MyLeoNes™

Value and tonal range — Art, 14–17 years

Value is how light or dark a colour appears. Controlling a range of values helps an image show form, space and focus.

Idea

Value is the lightness or darkness you can see, even when colour changes. A red object and a blue object may have the same value, while one colour can contain many values from highlight to shadow.

Why it matters

Artists need value because colour alone does not reliably show volume or distance. Before cameras and colour materials were common, painters and printmakers used light–dark changes to make flat surfaces look solid and to guide the eye.

Worked example

Draw a grey sphere using five steps: white highlight, light grey, middle grey, dark grey, and almost black cast shadow. Place the highlight on the side facing a lamp, blend towards the middle, then put the darkest shadow on the opposite side and under the sphere.

Common trap

A common mistake is making every shadow pure black and every light pure white. This feels logical because a strong contrast seems dramatic, but real light usually contains several steps, and too much black can flatten rather than round a form.

Outside school

Photographers adjust exposure and contrast to control the value range of a picture. Film-makers use dark and light areas to create mood or make a face stand out, while tattoo artists and digital painters use value to suggest volume without changing the outline.

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