, perception and color (the other fundamentals). Glad to hear that it's helped you reinforce that understanding. 😊 ~ Daniel
you just earn my sub sir, I've been watching different tutorial and they always tell me to learn 10-11 value scale (they probably just copy each other). I think I can work with 4 scale as of now I'll learn the others later.
Glad to hear that! Simplicity is key 🔑 and if you want to see those 4 values in action, check out this video: ruclips.net/video/bN2BggfFTgk/видео.html ~ Daniel
I did my first acrylic painting in June, 2021 and the result filled my heart with joy. I followed some RUclips videos and found they were barely beneficial and I barely learned anything. Then I bought an online course from a Chinese artist who paints really well. However her videos of lessons are not well structured or designed to take students make progress step by step. Most of her videos are just showing how to create a painting from start to finish. Lots of her paintings are complicated and I often feel exhausted through the process. I have been wishing that she could explain what each painting is about and what goal is to achieve in each lesson. I just bought their sketch and colored pencil lessons in the hopes of helping me understand how to paint. But I feel so overwhelmed. I was thinking that there should be some aspects commonly shared in all paintings that an artist should be aware when starting painting so as to realize the result they intend to. These videos helped clear my thoughts. Questions: how many pieces of art work needs to be done in the first 4 blocks? A youtuber mentioned 2 boxes of art supplies would be sent to students. I was thinking there would not be a lot in only 2 boxes. I am hesitant whether to enroll in your program as I have three courses on hand they have 3 years expiration date, although I didn’t pay a lot for those. Also your program is a lot more expensive!!
Hey again 😊 you’ll make 20 painting studies for each block for Blocks 1-3 and 9 paintings in Block 4. You’ll have all the materials you’ll need to complete assignments (including paint, brushes, canvas, palette paper, medium, photos, and more), except for a few items we can’t fit in the box (such as an easel) or household items (such as tape and paper towels), and you get much more paint than you need. In the first box we send you enough grayscale paint to make more than 100 paintings. In the second box we send you color paint that usually lasts our students well beyond Block 4. I am sorry for your frustrating experience with other art courses. We have a very structured approach where we teach one simple skill at a time, starting with the most important skills as a foundation and then build each new skill directly on top, so that each skill is supported by the ones that came before it. This creates a very fast, effective, and frictionless education. Our program does not have an expiration date. You can work at your own pace, either taking your sweet time over the course of years or plowing through the program in just a few months. Of course, we don’t let our students rush through our program and miss the chance to get the most out of it - it just comes down to how many hours you put in. Even after you finish the program you always have access and can return to the educational videos and remain a part of the student body and community of artists where we encourage and help support one another. As I mentioned to you in a previous reply to your comment, we are expensive compared to free RUclips videos but we are much much cheaper compared to art colleges and ateliers, and get results even faster. It sounds to me that you are really serious about wanting to learn how to paint, and regardless of what direction you take I would encourage you to think about your education as an investment to your growth as an artist. Ask yourself “if I put in this much money and time, what would I get out of it?” Weigh the value of the return on your investment against the cost of the investment. Maybe I’m a little biased 😛 but I don’t think you’ll be able to find a better investment than Evolve when you weigh its cost compared to the value. Regardless of what direction you take, just remember it’s been said that if you think the cost of education is high, try the cost of ignorance. 🤔 Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions 😊 ~ Daniel
@@evolveartist hi Daniel- thank you for your reply! Another question is: after I complete your course, Will I be able to paint anything I want? That seems to be the achievement Evolve promises. And once I have the skills, I can create professional art with other mediums too, like acrylic paint? I learned a little bit of watercolor painting in middle school and am not familiar with any other mediums except for acrylic paint that I started using a couple of months ago. Also I wish I could send you a few photos of the acrylic paintings by my current art teacher and ask you if I can easily paint those once I complete your program. I can put in 3-4 hours for learning to paint daily on weekdays while my daughter is in school and maybe 1-2 hours on the weekends. According to this schedule I should be able to complete in about 4-6 months. Am I correct? Another concern of mine is although I agree evolve is a well structured and well designed program but what do I do if I regret purchasing the course just because I don’t see obvious improvement. Your website states that a refund can be requested at block one and how I measure if I have acquired some important skills then, say for improving my acrylic painting, as the studies in block one is about gray paint. Please understand these concerns as this is not a small expense. Thank you for your patience for answering all my questions.
@@GraceBilunas Thank you for asking these questions! I'll tackle one at a time: 1. "Does Evolve promise that I will be able to paint anything I want?" This is a bit of a loaded question, so let me break it down. Our goal, yes, is to get you to a skill level where you can paint anything you want. In our program, we consistently get our students to professional level skills where, by the end of Block 4, they can paint anything at a photorealistic level. That is to say, you will have the skills to paint anything realistically, but you may not have the skills to paint something in a different style that you might want to paint. However I can assure you that you will not be a "copy machine," because we primarily focus on giving you an understanding of the most essential fundamental principles that are used for all kinds of art styles. From there, the Advanced Program builds off the Foundation Program to introduce more techniques to get you closer to painting anything you want IN ANY WAY YOU WANT. But from the Foundation Program alone, you will be much, much closer to the destination of "creating art without limitations" because of the fundamentals you will learn. An easy way to put it is that we teach you the language of painting - the alphabet, vocabulary, grammar, etc. and help you string those things together to form coherent sentences (aka realism), and all of this is necessary for you to learn in order to write poetry (in this case, visual poetry). 2. Yes you are correct. For 15 - 20 hours a week, you can expect to complete the Foundation Program (Blocks 1 -4) in 4-6 months. 3. Let me first say that our team works closely with every student during the program to make sure they are getting the full benefit of the program. But if you finish Block 1 and feel it hasn’t delivered the education promised despite your best efforts, we will review your case and issue a refund if it meets those qualifications. "Best efforts" can depend on the student, but it essentially means that if it's clear that they didn't put much effort into the assignments or try to follow the instructions, it's unlikely we would issue a refund. You also asked how you can tell if you improved after only going through Block 1 - easily! By the end of Block 1 you will be able to see the difference (and so will we) from a technical and objective standpoint, even when you work in your acrylic paintings in color. This is because in Block 1 we teach vital, fundamental principles like light and shadow, values and edges. Don't be fooled by the grayscale paint! The grayscale paint simply helps you learn these fundamental principles (which apply to color paintings). If you have any more questions about this, such as examples of what would qualify or what wouldn't qualify, our support team at hello@evolveartist.com can definitely help! Hope this helps! ~ 😊Daniel
What are the several techniques taught in Evolve and what are their procedures. Primarily, what is the LAST technique taught in Block 4? What are the techniques and thought processes taught in Blocks 5 through 8. Can't seem to find an answer to this. Thank you Daniel.
It's not bad to like one more than the other 😊but from a technical standpoint, the increased contrast creates less depth - whether you like that or not is simply subjective. It's more important that you know that you can objectively increase or decrease the impression of depth simply by changing the values 😊 in the words of Picasso, "learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist." Having an understanding of the "rules" of values to get the effect that you want is incredibly empowering. Consider, if you were to make this portrait, how long would you want viewers to stare at the girl before staring at the details? If you know (roughly) how long you wanted your viewers' attention to linger on the girl, before they started appreciating the details in the landscape behind her, you could arrange the values of the painting accordingly to determine that length of time. Pretty cool right? Kevin Murphy (Evolve's founder and my teacher) recently told me that in learning there are no "advanced techniques" - instead, there's only the fundamentals, and from there, an advanced understanding of those fundamentals. If you focus on advancing your understanding of the fundamentals, you will quickly become a master at using those fundamentals in limitless ways. 😊~ Daniel
The way you said "buying into it" make it seem like a conspiracy, and after watching this video I feel like a sheep for over complicating my painting process. Thank you for opening my eyes lol
Oh interesting, I believe I was talking about how values can create the illusion of form, and how our eyes naturally "buy into" that illusion. It's interesting to think of it as a conspiracy... of course, the way our brain processes visual information is not a bad, malicious vendetta against our desire to create art, but there is an aspect to learning art where we have to teach our eyes and brain to "see through" the illusion so that we can look at the simple parts for what they are and then rebuild them into an effective illusion for our viewers. Someone who looks at a photo of a portrait and "buys into" the illusion would say "this is a photo of a face." But someone who has trained their eyes to see through the illusion could look at the photo and say, "this is not a face, it's only a combination of values, edges, and color that makes it look like a face." I don't know if that made sense, but in any case I'm glad I was able to help open your eyes! I would encourage you to keep focusing teaching your brain to understand and simplify what you see so that painting becomes easier for you 😊 ~ Daniel more on this topic: ruclips.net/video/diwD3ykRs74/видео.html
This is indeed a solid approach to start from but beware of "rules" and "set approaches" for there are no light values and dark values. Taking your example of the two cubes at 00:41, the shadow value of the "white cube" could be the same value than the light value of the dark cube ( if it was darker of course). Therefore 4 values work fine, as long we are talking about painting one object, but things can get confusing once local values are involved. Another thing is simplifying light so much can be problematic : one might believe there is a light side and a shadow side whereas most of the time you will have a key (directional) light, a fill light and ambient occlusions. So what you end up calling shadow plane is actually still in the light but under a light that is weaker than that of the key light ... so you could say a shadow plane is in the shadow of the directionnal light ... but it still receives and reflects fill light (or ambient light) compared to ambient occlusions... Now ambient occlusions is the area of the cube which hardly receives any light , e.g the shadow of almost any light source = the area right under the cube. And of course there could be a fall off between the top of the ambiently lit part of the cube and the ambient occlusion area. So in the end , pretty much like with color, we should talk in relative terms and avoid absolutes. There is a part of the the cube which is in the shadow of the main light but is not just in shadow.
Hey Calintz, you raise some good points! One of our philosophies on teaching art is that “you don’t need rules to make art, but rules are very effective for learning.” Picasso himself said “learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” Sometimes having absolutes to start can really keep a simple and streamlined approach to learning. Then, as experience and knowledge begins to push at the seams of those beginning limitations, as teachers we want to start releasing the limitations so that the learning artist can begin to juggle more relationships (like reflections in shadow). This is one way that we help artists get to pro level skills so fast - through a “Mr. Miyagi” approach to learning: aka “Do first, explain after.” We teach in this structured process (where the brightest shadows can’t be darker than the darkest lights) not to create perfectly realistic paintings, but to reinforce a process that allows you to simply what you see rather than complicate what you see. After 3 Blocks of training in fundamentals, we then release them to create fully realistic paintings without the same constraints they had before. And the results speak for themselves, at only about 350 hours of studying at the easel. Let me know your thoughts! ~ Daniel
it's kind of impossible to see values though ... maybe it's easy in less colorful references. but when there are a lot of differences in the saturation of color, it's very hard to get the values close. which leads to a lot of trial and error until things look right. I keep looking for tips to be able to see values easily, but I can't find anything. I've been looking for a really long time.
Hey Adresa 🙂it's not impossible, it just takes practice with the right process. Because it takes time to develop the ability to see values, we have our students make paintings in in grayscale in our online school before we teach them how to paint in color. Once they get into color we continue to reinforce their understanding of values, giving them a process for mixing the right colors in both shade and hue. On our website you can see our curriculum and the kinds of paintings our students make. Don't despair! You can absolutely learn this. Here's the link to our website: bit.ly/go-evolve
We don't have a hard rule on this at the moment, but we recommend Evolve for anyone over the age of 12 who wants to develop their skills. Feel free to send us an email with questions about your specific situation at hello@evolveartist.com 🙂~ Daniel
If I’m understanding you correctly, yes! Values and colors are slightly different from each other. Value is how light or dark something is. You can have a light red or a dark red, for example. So, you could use 4 values in “monochrome,” such as a range of 4 red shades from dark to light. From there, you want to mentally break the 4 values down into 2 parts: light, and shadow. Use the 2 darkest ones only for your shadows, and you the 2 lightest ones only for your lights. I hope that makes sense! Let me know if I was able to answer your question 🙂 ~ Daniel
Hey Magikrap, I often am, but I have to keep trying 🙂would you mind giving me some constructive feedback on what I should be ashamed about, in this particular case? ~ Daniel
@@evolveartist you're taking advantage of people. Your ads play constantly throughout your videos. Go watch one of your ads where you talk about 'your backstory' and ask yourself how believable what you're promising sounds, being fully aware of the truth in contrast to it. You have zero scruples man. Just taking money from people with dreams who should be approaching something like this with realistic goals. You're setting people up to knock them down, shattering dreams and catalyzing disappointment in some really decent people, all just to make a quick buck? Yeah.. your reply is patronizing, but I sincerely hope you do, for humanity's sake I hope on some level you really do.
@@magikrap7309 thank you for taking the time to explain, and being candid about it. I appreciate that you're skeptical and are looking out for other people who might fall prey to scams online. And I'm sorry for giving you a false impression of what I'm all about. If I really was deceiving people, getting their hopes up and providing nothing of value just to make some money, I would definitely feel ashamed of myself. I imagine that you've seen or had some terrible experiences like this, and have been let down yourself by someone or something. I see it everywhere, and I think it's awful. It's actually a big part of what inspired us to actually make Evolve in the first place, a program that actually delivers tangible results. For us, getting results for our students is everything, because without getting real results for our students we would be just like so many other online art courses. You can look up the paintings our students make by searching up the #evolveartist hashtag, where many of our students post their work. You can also hear people's thoughts on Google reviews and also watch some interviews here: bit.ly/evolve-student-stories. And there's also other RUclipsrs only sharing their progress in the program, like Mithrilda (we didn't sponsor her to make her videos about Evolve, and she didn't hold back on sharing how she thought we could be better, which we appreciated). I truly believe in what we're doing with Evolve. My story is true. I didn't think of myself as an artist or even think I could become one. It wasn't even on my radar - I was interested in writing. But my mom dragged me in to Kevin's art school, where I took weekly art classes. I still wasn't interested in art for art's sake, but I enjoyed the challenge of Kevin's exercises, so I focused hard on learning, even though I was slower than most. After about 2 years of weekly 2.5 hour classes, I remember one day it was as if I had just "blinked" and realized, "Wait a minute, I think I'm an artist. This could be my life." The transformation had snuck up on me, and I never expected to be making paintings like I was in only about 250 hours, especially given the fact that I hadn't been aspiring to become an artist - I was just doing the work and trying to follow the instructions. My story is a unique one because most artists DO have goals and visions of improving their skills and making art of their dreams, and knowing that makes me feel all the more convicted that people should know about the training I received, because it worked for me, and quickly. So I'd encourage you to take a closer look at what Evolve really offers. For one, we send our students over $1k-worth of art supplies (all included in the tuition), and provide feedback on every painting assignment within 24 hours of submission. If we were just trying to make a quick buck, we would be selling video lessons only, to reduce our costs and maximize our profits, which is what most other online art courses do. But we believe that video lessons alone aren't enough to provide a true education that delivers results. The high-quality materials we send don't make our students better artists - more importantly, the materials don't hold them back from representing their skill (which we need to see, in order to provide clear, constructive feedback). And the feedback is essential because we want to make sure our students are truly retaining the information from our video lessons and applying it into skill - giving feedback on every painting helps them make simple course-corrections to stay on the straightest, most efficient path to developing the skills quickly so that they can get to making the art of their dreams. And our approach to teaching is super practical and realistic. We start every student off by having them paint gray squares... it might seem boring but it allows our students to learn how to apply paint properly and develop good habits from the start, being able to handle a brush and stay within the boundaries you set for yourself. Then we move on to gradients. Then we make our first grayscale painting of a couple of cubes, teaching them our process for painting. The next one is a sphere... you can see them all on our website, this steady progression in complexity as we introduce one skill at a time. The end result is photorealistic paintings, and our students often feel like I did, wondering "how it happened" that they arrived at their skill level by the end of the program, only after about 350 hours of painting study. 350 hours to pro level skills is unheard of in the art education industry - most expect it takes 4-5 years. At college, you'd be looking at about 4,500 hours. And Evolve is 13x faster and 100x cheaper than art colleges. If we were trying to make a quick buck, we would start our students in color and have different courses for the subjects they like (which is what most online art courses do). We would also provide step-by-step tutorials where students can just copy what we do (without actually learning anything). But we don't do any of this, because we care more about actually educating our students, so they can make art that has never been seen before. Let me know your thoughts on all this. Happy to keep going back and forth here about why you think I may be in the wrong, or even if you feel like I could have communicated all this better in your first impression of me. Warmly, Daniel
This is amazing. Im really trying to understand values, I struggle to understand the simple terms still. Ill do more research and watch more videos. This was great though. Thank you so much. So less daunting xx
Yes! I'm so glad to hear that painting feels less daunting for you. It really becomes much more enjoyable when it's simplified - and the painting often looks better for it too! Feel free to ask me any questions as you go through the Fundamentals playlist: ruclips.net/p/PLlBZ6D4J51BMfilYd3PhLTsjmt9pabRu8 🎨~ Daniel
It makes sense that value is more important than color alone. Even our eyes are adapted to it. With 91 million rods to detect value vs 6 million cones to detect color.
One thing I would add is that the 2 values for light and two values for shadow is merely a starting point. Don't consider it a rock solid rule. There will be times when you will have very little shadow to draw, warranting only 1 shade for the shadow; and there will be times where the opposite will be true, having a bright highlight on a very small part of the face with the rest of it enveloped in shadow. The other thing is that you CAN actually get good at painting with more than just 3 or 4 values. I have come to like 6 a lot of the time. I find that for faces, you need a white for highlights, then 2 for most of the front detail, 1 for the transition into shadow, and that leaves you 2 for the shadow. Converting B&W images to index color mode is great for simplifying the shading as well. It's a fantastic way to study exactly what is going on when you're just starting out.
Great points! Yes the 4 values is a great starting point for beginners and those who are returning to the basics, and like training wheels it is meant to be there for support until no longer needed. The 4 values help the artist learn how to simplify what they see based on an understanding, training their eyes and brain to view relationships critically and thoughtfully to handle even more complex relationships in the future (such as color). I expound on this topic more through a grayscale portrait done in the Evolve method, and show how you can easily add highlights and reflections with an additional 3 in-between values (admixtures) and I think you'll like it: ruclips.net/video/bN2BggfFTgkp/видео.html You absolutely can get good at painting through a variety of approaches - with Evolve we are focused on finding the shortest, quickest path to creating art without limitations. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I appreciate how you think flexibly and are looking to simplify visual information through processes. Would love to hear your thoughts about that portrait video! 😊~ Daniel
@@evolveartist The Evolve method looks very similar to what I have been doing myself, so I would say that is a great path to go down, especially for beginners. At 6:20 you show the morph from solid lines to gradients. It's similar to low polygonal modeling in 3D. We will model a lot in low poly mode, then apply a Smooth to see what it looks like, but undo it and continue on with low poly modeling, then try a Smooth again and view the results. You can achieve a lot with the solid lines, then blurring later on. To apply that same idea with value painting, I usually paint in Index Mode to limit my colors, but I do not use a pencil or soft brush - I use a spray paint brush. This allows me to still paint gradients while at the same time continuing to limit myself to the set number of colors (dithering, basically). Doing it this way yields great results when you switch it back into RGB mode and smooth it out with a 50% soft brush. I think it makes the end result look less blurry. The more you can achieve in the low-color "mode" (like low poly modeling), the better it will look once you take it to the smoothing step. That's why a spray paint brush is so nice! I haven't looked through your videos yet, but a great topic to cover if you haven't already is maybe the typical highlights and shadows you might encounter in typical faces. I find it very helpful to quickly paint values when I already know that it's likely for there to be highlights above the brows, above the upper lip, on the top of the outside of the nostrils, the tip of the nose, the top of the cheek bone, the forehead, and the top of the chin; and that shadows commonly fall above the eyelid, below the bottom lip, the creases from the nostrils down to the outside of the mouth, and often there will be another set of line shadows from the outside of the mouth going down on either side of the chin. Breaking down these features is critical for painting from memory and would be a great thing to point out if you haven't already. We of course will not find shadows and highlights in these areas all the time, but it's a great place to start. You also make a comment about how you can still recognize what the image is from far away with only the light and shadows. This is something I also realized when programming object recognition software. In just a single 4k image, you have 8,294,400 pixels. Each pixel has a byte for red, green, and blue, so that's 24,883,200 bytes. This quickly becomes a mountain of data to process. The realization that you can still tell what an object is even if it's in black and white is critical to reducing the workload here. This reduces the number of bytes down to just 1 per pixel instead of 3 (grayscale). Furthermore, if you take a black and white image into Photoshop and go Image>Mode>Index>Perceptual and set it to a low number (like 10), you can see that even with only 10 shades of grey, you can still tell very easily what the object is. This is important for storing profiles of recognized objects. You can have a cluster of these values in an area that AI can use to describe the general shape of an object. The really interesting part is how low of a resolution can you go (to reduce the file size even more) and still successfully recognize the object by matching it to the data profile. For instance, even though your image is 4k that you are processing, you may only need to cycle through every 10th pixel, effectively making it equivalent to a 384x216 sized image. Now you can process the data at lightning speeds because you only have to process a fraction of the pixels. It's just amazing how these concepts we use in painting can applying to some of the most futuristic problems we are trying to solve in tech. Great videos!
@@digitalconsciousness wow, so cool! Love that explanation about the programming object recognition software, so amazing how even computers process information more quickly when it is simplified. How much more so for us humans! Thank you for sharing your thoughts and outlook on this, it really brightened my day 😊 Thank you also for your recommendation on typical highlights and shadows in faces. In my videos I really try to focus on helping artists learn how to understand and filter visual information through a process, regardless of subject matter. This allows artists to take greater steps forward in creating art without any limitations. I will use subjects (like portraits) to illustrate these process, but we try to keep the process more fundamental, stripped down to the building blocks of our visual reality. For example, I could make a video explaining where highlights and shadows typically fall on generic human faces, or I could make a video helping people critically assess and determine the value relationships in their reference - the latter, to me, is more fundamental and more valuable as a concept that can be applied more broadly. That being said, I think you are on to something because people rarely search "process for seeing value relationships" compared to "where are the highlights and shadows on the face." In many ways I can see myself being of greater service to others by responding to their specific inquiry (such as common lights and shadows on the face) and then taking it a step deeper in the video itself to expound about how these fundamental approaches can apply to anything. So, thank you for your feedback! Really appreciate it :)
Thank you Caroline, I really appreciate that! I think there’s a big need out there for simple but critical information that cuts straight through all the fluff and gets right down to practical, effective learning that isn’t theatric but truly gets results for artists. That’s really our whole focus - creating the shortest path necessary to create art without limitations 😊 thank you! ~ Daniel
Nice! Yes training your eyes to see value first will actually improve your ability to critically see colors for their value, which in turn will allow you to see color more accurately when you get back into color again :) in the Evolve program, we teach our students values and edges first, and then proportional drawing, before getting into color. You can see how we do it on our website's curriculum page: evolveartist.com/the-curriculum/
Great question - absolutely not! Here's why: I've given advice to hundreds of artists - from professionals to complete novices - and the most common issue, by a longshot, is the inability to capture the simple impression of light and shadow. The purpose of having 4 values is to make value decisions based on whether or not something is a light or a shadow. Especially as a complete novice, you don't want to think about mid-tones right now. A mid-tone is what we think of as something being in between light and shadow. So if you only had 3 values and could choose a value to go between your lights and your shadows, you would neither efficiently nor effectively learn how to see complex things and simplify it down into only light and shadow (which is the first and most impactful step to creating the impression of form in your work). You would be better off starting with two values (one for your light, one for your shadow), than to use 3 values instead of 4. 4 values is nice because, once you have broken your image down into light and shadow, you can then relatively compare your darkest shadows with your brightest shadows, and for each shadow, choose 1 of the 2 shadow values. Then you can do the same with your lights. If you can consistently simplify an entire painting into 4 values, and from those 4 values maintain a solid impression of light and shadow, then there's nothing you wouldn't be able to do, and growing into a wider value scale would be a breeze. If you don't believe me, watch me paint an entire portrait starting with just 4 values and you'll see what I mean - ruclips.net/video/bN2BggfFTgk/видео.html Great question, thanks for asking! ~ Daniel
@@evolveartist oh wow that actually makes more sense to do it this way! Ill try it out with the fruits at home before tackling a portrait. Thank you Daniel I’ll be looking forward to more from your channel :)
@@elyceus awesome! Love to hear that you’re trying it out for yourself. Why don’t you just join the Evolve program? It’s the fastest way to level up your skills. In any case feel free to send me your fruit still life and I’ll give you a critique to help you out 😊 Submit here (it’s free): evolveartist.com/review ~ Daniel
Thank you so much for this video. I have been stuck and struggling to understand how to implement values into my art for almost 3 weeks now. You've helped me understand how I can finally start moving forward again.
I believe so! That was taken on top of Mount Bierstadt. I had been recording a video to talk about why mountains are blue. Thought it was fitting to talk about art on top of a mountain named after the 19th century landscape painter 👨🎨 ~ Daniel
@@evolveartist Cool! Love that someone else gets that. I live in the Pikes Peak region and have hiked 40 of the 14ers. Is that "Why mountains are blue" video out on RUclips?
@@delanebredvik it’s not on RUclips because the audio was really bad with the wind. But I did post it on my story highlights on my personal Instagram account: instagram.com/danielfolta Once you get to my profile, tap on the ☀️ ~ Daniel
I have learned a lot with this video, but i have felt that the pace was too fast at times. Maybe it would be because i am not a native english speaker. Anyway,thanks for the video!
Thank you José! I really appreciate the feedback - I've been thinking about slowing down my pace a bit a more, so this helps! 😊 much appreciated ~ Daniel
I took art class 2 years in a row in high school, except my art teacher was also the head teacher for our school and would use our art block to do her own paper work and grading. She'd just come in for 5-10 minutes and leave us to do our own art however we liked. I'm so sad I didn't learn this basic yet fundamental concept in her class, but I'm thankful I now understand the *value* of it through this video
Sorry to hear that Rycherry 😔 but I’m glad you found us and hopefully these videos and our training program can continue to help people like you. We want to redefine and raise the standard for art education and equip artists all around the world with the skills necessary to create art without limitations 😊 thanks for sharing ~ Daniel
Hi Patricia, unfortunately we do not offer the program in any medium other than oil, as we take our student results very seriously. Oil paint is the easiest, most forgiving paint to learn with. Watercolor is especially unforgiving and hard to learn the fundamentals with when you have to juggle additional factors such as the layering, drying time and spread. But if you do take the Evolve program, you will find that the fundamentals we teach will apply seamlessly over into watercolor. You would only be missing the application side of watercolor - but the concepts of value, edges, color, how to turn form and create depth, etc. would easily transition over into watercolor for you. If you're curious, here's a video where I explain why oil paint is better for learning compared to acrylic: ruclips.net/video/A30TGvh-imQ/видео.html Let me know if you have any questions! What do you not like about oil paint? 😊~ Daniel
Oil paint may be easiest to learn to use, but if I ever take up painting, it'll be watercolor. Not just for its etherial effects or the challenge of mastering the medium... but because severe irritant-induced asthma makes breathing challenging enough without adding potentially deadly (for me) fumes of oil paints, solvents, media, etc. Ease of learning isn't worth risking a "brush with death" (pun intended). 😉🙂 Still love the Evolve video series and learning more about the basic but crucial principles behind creating effective art. Much of this knowledge can even translate to other media beyond painting and drawing. Better understanding and use of value, color theory, texture, perspective, depth, contrast, etc. make it much faster and easier to select the right components to create more dynamic and aesthetically pleasing projects - be they crochet, counted cross stitch, beaded jewelry or loomwork, sewing, home decor, whatever! 😀 No more wasting hours aimlessly matching up random combos of every (bead, yarn, floss, finding, wire, fabric, etc.) from the stash before finally picking a colorway/palette that "might" work, only to end up constantly tweaking it throughout the project! So even if I never pick up a paintbrush (and even if I do it won't be with oil paints👻☠️), I still really appreciate these videos! 💕
@@abbynormal4740 watercolor is such a beautiful medium to work with 😊nothing wrong with choosing to paint with it over oils. Sorry to hear that oil paint is a no-go for you. Did you hear me talk about oil paint fumes in the "learning art with oil vs acrylic" video? I shared how you can completely avoid solvents and toxic fumes. Of course, people can react differently to different things, but as a generalization, oil paint is not toxic and doesn't have to be a toxic experience. Here's the link to that section of the video: ruclips.net/video/A30TGvh-imQ/видео.html In any case, so glad to hear that you are able to apply these videos to other forms of art! That is certainly one of my goals when I make these videos 😊the fundamentals of art must go beyond any medium and tap into the deeper ingredients of our visual reality 😊 thank you for sharing what you've gotten out of these videos and I hope that we can continue to help you create art without limitations! 😁~ Daniel
You added Value to my day.
😂😂 good one!!
I don’t have much value
I C wut u did there
"you are much better off starting with a four value scale" like literally YES! thank you so much, i was having difficulty with shading and the idea of simplification and just 4 value made a lot of sense.
"High contrast pulls forward,
Low contrast pushes back"
more contrast will grab our attention." also i learn new thing. thanks^^
Awesome! So glad to hear that Rosa 😊simplicity is so important, especially for learning! We designed our entire program with that in mind, to make sure our students are learning the right information, at the right time, so that they can easily digest the knowledge. And then we guide them to convert that knowledge into application and skill! It's incredible how quickly artists can level up their skills when those things come together 😊~ Daniel
Huh...This explains why my embroidery work seems to be more vibrant than my actual drawings. Because I subconsciously picked out only 3-4 values for each color and work with only those where I dont have that same physical restriction when I'm drawing.
Fabulous. My first time seeing Evolve Artist. Short and to the point with many visual examples. I am teaching a teenager with developmental challenges and I am going to share this, at MANY of our sessions. I've helped her with shadows a lot and this will be useful to advance her understanding of values and their impor
tance. You do not talk down to anyone. I enjoyed it and although more advanced, I definitely will remember this simplifying approach when I'm overloading my brain with too many choices. Thanks. And yes, I subscribed!
That's beautiful Leslie! Thank you for the kind words and thank you for helping others with their art 😊~ Daniel
Daniel, these are so informative. I am watching as many as I can until October when I will join Evolve, but it is making it hard to be patient and wait. LOL. Thank you for the videos and the helpful information.
I should thank you ❤ As I started teaching art to my students, I got a lot of confusion about how to simplify the learning for the beginners. I searched for good tutorials here. I found the one ❤ Thank you
Thank you for explaining that so simply! I finally understand it and I've watched countless videos on the subject.
This series is an eye opener. I've unlocked my third eye thank you
Thank you Drake, glad to hear that 😊 ~ Daniel
I had been painting for quite some time but had to give up due to failing eye sight and, being self-taught, I had difficulty understanding values. The method of breaking values into 4 grades helps and re-inforce my understanding of the subject. While intuitively knowing that the value of objects in the background always recedes, I didn't quite realise that by intensifying the contrast brings the objects forward (without altering its size!); I probably do it by trial-and-error, anyway. What an eye-opening tutorial! I have watched the beginning of this video numerous times, just to make sure the foundation is sound and I understand the definition.
Many thanks for such a great video.
That's awesome! Simplifying a vast amount of information into just a few, critical things is powerful. The same can be done in edges, perception and color (the other fundamentals). Glad to hear that it's helped you reinforce that understanding. 😊 ~ Daniel
Best art instructional channel I have found.
Thank you Lauren! 😊 ~ Daniel
Thank U so much Daniel🎉
Awesome, I didn’t know Evolve had a RUclips, subscribed! 👍👍
Thanks for the sub! Looking forward to seeing more of your content Dennis 😊 ~ Daniel
Thanks for the clarification. Great video. Blessings and take care.
Thank you Crisalida 😊 ~ Daniel
you just earn my sub sir, I've been watching different tutorial and they always tell me to learn 10-11 value scale (they probably just copy each other). I think I can work with 4 scale as of now I'll learn the others later.
Glad to hear that! Simplicity is key 🔑 and if you want to see those 4 values in action, check out this video: ruclips.net/video/bN2BggfFTgk/видео.html ~ Daniel
this video is such a hidden gem, thank you for sharing!
My pleasure Rp! 😊 ~ Daniel
best explanation I have ever seen on youtube. Thank you so much.
You’re welcome ☺️ ~ Daniel
I did my first acrylic painting in June, 2021 and the result filled my heart with joy. I followed some RUclips videos and found they were barely beneficial and I barely learned anything. Then I bought an online course from a Chinese artist who paints really well. However her videos of lessons are not well structured or designed to take students make progress step by step. Most of her videos are just showing how to create a painting from start to finish. Lots of her paintings are complicated and I often feel exhausted through the process. I have been wishing that she could explain what each painting is about and what goal is to achieve in each lesson. I just bought their sketch and colored pencil lessons in the hopes of helping me understand how to paint. But I feel so overwhelmed. I was thinking that there should be some aspects commonly shared in all paintings that an artist should be aware when starting painting so as to realize the result they intend to. These videos helped clear my thoughts. Questions: how many pieces of art work needs to be done in the first 4 blocks? A youtuber mentioned 2 boxes of art supplies would be sent to students. I was thinking there would not be a lot in only 2 boxes. I am hesitant whether to enroll in your program as I have three courses on hand they have 3 years expiration date, although I didn’t pay a lot for those. Also your program is a lot more expensive!!
Hey again 😊 you’ll make 20 painting studies for each block for Blocks 1-3 and 9 paintings in Block 4. You’ll have all the materials you’ll need to complete assignments (including paint, brushes, canvas, palette paper, medium, photos, and more), except for a few items we can’t fit in the box (such as an easel) or household items (such as tape and paper towels), and you get much more paint than you need. In the first box we send you enough grayscale paint to make more than 100 paintings. In the second box we send you color paint that usually lasts our students well beyond Block 4.
I am sorry for your frustrating experience with other art courses. We have a very structured approach where we teach one simple skill at a time, starting with the most important skills as a foundation and then build each new skill directly on top, so that each skill is supported by the ones that came before it. This creates a very fast, effective, and frictionless education. Our program does not have an expiration date. You can work at your own pace, either taking your sweet time over the course of years or plowing through the program in just a few months. Of course, we don’t let our students rush through our program and miss the chance to get the most out of it - it just comes down to how many hours you put in. Even after you finish the program you always have access and can return to the educational videos and remain a part of the student body and community of artists where we encourage and help support one another. As I mentioned to you in a previous reply to your comment, we are expensive compared to free RUclips videos but we are much much cheaper compared to art colleges and ateliers, and get results even faster. It sounds to me that you are really serious about wanting to learn how to paint, and regardless of what direction you take I would encourage you to think about your education as an investment to your growth as an artist. Ask yourself “if I put in this much money and time, what would I get out of it?” Weigh the value of the return on your investment against the cost of the investment. Maybe I’m a little biased 😛 but I don’t think you’ll be able to find a better investment than Evolve when you weigh its cost compared to the value. Regardless of what direction you take, just remember it’s been said that if you think the cost of education is high, try the cost of ignorance. 🤔
Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions 😊 ~ Daniel
@@evolveartist hi Daniel- thank you for your reply! Another question is: after I complete your course, Will I be able to paint anything I want? That seems to be the achievement Evolve promises. And once I have the skills, I can create professional art with other mediums too, like acrylic paint? I learned a little bit of watercolor painting in middle school and am not familiar with any other mediums except for acrylic paint that I started using a couple of months ago. Also I wish I could send you a few photos of the acrylic paintings by my current art teacher and ask you if I can easily paint those once I complete your program.
I can put in 3-4 hours for learning to paint daily on weekdays while my daughter is in school and maybe 1-2 hours on the weekends. According to this schedule I should be able to complete in about 4-6 months. Am I correct?
Another concern of mine is although I agree evolve is a well structured and well designed program but what do I do if I regret purchasing the course just because I don’t see obvious improvement. Your website states that a refund can be requested at block one and how I measure if I have acquired some important skills then, say for improving my acrylic painting, as the studies in block one is about gray paint. Please understand these concerns as this is not a small expense. Thank you for your patience for answering all my questions.
@@GraceBilunas Thank you for asking these questions! I'll tackle one at a time:
1. "Does Evolve promise that I will be able to paint anything I want?" This is a bit of a loaded question, so let me break it down. Our goal, yes, is to get you to a skill level where you can paint anything you want. In our program, we consistently get our students to professional level skills where, by the end of Block 4, they can paint anything at a photorealistic level. That is to say, you will have the skills to paint anything realistically, but you may not have the skills to paint something in a different style that you might want to paint. However I can assure you that you will not be a "copy machine," because we primarily focus on giving you an understanding of the most essential fundamental principles that are used for all kinds of art styles. From there, the Advanced Program builds off the Foundation Program to introduce more techniques to get you closer to painting anything you want IN ANY WAY YOU WANT. But from the Foundation Program alone, you will be much, much closer to the destination of "creating art without limitations" because of the fundamentals you will learn. An easy way to put it is that we teach you the language of painting - the alphabet, vocabulary, grammar, etc. and help you string those things together to form coherent sentences (aka realism), and all of this is necessary for you to learn in order to write poetry (in this case, visual poetry).
2. Yes you are correct. For 15 - 20 hours a week, you can expect to complete the Foundation Program (Blocks 1 -4) in 4-6 months.
3. Let me first say that our team works closely with every student during the program to make sure they are getting the full benefit of the program. But if you finish Block 1 and feel it hasn’t delivered the education promised despite your best efforts, we will review your case and issue a refund if it meets those qualifications. "Best efforts" can depend on the student, but it essentially means that if it's clear that they didn't put much effort into the assignments or try to follow the instructions, it's unlikely we would issue a refund.
You also asked how you can tell if you improved after only going through Block 1 - easily! By the end of Block 1 you will be able to see the difference (and so will we) from a technical and objective standpoint, even when you work in your acrylic paintings in color. This is because in Block 1 we teach vital, fundamental principles like light and shadow, values and edges. Don't be fooled by the grayscale paint! The grayscale paint simply helps you learn these fundamental principles (which apply to color paintings).
If you have any more questions about this, such as examples of what would qualify or what wouldn't qualify, our support team at hello@evolveartist.com can definitely help! Hope this helps! ~ 😊Daniel
@@evolveartist thank you for your detailed response, very helpful!
@@GraceBilunas My pleasure! 😊~ Daniel
Thank you for explaining that so simply ❤❤❤❤❤❤
Thank you for such clear explanation! I hope you upload more interesting videos like this.
Thank you! That’s the goal 😊 ~ Daniel
What are the several techniques taught in Evolve and what are their procedures. Primarily, what is the LAST technique taught in Block 4? What are the techniques and thought processes taught in Blocks 5 through 8. Can't seem to find an answer to this. Thank you Daniel.
Love this thank you
❤
Is it bad that i also like the increased contrast edit of that painting? To me it feels more like theres more to look at than just the girl.
It's not bad to like one more than the other 😊but from a technical standpoint, the increased contrast creates less depth - whether you like that or not is simply subjective. It's more important that you know that you can objectively increase or decrease the impression of depth simply by changing the values 😊 in the words of Picasso, "learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist."
Having an understanding of the "rules" of values to get the effect that you want is incredibly empowering. Consider, if you were to make this portrait, how long would you want viewers to stare at the girl before staring at the details? If you know (roughly) how long you wanted your viewers' attention to linger on the girl, before they started appreciating the details in the landscape behind her, you could arrange the values of the painting accordingly to determine that length of time. Pretty cool right?
Kevin Murphy (Evolve's founder and my teacher) recently told me that in learning there are no "advanced techniques" - instead, there's only the fundamentals, and from there, an advanced understanding of those fundamentals. If you focus on advancing your understanding of the fundamentals, you will quickly become a master at using those fundamentals in limitless ways. 😊~ Daniel
Thank you! Your course save the day
Glad to hear that Nei! Let me know if you have any questions 😊 ~ Daniel
Thank you so much, it is very useful video!!!!
Wow! Thanks!
Glad you liked it! Thank you Deborah :)
Beautiful lesson.thank you
Bravo. Daniel.
Thank you Joyce :)
😭 I wish I would've found this before I joined Milan art institute
Amazing and Beautiful
Thank you! 😊~ Daniel
EXCELLENT!
Thanks Ian!
Subbed 👍🏽Easy to understand, no annoying music in the background, love that you get right into it without 15 minutes of babbling. Thanks🌹
The way you said "buying into it" make it seem like a conspiracy, and after watching this video I feel like a sheep for over complicating my painting process. Thank you for opening my eyes lol
Oh interesting, I believe I was talking about how values can create the illusion of form, and how our eyes naturally "buy into" that illusion. It's interesting to think of it as a conspiracy... of course, the way our brain processes visual information is not a bad, malicious vendetta against our desire to create art, but there is an aspect to learning art where we have to teach our eyes and brain to "see through" the illusion so that we can look at the simple parts for what they are and then rebuild them into an effective illusion for our viewers. Someone who looks at a photo of a portrait and "buys into" the illusion would say "this is a photo of a face." But someone who has trained their eyes to see through the illusion could look at the photo and say, "this is not a face, it's only a combination of values, edges, and color that makes it look like a face." I don't know if that made sense, but in any case I'm glad I was able to help open your eyes! I would encourage you to keep focusing teaching your brain to understand and simplify what you see so that painting becomes easier for you 😊 ~ Daniel
more on this topic: ruclips.net/video/diwD3ykRs74/видео.html
Dropped a sub. Useful info. I love finding art youtubers who can teach me.
Thanks d! 😊I appreciate it 🙂~ Daniel
This is indeed a solid approach to start from but beware of "rules" and "set approaches" for there are no light values and dark values. Taking your example of the two cubes at 00:41, the shadow value of the "white cube" could be the same value than the light value of the dark cube ( if it was darker of course).
Therefore 4 values work fine, as long we are talking about painting one object, but things can get confusing once local values are involved.
Another thing is simplifying light so much can be problematic : one might believe there is a light side and a shadow side whereas most of the time you will have a key (directional) light, a fill light and ambient occlusions. So what you end up calling shadow plane is actually still in the light but under a light that is weaker than that of the key light ... so you could say a shadow plane is in the shadow of the directionnal light ... but it still receives and reflects fill light (or ambient light) compared to ambient occlusions... Now ambient occlusions is the area of the cube which hardly receives any light , e.g the shadow of almost any light source = the area right under the cube.
And of course there could be a fall off between the top of the ambiently lit part of the cube and the ambient occlusion area.
So in the end , pretty much like with color, we should talk in relative terms and avoid absolutes. There is a part of the the cube which is in the shadow of the main light but is not just in shadow.
Hey Calintz, you raise some good points! One of our philosophies on teaching art is that “you don’t need rules to make art, but rules are very effective for learning.” Picasso himself said “learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” Sometimes having absolutes to start can really keep a simple and streamlined approach to learning. Then, as experience and knowledge begins to push at the seams of those beginning limitations, as teachers we want to start releasing the limitations so that the learning artist can begin to juggle more relationships (like reflections in shadow). This is one way that we help artists get to pro level skills so fast - through a “Mr. Miyagi” approach to learning: aka “Do first, explain after.”
We teach in this structured process (where the brightest shadows can’t be darker than the darkest lights) not to create perfectly realistic paintings, but to reinforce a process that allows you to simply what you see rather than complicate what you see. After 3 Blocks of training in fundamentals, we then release them to create fully realistic paintings without the same constraints they had before. And the results speak for themselves, at only about 350 hours of studying at the easel.
Let me know your thoughts! ~ Daniel
Fantastic.
So practical..
This was great
THX TVT
it should be referred as tonal values.
very good job, thanks for this
Glad you liked it :) ~ Daniel
Nice 👍
it's kind of impossible to see values though ... maybe it's easy in less colorful references. but when there are a lot of differences in the saturation of color, it's very hard to get the values close. which leads to a lot of trial and error until things look right. I keep looking for tips to be able to see values easily, but I can't find anything. I've been looking for a really long time.
Hey Adresa 🙂it's not impossible, it just takes practice with the right process. Because it takes time to develop the ability to see values, we have our students make paintings in in grayscale in our online school before we teach them how to paint in color. Once they get into color we continue to reinforce their understanding of values, giving them a process for mixing the right colors in both shade and hue. On our website you can see our curriculum and the kinds of paintings our students make. Don't despair! You can absolutely learn this. Here's the link to our website: bit.ly/go-evolve
okay you. are. so. good.
Thank you Rachel! Let me know if you have any questions 😊 ~ Daniel
Is there an age requirement for this program?
We don't have a hard rule on this at the moment, but we recommend Evolve for anyone over the age of 12 who wants to develop their skills. Feel free to send us an email with questions about your specific situation at hello@evolveartist.com 🙂~ Daniel
so using 4 values equals using only 4 colors 2 darker and 2 lighter?
If I’m understanding you correctly, yes! Values and colors are slightly different from each other. Value is how light or dark something is. You can have a light red or a dark red, for example. So, you could use 4 values in “monochrome,” such as a range of 4 red shades from dark to light. From there, you want to mentally break the 4 values down into 2 parts: light, and shadow. Use the 2 darkest ones only for your shadows, and you the 2 lightest ones only for your lights. I hope that makes sense! Let me know if I was able to answer your question 🙂 ~ Daniel
@@evolveartist thanks, that helped!
I know it's nine instead of ten, but if there are three in the middle of the four, it won't make much difference if there are four.
Ok, let’s be honest.
Who else noticed that his beard had only four values at 3:25?
😂😂
🍪🍼
You should genuinely be ashamed of yourself, Daniel
Hey Magikrap, I often am, but I have to keep trying 🙂would you mind giving me some constructive feedback on what I should be ashamed about, in this particular case? ~ Daniel
@@evolveartist you're taking advantage of people. Your ads play constantly throughout your videos. Go watch one of your ads where you talk about 'your backstory' and ask yourself how believable what you're promising sounds, being fully aware of the truth in contrast to it. You have zero scruples man. Just taking money from people with dreams who should be approaching something like this with realistic goals. You're setting people up to knock them down, shattering dreams and catalyzing disappointment in some really decent people, all just to make a quick buck? Yeah.. your reply is patronizing, but I sincerely hope you do, for humanity's sake I hope on some level you really do.
@@magikrap7309 thank you for taking the time to explain, and being candid about it. I appreciate that you're skeptical and are looking out for other people who might fall prey to scams online. And I'm sorry for giving you a false impression of what I'm all about. If I really was deceiving people, getting their hopes up and providing nothing of value just to make some money, I would definitely feel ashamed of myself. I imagine that you've seen or had some terrible experiences like this, and have been let down yourself by someone or something. I see it everywhere, and I think it's awful. It's actually a big part of what inspired us to actually make Evolve in the first place, a program that actually delivers tangible results. For us, getting results for our students is everything, because without getting real results for our students we would be just like so many other online art courses.
You can look up the paintings our students make by searching up the #evolveartist hashtag, where many of our students post their work. You can also hear people's thoughts on Google reviews and also watch some interviews here: bit.ly/evolve-student-stories. And there's also other RUclipsrs only sharing their progress in the program, like Mithrilda (we didn't sponsor her to make her videos about Evolve, and she didn't hold back on sharing how she thought we could be better, which we appreciated).
I truly believe in what we're doing with Evolve. My story is true. I didn't think of myself as an artist or even think I could become one. It wasn't even on my radar - I was interested in writing. But my mom dragged me in to Kevin's art school, where I took weekly art classes. I still wasn't interested in art for art's sake, but I enjoyed the challenge of Kevin's exercises, so I focused hard on learning, even though I was slower than most. After about 2 years of weekly 2.5 hour classes, I remember one day it was as if I had just "blinked" and realized, "Wait a minute, I think I'm an artist. This could be my life." The transformation had snuck up on me, and I never expected to be making paintings like I was in only about 250 hours, especially given the fact that I hadn't been aspiring to become an artist - I was just doing the work and trying to follow the instructions. My story is a unique one because most artists DO have goals and visions of improving their skills and making art of their dreams, and knowing that makes me feel all the more convicted that people should know about the training I received, because it worked for me, and quickly.
So I'd encourage you to take a closer look at what Evolve really offers. For one, we send our students over $1k-worth of art supplies (all included in the tuition), and provide feedback on every painting assignment within 24 hours of submission. If we were just trying to make a quick buck, we would be selling video lessons only, to reduce our costs and maximize our profits, which is what most other online art courses do. But we believe that video lessons alone aren't enough to provide a true education that delivers results. The high-quality materials we send don't make our students better artists - more importantly, the materials don't hold them back from representing their skill (which we need to see, in order to provide clear, constructive feedback). And the feedback is essential because we want to make sure our students are truly retaining the information from our video lessons and applying it into skill - giving feedback on every painting helps them make simple course-corrections to stay on the straightest, most efficient path to developing the skills quickly so that they can get to making the art of their dreams.
And our approach to teaching is super practical and realistic. We start every student off by having them paint gray squares... it might seem boring but it allows our students to learn how to apply paint properly and develop good habits from the start, being able to handle a brush and stay within the boundaries you set for yourself. Then we move on to gradients. Then we make our first grayscale painting of a couple of cubes, teaching them our process for painting. The next one is a sphere... you can see them all on our website, this steady progression in complexity as we introduce one skill at a time.
The end result is photorealistic paintings, and our students often feel like I did, wondering "how it happened" that they arrived at their skill level by the end of the program, only after about 350 hours of painting study. 350 hours to pro level skills is unheard of in the art education industry - most expect it takes 4-5 years. At college, you'd be looking at about 4,500 hours. And Evolve is 13x faster and 100x cheaper than art colleges.
If we were trying to make a quick buck, we would start our students in color and have different courses for the subjects they like (which is what most online art courses do). We would also provide step-by-step tutorials where students can just copy what we do (without actually learning anything). But we don't do any of this, because we care more about actually educating our students, so they can make art that has never been seen before.
Let me know your thoughts on all this. Happy to keep going back and forth here about why you think I may be in the wrong, or even if you feel like I could have communicated all this better in your first impression of me.
Warmly, Daniel
You look like Tsar Nicholas II.
This is amazing. Im really trying to understand values, I struggle to understand the simple terms still. Ill do more research and watch more videos. This was great though. Thank you so much. So less daunting xx
Yes! I'm so glad to hear that painting feels less daunting for you. It really becomes much more enjoyable when it's simplified - and the painting often looks better for it too! Feel free to ask me any questions as you go through the Fundamentals playlist: ruclips.net/p/PLlBZ6D4J51BMfilYd3PhLTsjmt9pabRu8 🎨~ Daniel
I second everything you said Rebecca. 👍
It makes sense that value is more important than color alone. Even our eyes are adapted to it. With 91 million rods to detect value vs 6 million cones to detect color.
Oh that's so cool! Didn't realize just how many rods we have for value vs color, that's crazy! ~ Daniel
One thing I would add is that the 2 values for light and two values for shadow is merely a starting point. Don't consider it a rock solid rule. There will be times when you will have very little shadow to draw, warranting only 1 shade for the shadow; and there will be times where the opposite will be true, having a bright highlight on a very small part of the face with the rest of it enveloped in shadow.
The other thing is that you CAN actually get good at painting with more than just 3 or 4 values. I have come to like 6 a lot of the time. I find that for faces, you need a white for highlights, then 2 for most of the front detail, 1 for the transition into shadow, and that leaves you 2 for the shadow. Converting B&W images to index color mode is great for simplifying the shading as well. It's a fantastic way to study exactly what is going on when you're just starting out.
Great points! Yes the 4 values is a great starting point for beginners and those who are returning to the basics, and like training wheels it is meant to be there for support until no longer needed. The 4 values help the artist learn how to simplify what they see based on an understanding, training their eyes and brain to view relationships critically and thoughtfully to handle even more complex relationships in the future (such as color). I expound on this topic more through a grayscale portrait done in the Evolve method, and show how you can easily add highlights and reflections with an additional 3 in-between values (admixtures) and I think you'll like it: ruclips.net/video/bN2BggfFTgkp/видео.html
You absolutely can get good at painting through a variety of approaches - with Evolve we are focused on finding the shortest, quickest path to creating art without limitations. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I appreciate how you think flexibly and are looking to simplify visual information through processes. Would love to hear your thoughts about that portrait video! 😊~ Daniel
@@evolveartist The Evolve method looks very similar to what I have been doing myself, so I would say that is a great path to go down, especially for beginners. At 6:20 you show the morph from solid lines to gradients. It's similar to low polygonal modeling in 3D. We will model a lot in low poly mode, then apply a Smooth to see what it looks like, but undo it and continue on with low poly modeling, then try a Smooth again and view the results. You can achieve a lot with the solid lines, then blurring later on.
To apply that same idea with value painting, I usually paint in Index Mode to limit my colors, but I do not use a pencil or soft brush - I use a spray paint brush. This allows me to still paint gradients while at the same time continuing to limit myself to the set number of colors (dithering, basically). Doing it this way yields great results when you switch it back into RGB mode and smooth it out with a 50% soft brush. I think it makes the end result look less blurry. The more you can achieve in the low-color "mode" (like low poly modeling), the better it will look once you take it to the smoothing step. That's why a spray paint brush is so nice!
I haven't looked through your videos yet, but a great topic to cover if you haven't already is maybe the typical highlights and shadows you might encounter in typical faces. I find it very helpful to quickly paint values when I already know that it's likely for there to be highlights above the brows, above the upper lip, on the top of the outside of the nostrils, the tip of the nose, the top of the cheek bone, the forehead, and the top of the chin; and that shadows commonly fall above the eyelid, below the bottom lip, the creases from the nostrils down to the outside of the mouth, and often there will be another set of line shadows from the outside of the mouth going down on either side of the chin. Breaking down these features is critical for painting from memory and would be a great thing to point out if you haven't already. We of course will not find shadows and highlights in these areas all the time, but it's a great place to start.
You also make a comment about how you can still recognize what the image is from far away with only the light and shadows. This is something I also realized when programming object recognition software. In just a single 4k image, you have 8,294,400 pixels. Each pixel has a byte for red, green, and blue, so that's 24,883,200 bytes. This quickly becomes a mountain of data to process. The realization that you can still tell what an object is even if it's in black and white is critical to reducing the workload here. This reduces the number of bytes down to just 1 per pixel instead of 3 (grayscale). Furthermore, if you take a black and white image into Photoshop and go Image>Mode>Index>Perceptual and set it to a low number (like 10), you can see that even with only 10 shades of grey, you can still tell very easily what the object is. This is important for storing profiles of recognized objects. You can have a cluster of these values in an area that AI can use to describe the general shape of an object. The really interesting part is how low of a resolution can you go (to reduce the file size even more) and still successfully recognize the object by matching it to the data profile. For instance, even though your image is 4k that you are processing, you may only need to cycle through every 10th pixel, effectively making it equivalent to a 384x216 sized image. Now you can process the data at lightning speeds because you only have to process a fraction of the pixels. It's just amazing how these concepts we use in painting can applying to some of the most futuristic problems we are trying to solve in tech.
Great videos!
@@digitalconsciousness wow, so cool! Love that explanation about the programming object recognition software, so amazing how even computers process information more quickly when it is simplified. How much more so for us humans! Thank you for sharing your thoughts and outlook on this, it really brightened my day 😊
Thank you also for your recommendation on typical highlights and shadows in faces. In my videos I really try to focus on helping artists learn how to understand and filter visual information through a process, regardless of subject matter. This allows artists to take greater steps forward in creating art without any limitations. I will use subjects (like portraits) to illustrate these process, but we try to keep the process more fundamental, stripped down to the building blocks of our visual reality. For example, I could make a video explaining where highlights and shadows typically fall on generic human faces, or I could make a video helping people critically assess and determine the value relationships in their reference - the latter, to me, is more fundamental and more valuable as a concept that can be applied more broadly. That being said, I think you are on to something because people rarely search "process for seeing value relationships" compared to "where are the highlights and shadows on the face." In many ways I can see myself being of greater service to others by responding to their specific inquiry (such as common lights and shadows on the face) and then taking it a step deeper in the video itself to expound about how these fundamental approaches can apply to anything. So, thank you for your feedback! Really appreciate it :)
Im so grateful to find your channel today. Thank you so much!
Great information. I wish there were more videos like this
Thank you Caroline, I really appreciate that! I think there’s a big need out there for simple but critical information that cuts straight through all the fluff and gets right down to practical, effective learning that isn’t theatric but truly gets results for artists. That’s really our whole focus - creating the shortest path necessary to create art without limitations 😊 thank you! ~ Daniel
At last a precise and just needed content.Simply and well explained. Same amplitude and vibe here.Thanks, Monsieur.Do teach, inspire
Thanks 🙏🏼 Really interesting video 😊
i love it! time to ditch color first and study value for the upcoming months
Nice! Yes training your eyes to see value first will actually improve your ability to critically see colors for their value, which in turn will allow you to see color more accurately when you get back into color again :) in the Evolve program, we teach our students values and edges first, and then proportional drawing, before getting into color. You can see how we do it on our website's curriculum page: evolveartist.com/the-curriculum/
This is best ever yet explanation about value. Thank you.
Take my money damn this is good
White looks gray
“how much atmosphere” that is- amazing, thank you so much
Love the clarity of your expanation!
That's so useful. Thank you.
Is it ok to start it with 3 values as a complete novice to painting? If we used mid tone, light and dark?
Great question - absolutely not! Here's why:
I've given advice to hundreds of artists - from professionals to complete novices - and the most common issue, by a longshot, is the inability to capture the simple impression of light and shadow.
The purpose of having 4 values is to make value decisions based on whether or not something is a light or a shadow. Especially as a complete novice, you don't want to think about mid-tones right now. A mid-tone is what we think of as something being in between light and shadow. So if you only had 3 values and could choose a value to go between your lights and your shadows, you would neither efficiently nor effectively learn how to see complex things and simplify it down into only light and shadow (which is the first and most impactful step to creating the impression of form in your work). You would be better off starting with two values (one for your light, one for your shadow), than to use 3 values instead of 4.
4 values is nice because, once you have broken your image down into light and shadow, you can then relatively compare your darkest shadows with your brightest shadows, and for each shadow, choose 1 of the 2 shadow values. Then you can do the same with your lights. If you can consistently simplify an entire painting into 4 values, and from those 4 values maintain a solid impression of light and shadow, then there's nothing you wouldn't be able to do, and growing into a wider value scale would be a breeze.
If you don't believe me, watch me paint an entire portrait starting with just 4 values and you'll see what I mean - ruclips.net/video/bN2BggfFTgk/видео.html
Great question, thanks for asking! ~ Daniel
@@evolveartist oh wow that actually makes more sense to do it this way! Ill try it out with the fruits at home before tackling a portrait. Thank you Daniel I’ll be looking forward to more from your channel :)
@@elyceus awesome! Love to hear that you’re trying it out for yourself. Why don’t you just join the Evolve program? It’s the fastest way to level up your skills. In any case feel free to send me your fruit still life and I’ll give you a critique to help you out 😊 Submit here (it’s free): evolveartist.com/review
~ Daniel
thank you
i love it
I love this series
Thank you so much for this video. I have been stuck and struggling to understand how to implement values into my art for almost 3 weeks now. You've helped me understand how I can finally start moving forward again.
You are so welcome! Thank you for sharing 😊 yes keep moving forward! 💪 ~ Daniel
Thank you!!
"how do you match all those values if you only have 4"
"that's the neat part, you don't
They say good artists know what to paint, great artists know what to leave out.
Thank you so much for the valuable information! What exercises we can do to learn values?
enroll for his paid course.
Course is quite costy, to be honest....🤑
Yeah, but still better off than art school 😅
Thank you for this amazing video.You helped me a lot.
Glad to hear it! 😊 ~ Daniel
TY SO MUCH THIS HELP ME UNDER STAND BETTER!!! it made it easier to practice
Super interesting, thank you!
Glad to hear that! Hopefully as you have been progressing you have been able to see and paint your values better 😊 ~ Daniel
Thank you so much for sharing
Value (actually, EVERY component) of colour theory is supremely important to become a decent to good artist
Very informative video
And i love your voice 😍
Wait, is that Pikes Peak in that mountains shot?
I believe so! That was taken on top of Mount Bierstadt. I had been recording a video to talk about why mountains are blue. Thought it was fitting to talk about art on top of a mountain named after the 19th century landscape painter 👨🎨 ~ Daniel
@@evolveartist Cool! Love that someone else gets that. I live in the Pikes Peak region and have hiked 40 of the 14ers. Is that "Why mountains are blue" video out on RUclips?
@@delanebredvik it’s not on RUclips because the audio was really bad with the wind. But I did post it on my story highlights on my personal Instagram account: instagram.com/danielfolta
Once you get to my profile, tap on the ☀️ ~ Daniel
This video is value
thank you
Oh hurrah! Thank you RUclips for putting you in my feed! New subscriber here and excited to binge watch!
Woohoo! Thanks for subscribing Alison 😊 let me know if you have any questions! ~ Daniel
I struggle so much with value still, it's the hardest part about art for me :(
Thank you for this amazing video
Work in grayscale to keep it simple! 🙂 ~ Daniel
I have learned a lot with this video, but i have felt that the pace was too fast at times. Maybe it would be because i am not a native english speaker. Anyway,thanks for the video!
Thank you José! I really appreciate the feedback - I've been thinking about slowing down my pace a bit a more, so this helps! 😊 much appreciated ~ Daniel
Omg this opened my mind, you're really good at teaching ;3
Thank you! ~ Daniel
I took art class 2 years in a row in high school, except my art teacher was also the head teacher for our school and would use our art block to do her own paper work and grading. She'd just come in for 5-10 minutes and leave us to do our own art however we liked. I'm so sad I didn't learn this basic yet fundamental concept in her class, but I'm thankful I now understand the *value* of it through this video
Sorry to hear that Rycherry 😔 but I’m glad you found us and hopefully these videos and our training program can continue to help people like you. We want to redefine and raise the standard for art education and equip artists all around the world with the skills necessary to create art without limitations 😊 thanks for sharing ~ Daniel
@@evolveartist I love this mission statement! Thanks so much!
Awesome! Thank you!
My pleasure :)
Can I do this class with watercolor? Don’t like oil.
Hi Patricia, unfortunately we do not offer the program in any medium other than oil, as we take our student results very seriously. Oil paint is the easiest, most forgiving paint to learn with. Watercolor is especially unforgiving and hard to learn the fundamentals with when you have to juggle additional factors such as the layering, drying time and spread. But if you do take the Evolve program, you will find that the fundamentals we teach will apply seamlessly over into watercolor. You would only be missing the application side of watercolor - but the concepts of value, edges, color, how to turn form and create depth, etc. would easily transition over into watercolor for you. If you're curious, here's a video where I explain why oil paint is better for learning compared to acrylic: ruclips.net/video/A30TGvh-imQ/видео.html
Let me know if you have any questions! What do you not like about oil paint? 😊~ Daniel
Oil paint may be easiest to learn to use, but if I ever take up painting, it'll be watercolor. Not just for its etherial effects or the challenge of mastering the medium... but because severe irritant-induced asthma makes breathing challenging enough without adding potentially deadly (for me) fumes of oil paints, solvents, media, etc. Ease of learning isn't worth risking a "brush with death" (pun intended). 😉🙂
Still love the Evolve video series and learning more about the basic but crucial principles behind creating effective art. Much of this knowledge can even translate to other media beyond painting and drawing. Better understanding and use of value, color theory, texture, perspective, depth, contrast, etc. make it much faster and easier to select the right components to create more dynamic and aesthetically pleasing projects - be they crochet, counted cross stitch, beaded jewelry or loomwork, sewing, home decor, whatever! 😀 No more wasting hours aimlessly matching up random combos of every (bead, yarn, floss, finding, wire, fabric, etc.) from the stash before finally picking a colorway/palette that "might" work, only to end up constantly tweaking it throughout the project! So even if I never pick up a paintbrush (and even if I do it won't be with oil paints👻☠️), I still really appreciate these videos! 💕
@@abbynormal4740 watercolor is such a beautiful medium to work with 😊nothing wrong with choosing to paint with it over oils. Sorry to hear that oil paint is a no-go for you. Did you hear me talk about oil paint fumes in the "learning art with oil vs acrylic" video? I shared how you can completely avoid solvents and toxic fumes. Of course, people can react differently to different things, but as a generalization, oil paint is not toxic and doesn't have to be a toxic experience. Here's the link to that section of the video: ruclips.net/video/A30TGvh-imQ/видео.html
In any case, so glad to hear that you are able to apply these videos to other forms of art! That is certainly one of my goals when I make these videos 😊the fundamentals of art must go beyond any medium and tap into the deeper ingredients of our visual reality 😊 thank you for sharing what you've gotten out of these videos and I hope that we can continue to help you create art without limitations! 😁~ Daniel