What is a value scale in watercolor painting?” A value scale shows the full range of a hue’s lightest to darkest tones. ( Hue: It basically refers to a color’s position on the color wheel. Red, blue, green, yellow, orange etc, these are all different colors.)  In watercolor painting, adding more water into a pigment lightens the mixed value, whereas using less water in a mix causes the pigment to remain darker.

The water to pigment ratio controls your value scales as you paint. A value is a range of lightness to darkness on a scale from white to black. White is lightest and black is darkest. In between scale values become darker in percentages. White is 0% and black is 100%. The middle scale value is the 50% tone of darkness. ( Tone in art simply refers to how light or dark a color is. ) The lightness to darkness of a hue is relative, but can be compared to a value scale of grays.

Value is the lightness or darkness of a color. A light value is pale and transparent, and a dark value is rich, deep and opaque. Therefore, we get a value in watercolor by adding more or less water to the water-pigment ratio mixture. A thick mixture of a lot of paint with a little percentage of water will give you a dark value.

Values : lights, mid-tones, and dark tones are critical in creating visual dimensions for a painting.  Color is an addition to painting, but values are much more important. Colors without various values present a flat painting, a spectrum of light to dark value shapes even in a monochrome gray scale provides three-dimensional life. Foreground, Mid-ground, Background.

In my next posting, I will introduce a concept of “pigment – water ratio consistency” and a very important symbolic analogy.