Exploring Secondary Colours, Tints and Shades
Senior 2 · Fine Arts
Exploring Secondary Colours, Tints and Shades
Lesson 2 of 4
20 min
Look at a hillside in Rwanda on a clear morning. The tea bushes near you are a deep, dark green; the hills behind are a paler green; the furthest hills look almost blue-grey. They may all be the same plants. What changes is how light or dark, and how bright or dull, the green appears. Painters control this with three simple mixes: tints, shades and tones.
Umutoni paints three rows of hills with one green. For the nearest hill she uses a shade (green + a touch of black); for the middle hill, the pure green; for the far hill, a tint (white + a little green) with a touch of grey to make a tone. The eye reads dark, strong colours as near and pale, dull colours as far away. This effect is called atmospheric perspective: the air between us and distant objects makes them look lighter, greyer and bluer.
Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) made this Japanese woodblock print, Under the Wave off Kanagawa, often called The Great Wave, around 1831. It is famous for its use of a newly imported blue pigment, Prussian blue. Count how many values of blue you can see: the deep blue inside the wave, lighter blues in the troughs, and the pale tint of the water in front of Mount Fuji. The white foam is simply the paper left unprinted. Notice also the dark tone of the sky near the horizon, which makes the white peak of Mount Fuji stand out.
Tip
"White up, black down, grey dulls." Tint = add white, shade = add black, tone = add grey. For tints, start with the white; for shades, add the black in tiny touches.
Is lilac a tint, a shade or a tone of violet? Explain.
Solution: a tint, because it is violet made lighter by adding white.
You need a large pot of light orange for a school banner. Describe how to mix it without wasting paint.
Solution: first mix a little orange (yellow, adding red slowly). Then put plenty of white in the pot and add the orange a little at a time until you reach the light orange you want.
What is the difference between a shade and a tone?
Solution: a shade is a hue mixed with black, so it becomes darker. A tone is a hue mixed with grey, so it becomes duller and softer, and it may be only a little darker or lighter.
In a landscape, the nearest trees are painted in a pale, greyish green and the distant hills in a dark, strong green. Why do the hills look as though they are in front?
Solution: dark, intense colours read as near and pale, dull colours as far (atmospheric perspective). Swap them: use shades for the near trees and pale tones for the far hills.
Remember
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