Value and Tone
Value refers to the lightness or darkness of an object. It pertains to the use of light or dark, shade and highlight in artwork. Tone refers to the lightness or darkness that is applied to a color in artwork.
A value scale (seen above) is the full range of lightness and darkness that can be applied to color, or in black and white. Knowing the value of the colors that you use in your artwork is important because if the values that you use are too close to each other your artwork will look flat.
Believe it or not, value is more important than color to the design and success of a piece of artwork. Value is used in all artwork. Black and white photography depends almost entirely on value to define its subjects.
Take a look at the examples below. Here we have a painting that appears a bit muddy or washed out. When we strip away the color, and look at the same picture in greyscale we see that the values that are used in the artwork are all very close. If we take this same picture, and change the value and tones of the colors suddenly the picture becomes more dynamic, vibrant and interesting. Simply changing the values used gives life to this image.
A value scale (seen above) is the full range of lightness and darkness that can be applied to color, or in black and white. Knowing the value of the colors that you use in your artwork is important because if the values that you use are too close to each other your artwork will look flat.
Believe it or not, value is more important than color to the design and success of a piece of artwork. Value is used in all artwork. Black and white photography depends almost entirely on value to define its subjects.
Take a look at the examples below. Here we have a painting that appears a bit muddy or washed out. When we strip away the color, and look at the same picture in greyscale we see that the values that are used in the artwork are all very close. If we take this same picture, and change the value and tones of the colors suddenly the picture becomes more dynamic, vibrant and interesting. Simply changing the values used gives life to this image.
Here we have a photograph of a flower. It has some great use of color, yet the image seems dull and flat.
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When we strip away the color, we see that the tones of the color in the image are all close together on the value scale.
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When we increase the difference in value, making the darks darker and the lights lighter the result is a broader range in value.
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Here we have the same image, but the values and tones of the colors used include a wider range. This image is much more vibrant and has more depth.
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