The Use of Tone and Value
- Tone is another name for value.
- Value is the lightness or darkness of a color or hue.
- Value is used to create a focal point within a painting or drawing.
- The human eye is immediately drawn to a light element against a dark element. This creates, the focal point of interest. In other words high contrast in value creates "emphasis".
- To create the illusion of depth, volume, or 3-D in a painting, paints of different color values are needed to be mixed, applied and rendered to on the surface.
- The greater the color value in mixing, the more of an illusion of depth occurs. See diagram below:
Example of colors dark in tone/value
Blending Cadmium Orange (light in value) with Dioxazine Purple (dark in value) to create an illusion of depth and volume.
To create a black alternative, mix equal amounts of alizarin crimson, phthalo blue and phthalo green
Mixing white with " black alternative" and blending creates the allusion of volume
