Color Fundamentals. VALUE

How do we learn to see what we cannot yet see?
Aimee Erickson

Color Week 39 we will start to explore the fundamental characteristics of color through the teachings of a class that I am taking with instructor Aimee Erickson. Erickson has laid out 3 fundamental characteristics of color which will be explored over the next 4 weeks – HUE. VALUE. CHROMA

Hue is the color family as on the color wheel
Value is how light or dark
Chroma is the intensity or saturation

Erickson also talked about the ‘poetic dimension’ of color, how we each describe a color using our own words and connotation… it conveys emotion.

This week our focus is on VALUE, starting with a dark to light 9 value scale. We are using black and white, mixing a 50/50 mid tone and filling the scale, she wants us to do lots of scales! Just like piano scales, to learn to read the intervals, practice, practice, practice.

We are using a gray background notebook for the class. In addition you can see a scale page with white/gray/black, this starts to show how the exact same color is perceived to have different value relative to the background. That scale and the following checkerboard assignment is showing the point where your eye is not reliable as to value because it is [almost always] relative and must be considered in context.