| This study demonstrates that there is some relationship between light values and what one individual finds attractive in a painting. It also emphasizes that it is important for an artist to concentrate on bright, medium and dark values as well as other elements of painting such as color and composition. It is of prime importance that the artist be pleased with the work s/he creates before attempting to please others.; Leland selected high quality reproductions of paintings from subjects of portraiture as well as genre, still life and abstract expressions and chose them from the periods of early Renaissance to 1969 in order to have as inclusive a group of samples as possible within the thirty reproductions of the experiment. It was important to select these without being influenced by value.; During certain time periods over the centuries, emphasis on particular values has shown to take on more importance to a majority of the artists while other artists remained outside the mainstream of popular value usages.; Leland has studied the reproductions of thirty paintings and measured three light values in each. A translucent decimal graph marked in inches (100 squares/square inch) was used for measuring the areas for the values. A Dietzgen Planimeter was employed as a second method for measuring these same areas. An architectural engineering type decimal Keuffel & Esser ruler was used for the total area measurement.; There is a brief comment about each of the paintings and what makes them unique. These results have bearing on at least one artist's attraction to some paintings and not to others. This is shown by two pie graphs: Graph 1 shows information pertaining to three values: bright, medium and dark. Graph 2 shows value percentage averages grouped thusly: upper one-third, middle one-third, and lowest one-third. Leland concludes that a painting can still be beautiful regardless of what value is observed as the greatest percentage, the medium percentage or the least percentage.; This principle of value proportions influenced Leland in the creation of twelve paintings and for which she produced a descriptive documented catalog. |
