Value as an Element of Art

In art last week, we returned to fruit as our subject matter but this time looked at the element of art known as value. In regards to colour, value deals with the brightness or tints of a hue, and the darkness or shades of a colour. When observing the fruit, the students could identify different tints, shades and tones of the colour on the fruit depending on how the light struck it and how it reflected light as a highlight, or as a shadow.

We explored creating our own tints and shades by adding white and black to base colours and then had the option of creating artwork that made use of different values, either as a monochromatic painting (only using one colour - either red, orange or grey) or by creating one using a greyscale for the background, and then the colour red or orange and its varying tones for the fruit to help contrast it with the background.