Value is the primary way we perceive form. In fact, some teachers will tell you that the “focal point” of a painting is the spot of greatest contrast. Through form, line and value, we begin to perceive depth on the flat plane. Color with its attributes is another aspect that I will discuss later.
Often, our perception of form in the world around us is not a “cut-and-dried” thing. It is a matter of closure. We perceive something that signals a “form” and we apprehend it (comprehend it) as a car, or a jar or a tree. Closure is the ability of the mind to complete a pattern or picture where only suggestion exists.
But your “trained” perception can lead you astray as a creative artist. When you were a child, you may have been taught by adults “how to draw a house or an apple.” Thereafter, you have established a mental symbol for house or apple to work from. That leads you to assume that, when you are looking at an apple, etc., you should supply the symbol. But I am asking you to look for yourself, look newly. If you understand that concept of closure, you can use it as needed without being restrained by past symbols.
There’s a great example of a mis-represented form in the book The Little Prince by Saint-Exupéry. The little prince draws a picture. It looks like a hat – one of the kind that men used to wear in the thirties. But actually, it is a picture of a snake who has swallowed an elephant.
“I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them.
But they answered: "Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a hat?"
My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of a boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained.”
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