Fundamentals of Painting: The 4 Fundamentals of Art (2024)

Values, edges, perception, color. These are the four fundamentals of painting we need to create art without limitations.

In this Fundamentals series, we've broken down each fundamental separately, defining each one and discovering how they are necessary to recreate the illusion of reality on a two-dimensional surface like a canvas or a computer screen.

Now, we're going to talk about bringing them together to make realistic paintings.

Values, edges, perception and color are the four fundamentals that we need to develop in order to create art without limitations.

We use our perception to make decisions about these three moving parts that make up our visual reality: value, edges, and color.

The Most Important Element to Make Realistic Paintings

Look around you. There's practically an infinite variety of relationships that can happen between these fundamentals in order to create everything that's around us. There's the relationship of value to value, edge to edge, color to color, but there are also the relationships of values to edges and edges to color and color to values and all the combinations in between.

There is almost an infinite variety of relationships that can happen between the fundamentals in order to create everything that’s around us.

We need to know which elements have the greatest impact on the fundamentals to make decisions when creating art.

Brazen Rift’s impressionistic painting First Tears (Part 3) demonstrates the strong understanding and use of the fundamentals of art.

When we make decisions through the lens of light, we can make realistic paintings.

How to Make Realistic Paintings: A Walkthrough

1. Values

Values are determined by how light interacts with it. Without light, even a white cube would be black.

Assign values based on the light and shadow, making sure that anything that is a shadow is darker than anything that is a light.

At Evolve Artist, the very first thing we have our students do is break the reference image down into light and shadow before determining their values, making sure that anything that is a shadow is darker than anything that is a light. This reinforces the power and impact that light and shadow have on a painting.

We also properly train our students to recognize things by their light and shadow before anything else. It's that important.

2. Edges

Form and cast shadows help determine whether edges should be sharp or soft.

Second, we move on to edges. There are some edges where one object ends and another one begins, but there are also edges that are found where the light and the shadow meet.

These edges are going to be either form shadows or cast shadows. If it's a form shadow, the edge should be relatively soft. If it's a cast shadow, the edge should be relatively sharp. If you don't know the difference between form and cast shadows then check out this earlier post on edges.

3. Color

Because color is light, objects in the light will have more color than those in the shadows.

Color temperature is determined by the warmth or coolness of the light.

We also have to take color temperature into consideration, which is determined by the degrees of Kelvin that the light source is emitting. Based on that, the light is either going to be warmer or cooler than the shadows.

4. Reflections & Highlights

Reflections and highlights are determined by how the light is bouncing around in the environment.

All that's left is dropping in some subtle reflections and highlights, which are determined by how the light waves are bouncing around in the environment.

At this point, there's not much else to do. All of what has been created here has been because of an understanding of how the light works. Add a little bit of depth using some softer edges in the background, and you've got yourself a pretty realistic work of art.

With an understanding of light, we can master how to make realistic paintings.

Light can evoke strong feelings as evident in this painting Sunrise by Albert Bierstadt.

Starry Night Over the Rhone by Vincent van Gogh captures how light can capture movement and playfulness in a painting.

Light can symbolize life, warmth, and truth as suggested in Jean II Restout’s painting, Pentecost.

The absence of light, or shadows, can symbolize ambiguity, emptiness, even death as captured in Nocturne in Black and Gold by James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

We need to use all three of the moving parts to properly capture the essence of light and shadow, these polar opposites that work together to form our beautiful world.

Using the Fundamentals to Create Depth

Now that we’ve used all the fundamentals of painting to create this still life, how can we use them together to add depth to the image?

Combining the four fundamentals together can create depth.

Let's say that I'm putting in a city skyline behind these two objects and I want it to be in the distance. I can use values, edges, or color to push it back.

Values can become more muted by making the buildings closer in value to the background in order to add depth to an image.

For values, I can make its values muted and become closer in value to the background that it's in.

Depth can be added to make realistic paintings by making the edges in the background softer than those in the foreground.

For edges, I could make the edges soft or blurry in relation to what's in front of it.

To add depth, you can make the colors of the buildings closer to the color of the background.

And for color, I can make the colors closer in color to the background, or the sky.

The various combinations of values and edges and color can be used to create the impression of your choice as an artist.

I could use a combination of two or all three and mentally toggle how far I push each one to create the impression that I want. How far I push them is going to be dependent on what I do with the other two.

This is a really simple image because we've got these objects up front and then the skyline in the back, but maybe you don't want to have all of your edges blurred out in the same way across the buildings. Maybe you want it to be blurrier in the center and the edges can get a little bit sharper as you go out.

Artistry is revealed in the choices made by the artist of which of these fundamentals are accentuated and emphasized.

As you can see, you've got a lot of options. Hopefully this simple example is giving you a sense of how these fundamentals of painting are not only working together but just so effective in creating whatever kind of impression that you want to convey.

Using the Fundamentals of Painting to Make Your Own Original Art

The four fundamentals of painting help to pave the road for artists to make realistic art on their journey of learning.

The road to taking what's in your heart and mind and getting it out into the world and sharing it with others is paved by these fundamentals. However, to gain a command over these fundamentals of painting and to realize your intentions, it's not enough just to read these posts. You have to go and earn the experience for yourself.

Click HERE to sign up and watch the 3 Things Mini Course.

Evolve's Daniel Folta transformed his art using the Evolve Artist method. You can start with the FREE 3 Things Mini Course HERE.

And that was the case for me too. I was seriously lacking in one of them, and it wasn’t until I seized it that I began to consistently produce professional level work.

So I have made a free, 15 minute course where you can get out your notebook and get ready to map out some clear steps to reach your art goals.

Learn from these three different artists and what they are missing through the FREE 3 Things Mini Course HERE.

In the course we’re going to look at three different artists, each of whom is missing one of the three things. You might relate to some of them! We’ll talk about why these three things are so essential, and how you can attain these things for yourself.

I’m very excited to share this with you! Click the link HERE to watch this free course.