tonal value and contrast

Tonal values are critical. The lights and darks contribute more to the success of a painting’s composition than any other factor, including color. In fact, your painting will really be only as good as its tonal values.

Value contrasts attract and entertain the viewer. Points of contrast provide touchstones for the eye as it scans the picture.

Value contrast is so compelling that it is
the best way to establish a strong focal point.

Value contrast will make any part of a picture an eye magnet.

To be effective, the lights and darks in your paintings must at least be consciously considered if not deliberately planned. This planning does not need to be difficult or time-consuming. All it takes is a preliminary sketch before starting the painting and the application of the ONE RULE OF COMPOSITION: Never make any two intervals the same.

the importance of value contrast

The success of your painting depends on value more than any other element. Good tonal value contrast attracts the viewer’s attention and creates clarity.

Compare the examples on this page. The picture with a wide range of tonal values, from light to dark, and strong contrast is the most appealing. Notice that the words in the examples (left) strongly contrast with the background, making them easy to read. More paintings are weakened by the lack of value contrast than in any other compositional failing.

Strong contrast
Strong tonal value contrast increases the clarity of your paintings and attracts and retains the viewer’s attention.

Weak contrast
Lack of value contrast can weaken your painting. It is important to provide at least one element of strong contrast.

vary your values for interest

If you think of a value scale as a series of grays from black to white, you can see how the intervals between each step of the scale are the same. According to the ONE RULE OF COMPOSITION, if a painting has little value contrast—that is, if there is little difference between the darkest and the lightest tonal values in a picture—no part of the picture will be particularly attractive to the eye. If a picture has only darks, only lights or only middle grays, nothing will stand out sufficiently to be a focal point. If you vary the intervals between values so there is no longer an equal interval between each, you create a more interesting proportion of values.

Boring, even intervals of value
This value scale has equal intervals. Each step changes to the same degree as the one before and after. This scale is boring because the eye and mind can determine the pattern quickly.

Heavy on the lights
This value scale is weighted toward the light side. It is more interesting than an evenly distributed scale.

Heavy on the darks
This value scale is weighted toward the dark side. There is an uneven, irregular change from step to step, producing interest.

Use a range of values with varied intervals
The values in this composition are a good example of Mostly, some and a bit (see color dominance for more about this formula). The painting is made up of mostly mid-value, some black and three bits of white.

November Chickens Robert Johnson Oil on canvas 24" x 40" (61cm x 102cm)

seeing your subject as a pattern of values

Before you can make the most of the tonal values in your paintings, you need to develop an awareness of them in your subject matter. The first step is to start looking through (or past) the surface details of your subject, seeing it as a simplified pattern of lights and darks.

To see your subject as a pattern made up of value shapes, you have to look at your subject not as a group of things that can be named, but as a pattern. Instead of thinking tree or vase, think dark shape or light shape. What an object is is not as important as its shape and value.

Simplify the shapes first
Use a pen or pencil to create a simple drawing, reducing your subject to a few big shapes. Eliminate details and combine small shapes into larger shapes. Link shapes of similar value or combine them into larger shapes. Think big shapes; don’t think detail.

Reference photo

Reduce the values to a few
Once you have simplified it, use black and white to make this pattern of shapes into a pattern of tonal values. Although the eye can see an almost unlimited range of tonal values and is capable of perceiving subtle distinctions, you need to use only a few contrasting values.

This way of seeing can be learned with a little practice, and the best way to practice developing an awareness of tonal value patterns is to make drawings that simplify the subject into a pattern of shapes, then turn the pattern of shapes into a pattern of values.

Using three values
Reduce your subject to three values: black, gray and white. All light shapes become white, all dark shapes become black, everything else is gray.

Most subjects will lend themselves readily to a reduction of three values. You’ll find that you will have to make some judgment calls when assigning labels, but less so than with only black and white. If using only three values, your first impulse might be to label everything gray because nothing is totally black or absolutely white. Instead, you’ll have to exaggerate the differences by making the darker shapes black and the lighter shapes white.

Try labeling the shapes B, G and W(black, gray, white) like a paint-by-number. Doing so encourages you to see the larger pattern of tonal values—the shapes that will be the strongest in your composition.

Using five values
Reduce your subject matter to five values: white, light gray, middle gray, dark gray and black. This value reduction still keeps the pattern simple, but allows for enough value distinctions to make the identity of your subject matter clearer.

If adjacent shapes are close in value, you may need to assign them different values to distinguish them from each other.

Five is a comfortable number for practicing with value patterns. It is easy to mix three grays that are sufficiently different for this purpose. Using more than three grays with the black and white requires careful mixing and renders little benefit for the extra effort.

basic value patterns

Once you start thinking about your picture as a pattern of value areas, you can check to see if that pattern forms an effective composition. Some patterns are more effective than others. In fact, there are some models that are almost guaranteed to make your pictures more effective.

Simple to remember and use, these patterns consist of only three values: dark, middle and light. (Since we rarely use pure black or white when painting, it is easier to think of dark and light).

By varying the proportional amount of area occupied by each value, you will naturally comply with the ONE RULE OF COMPOSITION. Varying the values this way is much more interesting than dividing them equally. In each case, the smallest area naturally becomes the center of interest. The largest value area becomes the dominant value group. (If the largest value area is light, the painting is said to be in a high key; if the largest is dark the painting is in a low key.)

When there is an equal distribution of values, it is more difficult to create one spot with enough contrast to act as the focal point. All three values compete for attention. When unequally divided, the smallest area, because of its contrast in both value and size, wins the battle for the viewer’s attention and becomes the “star.”

Vary the intervals between values
Each of these two basic value patterns is divided into three areas of different sizes and values, resulting in six possible variations. The smallest area, located at one of the sweet spots, is the natural center of interest.

lead the viewer’s eye to your focal point

The artist has employed one of the basic value patterns, a white shape containing a dark shape placed on a mid-value field. The monastery is the light shape, making it the visual focal point. The ladder-like bands of shadow and the converging road lead the eye toward this point; the peripheral darks keep the eye circulating within the composition. The focal point is located at one of the off-center sweet spots.

A basic value pattern

Spanish Monastery Jack Lestrade 19" x 28" (48cm x 71cm) Watercolor on paper

use values to enhance mood

This picture is a good example of how a value pattern can enhance the mood suggested by the subject matter. The dog is a simple dark shape set against a high-key background. The animal is balanced and contrasted with the brighter, busier folds of the quilt on the right. The contrast makes the dark shape look very passive, even inert—appropriate for a sleeping dog. The mood is one of quiet rest in the shadows. Bright eyes twinkle from the dark fur of the animal’s head (located at one of the sweet spots), creating an irresistible center of interest.

Guilty Pleasures Sueellen Ross 13" x 19" (33cm x 48cm) Ink, watercolor and colored pencil on paper

turn the ordinary into the extraordinary

This elegant landscape painting is a good example of how a strong, simple value scheme can make a powerful picture of an ordinary scene. Although the colors are clean and the brushwork is descriptive and economical, the lights and darks are what makes the piece so compelling. There is minimum detail, but maximum impact. The focal point is located at the bottom of the dark shape of foliage on the left. The sunlit rocks against the deep shadow create an eye-catching area of contrast. The secondary focal point is the cactus silhouetted against the distant mountain. Because the contrast there is less stark than at the rocks below, the cactus becomes a subordinate attraction for the eye and provides an interesting balance.

Table Mountain Kurt Anderson 14" x 11" (36cm x 28cm) Oil on canvas

gradation of value creates interest

While value contrast is a great technique for attracting the viewer’s attention, gradation of value is a great technique for retaining it. Gradation is the gradual change of tonal value from light to dark over distance. The transition is not sudden, but blended from one area to another.

Gradation, by its very nature, complies with the ONE RULE OF COMPOSITION: Never make any two intervals the same, because gradation entails constantly changing.

A shape with a single value overall can be monotonous and boring. However, if the value changes within that shape, there is more for the eye to examine and explore, which makes it more interesting. If the adjacent shapes show a contrasting gradation, the eye and mind have more to scan, which makes that part of the composition even more appealing.

Gradations draw in the eye
The gradual change in tonal value in the foreground pulls the eye into the picture. A value area that has both contrast and gradation attracts and retains the viewer’s attention, creates depth in a picture, and helps focus the eye on a center of interest.

Value changes within shapes
The gradations of each shape go back and forth between light and dark.

Value changes keep the eye moving
The alternating pattern of light and middle values with one chunk of light anchors the eye. The variety of textures and gradations on the rocks “tickles the retina” and keeps the eye circulating.

Mud, Rocks and Water Joan Rudman 30" x 36" (76cm x 91cm) Watercolor on paper

harmony within value contrast

Arthur Wesley Dow, an influential teacher of the late nineteenth century, introduced the Japanese word notan for pleasing value contrast in design in his classic book Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Instruction (Doubleday & Co: 1929). The word in Japanese means dark-light. Notan, however, is a concept much more profound and subtle than merely dark-light contrast. Notan expresses the beauty and harmony of darks and lights balanced together or interacting in what the Japanese call visual music.

The concept of notan includes figure-ground relationships formed by dark shapes against light and light shapes against dark. (In this case, figure refers to any object or shape set against a background, not just to a human figure). Notan combines all that makes shape and value contrast interesting: variety in dimension, concavity and convexity, interlocking, figure-ground ambiguity and dramatic opposition.

Dow recommended reducing a composition to its basic dark and light pattern by rendering it in pure black and white shapes. If this underlying foundation was interesting, the composition was successful. All the shapes, both positive and negative, must be interesting shapes in themselves with varying intervals. Their interaction should create harmony and balance.

Values help define the subject
This painting works well as a purely abstract value pattern, even without reference to a real landscape, and is therefore a good example of notan. Nevertheless, there are just enough visual clues to identify the subject matter: water, surf, rock and cloud are all expressed in this moonlit landscape. Soft and hard, smooth and rough, light and dark are all contrasted to make a seemingly simple picture one of subtle mystery.

Lobster Cove 1 Donald Holden 7 1.4 " x 10 3.4" (18cm x 27cm) Watercolor on paper

Notan utilizes the potential of ambiguity in the figure-ground relationship; sometimes the white in a design appears to be the figure or positive shape on a black background, and sometimes the black in the same design appears to be the figure or positive shape on a white background. Neither the white nor the black dominates. The result is a fascinating game for the mind to play, one that follows the ONE RULE OF COMPOSITION:Never make any two intervals the same.

Values intensify drama
Don Holden is an artist who believes “that a painting must be (before anything else) a satisfying arrangement of positive and negative shapes.” This painting is an example of his use of black and white design principles to build his composition. A series of dark violet verticals are interrupted by flares of hot color. The widths of the intervals and the spaces between them are varied to intensify the drama of a raging forest fire.

Forest Fire XI Donald Holden 7 ¼" x 10 ¾" (18cm x 27cm) Watercolor on paper

Amour Doré Kevin Macpherson 20" x 16" (51cm x 41cm) Oil on canvas