Smart phone art hack for checking values
If you hang out on social media art accounts long enough, you will see an artist tell you to check your values. That might as well be speaking in tongues to a beginning artist, so let me tell you what that means.
Value is the lightness or darkness of a color. You can buy value finders at just about every art store, including big box stores like Michael’s. They look like a wide bookmark and have ten color blocks ranging from solid black to solid white with greyscale in between.
You use them by holding the paper against your colors. If the values match, the color will appear to merge with the appropriate grey. This works even if the color is not black, white, or grey. There is an easier way, though, to check your values while you work.
Take a photo of your work in progress. Open up a collage app or your photo editor and place your work photo and reference photo in a two-photo collage frame. Reduce their saturation to zero so they are 100% grey scale. Do your lights and darks match the reference? If not, make a note of where you need to adjust and proceed accordingly!