How to improve your paintings by understanding tonal values & contrast

Beautiful lesson.

So impressive! I can learn a lot both water color and English language. Thanks!

Thanks again, I keep looking for your tutorials. Wonderfully presented as usual.. This is certainly a new outlook and very informative as usual. I will have to try these.

Brilliant teaching. Great artist ! Thank you .

You are so incredibly talented. Not only are you a great artist but also a great teacher, funny and have an amazing personality! I came across your channel a few weeks ago and I’m loving it!!!! I’m learning watercolors

You've just clarified what I've been doing wrong, by describing adjacent tonal differences.
Thank you! I will now go and practise what you have taught. Keep up the good work 😊

Thank you very much. I am learning many things from you many.

Thank you kindly for this lesson. Understanding how to work with value and contrast is going to help me find more joy in watercolor. It was a delight watching your creation.

Thank you Paul you inspire me every single time I watch one of your videos. 🙂🙃

Payne's Gray from Van Gogh watercolors, as also Some sanguine pencils with more pyrol color than the common ones, are my favorite monochrom mediums!!!

Paul splattered paint does give a great effect however if yo only have one hand it can get a bit out of control currently I use my dominant hand with a loaded brush th hold over the area I think needs it and tap the top of the brush with the index finger on the hand holding the brush, it sometimes works... Do you have any more ideas, kindest regards mickT

thanks Paul...u r my guru :)

Imo waterclolor is the most interresting Art for watching. During the process i often think, oh, "this stroke was wrong", or "this color is to dark". But in the result, i m wrong and surprised, what effect each brush stroke has. For me as a beginner its hard to handle, but practice and repeat will take me further. For the beginning its better to limit the number of colors and focus for tones and values and the wetness of the brush/Paper. Monochrome seems to me as a good start and effect very well, how to see in this Video.
Thanks for shareing and greetings.

I’d bet an even better tool would be to download several copies, and do different lighting directions on the same subject as an exercise..!

Or..a caption contest..girl by the gate sort of looks like “oh my! I think I’m having a contraction!”..lol..

You have help me on art 😀😀😀💪😀

Thank you for this video. It is was a lot more fun than I thought it would be just using one color. Actually a lot of fun! My poor girl has a face than would sink a thousand ships though. :). Extremely good exercise and really helps in understanding tonal values.

I love your teaching style and your sweet humour. Can you do the famous Eucalyptus trees and also some Perspectives. Greetings from Australia 🇦🇺 😊 PS. I just became a subscriber 👍

Very helpful thank you Paul!

Hi Paul, what tape do you use?

Tonal contrast is something I have been trying to do better. It brings paintings to life. Thank you for all your great help.

Beautiful work Paul, thank you for sharing..

I love everything about your videos!

Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful talent and art with us! I love it ❤

You make it look so easy❤

Question: do you tilt your board when you paint or paint with the board flat ?

Thank you for your tutoring

amazing... you are a great teacher !

Paul, again, thank you very much. I am really delighted by your painting, SO WONDERFUL. Thank you very much.

thank you Paul!!!!!

Beautifull and so nice and relexing ❤❤❤

Thank you Paul. What a great lesson in values. So important to get the values right. This is extremely helpful. Many thanks

Must do these exercises. As a beginner must learn more basic techniques! Thanks. Merry Christmas & Happy 2024.

As always, very much enjoy watching you paint and listening to you as you teach us so much. And thank you for your fantastic choice in music. It’s not hard to hear you and it isn’t intrusive at all. Happy New year and God bless ya!

Darker values are counter-intuitive in watercolors.
FIrst because as its name annouces, water dilutes the media, and second because pigments are even clearer after drying.
So watercolores have two additional factors to the person's own difficulties appling dark values.

Such a great idea to take a mono photo of my subject. I struggle to see the values sometimes. Not anymore! Thanks Paul. Your videos never fail to make me smile too. What's not to like about a drink break??

Merci beaucoup Paul pour ces merveilleux tutoriels qui aident réellement à progresser; Beaucoup de plaisir à vous suivre, à mêler apprentissage de la technique et lâcher prise 🙏

U r awesome tutor .❤

U r uncomparable. Complete baggage for learners. I have never come across such a perfect and unimaginable teacher of painting. A warm hug to u Sir. Regards to the core of my heart. 🙏

M glad to find u Sir. Big salute to u and your hard work. 💯 ❤

الفنان الجميل، ما شاء الله
The Beautiful artist, God Bless

Thank you for that great explanation. I think my paintings have gone a bit better since I had understood how important tonal values are.

Gonna do this today. I forgot about your monk's habit being a little over the top remark. Just spewed my coffee...

Thank you Paul ! This was an awesome Demo. I am oil painter and pastel so this was wonderful to see your techniques with Watercolor and I love the one color to understand tonal values which I struggle with. Blessings, Mireille

Do you paint flat or slight tilt?

It's so great to see this concept in watercolor. Though I was trained formally as an oil painter, so many art students work now in acrylic and I try to switch them over to watercolor for their studies, as I feel it's a better prep for later mixing true, transparent colors with oils. I work mainly in watercolor, now myself, and it just goes so well with sketching lessons, to start adding color to drawings for a first experience of painting that allows a student to maintain the depth of the tones they worked out in their drawing. But starting from just the line drawing and adding the tonal layer completely in watercolor solves the issue of having all that pencil on the tonal drawing under the paint. Thanks for reminding me.

Definitely think im going to go with a style similar to this for an art piece i want to do. My walls are brown and so earth colors are about the only thing that will look good with brown. Ill get a white frame to match my door frame and windows 😊

Your selection of music is always perfect for each painting. I do think this one is my favorite. It goes along beautifully with each stroke of the brush. Thank you for your time and care❤

Merci beaucoup ❤