Supression of values and Stapletonian confusion

Sargent portrait from artrenewal.com

Below is another e-mail question:

Dear Stape:
Howard Pyle is quoted (paraphrased):

Only 2 values - makes strong & powerful picture

Only 3 values - picture is still good

4 or more -- throw it away.

But we are told to use value change - don't substitite color change for value - novices use too few values - etc. I have made the error of using too few values and I see too few values in many weak paintings.
How do I reconcile these two bits of advice???????? It has been bothering me since reading the Pyle quote.

Thanks,
Australopithecus Portapotty

Dear Austra:

I read that quote too, over on Mathew Innis's great blog (find that here) The supression of values is an idea that I was unaaware of until a decade or so ago. Richard Schmid hipped me to that. I can't say that I have fully assimilated it either. usually I confidently write about things I know well, but tonight I will have to say I am a little fuzzy on this too. Here are my muddled thoughts, none the less.Would bullets make me seem smarter? Maybe.

• I work with ten values with the darkest being a little less that black and the lightest being little less than white. I had this driven onto me by Ives Gammell before the cast. I may not use all ten in a painting, but that IS my frame of reference.

• I was also taught to suppress halftones lest my drawing be "overmodeled". Still I don't see how I can adequately work in two or three values.I think I need at least;

1. the value of the lights
   
2. the shadow note
3. A highlight
4. a reflected light in the shadow
5. a variation in the halftone as it approaches the shadow (modeling)
   

That comes to at least five values .I believe I see those separate values in the works of the great painters I study. So I am a little befuddled here too.

• I do suppress values to simplify my value construction but perhaps I don't really get the implications of this.I try to avoid chopping forms up with lots of fussy transitions and keep the "big".
  
• Pyle was working for reproduction by what would now seem primitive means. Some of the illustration in that era was reproduced in black, white, and red. Perhaps getting his art to "read": in that environment made it important to collapse his values, I am not sure. I do understand how this works in the largest overall picture design sense, but not as much within the objects represented themselves.
  
• Richard Schmid certainly does it, and that is enough to impress me. I have studied his painting and he is suppressing his value changes, so there has to be something to it. His word is enough for me. His book is a little cryptic on this. I noticed his mentions of it and wished for more explanation.He mentions it, but doesn't explain it, at least not enough for me to figure it out.
• I understand how portrait pointers turn form with color rather than with value change, and I use that in my landscapes when it seems feasible.
• When I teach, most of my students have too few values. They have a light, and a couple of darks, and their paintings work better when I throw a better observed panoply of values into them.
• Henry Hensche used to stress turning form with color rather than value and I was exposed to that through his students long ago. but still......
• I'm with you, I don't really get it either. I have been worrying over this myself, perhaps I am overthinking it, I don't know.

There I have done a post on something I don't know. Thats a new frontier for me and opens up lots of possibilities for the future as there are lots of other things I don't know. I will no longer be constrained to writing only when I know what I am talking about.