Value of values

When I first started looking at art I thought the color was the most important thing to draw someone into a painting.  Then probably followed by subject, composition and that was probably it.  For drawing I just thought of shading as the equivalent of color.

Then I started studying art and discovered I had it all wrong.  The most important thing is value.  Value is the how dark something is.  If I take a picture of a painting and turn into to a gray scale on the computer, I can see the values without getting confused by color differences.  That is something artists actually do if they think there is something not quite right about a painting or if they are doing prepartory work prior to starting a painting. 

I can use any color to represent something as long as I get the values right.  For example, this window scene is done in one color, Ultramarine Blue, but you see the scene based on the values.

More on the values and color connection next week.