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Seeing the
Values of Colors
A richly-illustrated introduction to the most important
skill for painting or drawing in color
ArtSpeak
Color: The visual qualities of objects based on
individual perceptions of their hues and values.
Basic colors include: yellow, orange, red, purple,
blue, and green.
Realism: A style of art in which living beings and
objects are represented in an artwork as they appear
in real life without stylization or distortion.
Values of colors: The intrinsic lightness or darkness
of a specific color. For example, a soft pastel yellow
has a light value and a deep midnight blue has a
dark value. In painting, dark colors can be mixed
with white to create lighter values (colors).
Value scale: A range of different values that are
rendered in order from light to dark or from dark to
light.
Highlight: A small section of a drawing subject
that is rendered with white or a very light value to
identify the brightest area where light bounces off its
surface. Highlights are more pronounced on shiny or
glistening surfaces than dull or matte surfaces.
Shadow: A dark area on an object or living being
that receives little to no light.
Low contrast: A drawing or painting created with a
limited range of values.
ISBN: 978-1-77193-150-2
Copyright 2015 Drawspace Publishing and Brenda Hoddinott. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transferred, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
electronic, digital, mechanical, recording, photographing, photocopying, or otherwise, without the purchase of a licence from drawspace.com or the prior written consent of Brenda Hoddinott and Drawspace Publishing.
Youre likely already familiar with a grayscale value scale (Figure 1). The next step is to
recognize values in colors.
Figure 1
ArtSpeak
Challenge!
Figure 2
Figure 3
ISBN: 978-1-77193-150-2
Copyright 2015 Drawspace Publishing and Brenda Hoddinott. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transferred, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
electronic, digital, mechanical, recording, photographing, photocopying, or otherwise, without the purchase of a licence from drawspace.com or the prior written consent of Brenda Hoddinott and Drawspace Publishing.
Figure 4
Seeing the values of colors is much more challenging than seeing values in grayscale.
The only way to train your eye to recognize the values of colors is to practice drawing or
painting with color. In the beginning, its mostly guesswork.
Conversely, if you take the royal blue (the darkest value in Figure 4) and make it the lightest
color in a value scale, many of the resulting colors are also similar (Figure 6).
Figure 6
Technically, any color can be broken down into an infinite range of values from very light to
almost black. However, theres little point in using colors that are so similar that the human
eye cannot discern one from another.
ISBN: 978-1-77193-150-2
Copyright 2015 Drawspace Publishing and Brenda Hoddinott. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transferred, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
electronic, digital, mechanical, recording, photographing, photocopying, or otherwise, without the purchase of a licence from drawspace.com or the prior written consent of Brenda Hoddinott and Drawspace Publishing.
The key to drawing realistically with color is to use a full range of values from very light to
very dark, as with the greens in Figure 7.
Figure 7
Compare Figures 8 and 9. A full value scale of any color (plus black and white) can achieve
the illusion of three-dimensional reality as well as a full value scale of black (called a
grayscale).
Figure 8
Figure 9
Figure 10
When drawing
with color, values
are definitely more
important than the
chosen colors.
Examine variations
of the same dagger
drawing with limited
ranges of values
(Figure 10).
Each still looks like
a dagger just not
quite as realistic or
three-dimensional
as those in Figures 8
and 9.
ISBN: 978-1-77193-150-2
Copyright 2015 Drawspace Publishing and Brenda Hoddinott. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transferred, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
electronic, digital, mechanical, recording, photographing, photocopying, or otherwise, without the purchase of a licence from drawspace.com or the prior written consent of Brenda Hoddinott and Drawspace Publishing.
Caution!
ISBN: 978-1-77193-150-2
Copyright 2015 Drawspace Publishing and Brenda Hoddinott. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transferred, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
electronic, digital, mechanical, recording, photographing, photocopying, or otherwise, without the purchase of a licence from drawspace.com or the prior written consent of Brenda Hoddinott and Drawspace Publishing.
The skin colors in Figure 12 are a value scale of ten different mixed colors, from very light
to very dark. Each skin tone has been assigned a number from 1 to 10.
Examine the close up view of a section of the painting (Figure 13) and then compare each
value to its corresponding number in Figure 12.
As most of the arm is in sunlight, the values range from light to medium (1 to 6). The
section of her upper leg thats in shadow is painted with darker values (7 to 10).
Figure 12
Figure 13
1
1
7
7
9
10
10
As an Aside
I rarely use pure white in my paintings
and never use black (I dont even own
a tube of black paint).
ISBN: 978-1-77193-150-2
Copyright 2015 Drawspace Publishing and Brenda Hoddinott. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transferred, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
electronic, digital, mechanical, recording, photographing, photocopying, or otherwise, without the purchase of a licence from drawspace.com or the prior written consent of Brenda Hoddinott and Drawspace Publishing.
Figure 14
Figure 15
2
3
Figure 16
Figure 17
4
5
5
6
Figure 18
Tip!
To make good use of the values of colors,
take black-and-white photos or scans
of your color artworks in progress, and
assess how your values are working.
For example, compare the original
painting in color (Figure 18) to the version
in grayscale (Figure 19).
As you can see, the subject appears
three-dimensional in both versions.
Figure 19
Tip!
A highlight appears brighter when
contrasted with the color thats opposite it
on the color wheel (complementary).
For example, if the iris of an eye is blue,
a very tiny bit of orange (complementary
to blue) added to the white makes the
highlight appear brighter.
ISBN: 978-1-77193-150-2
Copyright 2015 Drawspace Publishing and Brenda Hoddinott. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transferred, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
electronic, digital, mechanical, recording, photographing, photocopying, or otherwise, without the purchase of a licence from drawspace.com or the prior written consent of Brenda Hoddinott and Drawspace Publishing.