rendering
that will give a faithful likeness. By the term values is meant the
relations of light and shade to each other. This subject has been so
admirably treated by John Burnet in his essay entitled "Practical Hints
on Light and Shade,"[C] that I give his observations on this point.

"Before proceeding to investigate light and shade in their various
intricate relations, it may be proper to notice a few of the more
palpable and self-evident combinations; and for the better
comprehending of which I shall divide them into five parts, viz.:
Light, half-light, middle tint, half-dark and dark. When a picture is
chiefly composed of light and half-light, the darks will have more
force and point, but without the help of strong color to give it
solidity it will be apt to look feeble, and when a picture is composed
mainly of dark and half-dark the lights will be more brilliant; but
they will be apt to look spotty for want of half-light to spread and
connect them, and the piece be in danger of becoming black and heavy.
And when a picture is composed chiefly of middle tint, the dark and
light portions have a more equal chance of coming into notice, but the
general effect is in danger of becoming common and insipid. Light and
shade are capable of producing many results, but the three principal
are relief, harmony and breadth. By the first the artist is enabled to
give his work the distinctness and solidity of nature; the second is
the result of a union and cement of one part with another; and the
third, a general breadth, is the necessary attendant on extent and
magnitude. A judicious management of these three properties is to be
found in the best pictures of the Italian, Venetian and Flemish
Schools, and ought to employ the most attentive examination of the
student, for by giving too much relief he will produce a dry hard
effect, by too much softness and blending of the parts, wooliness and
insipidity, and in a desire to produce breadth of effect he may produce
flatness."

The student should make a careful study of the values, as upon these
will depend the entire effect of the portrait and its fidelity as a
likeness; and the absence of these qualities of rendering light and
shade are one of the marked features of the work of amateurs, as they
are apt to make their shadows too dark and their lights too light. You
should compare the portrait with the photograph you are working from,
and preserve the same contrasts between the lig