Value contrasts are critical to successful watercolor paintings. Using a full range of values is sometimes difficult for beginning painters, because watercolor pigments dry lighter than they look when wet, and because too little pigment is used when mixing.

Why are value contrasts so important? Because they help structure the painting, establish a center of interest, and lead the viewer into and around the painting in an interesting, orchestrated and planned way. Value patterns also help describe forms, and tell us where the light is coming from. Finally, value contrasts help create the illusion of distance (depth) in our paintings.

How well are you using value contrasts? Here's a tip. Take some of your paintings (or color photos of them) and have black and white photocopies made of them. If you are loosing many of your forms, or if everything looks nearly the same shade of gray, then you probably need to focus a little more on value contrasts.

Mixing darker values of colors (shades) is not as straightforward. You can add black to many pigments to darken them, but in some cases, this creates surprising results (particularly with yellows which turn green when black is added to them). A way to darken some hues successfully is to add a little of their complementary color, or another pigment in the same family that is inherently darker in value. Yellows can be darkened with browns. See the examples below.

Demonstrated in the samples at the left are hi-key values (top), low-key values (middle) and full value range (bottom).

Note how both the hi-key and low-key paintings seem flatter than the one with the full range of values. That's because they lack contrast. All of the values are very similar.

In the bottom painting, each object has been painted using changes in value from dark to light. As a result, this gives both the individual objects 3-dimensional form, but also adds depth to the painting. Finally our eye tends to focus on the lightest values where they juxtapose the darkest values (in the center of the painting).

In more complex paintings like the one at the right, value patterns of light and dark help lead your eye through the painting. Note how the lightest values make a loose "S" shape beginning with the light clouds in the upper right, going down and left behind the tree trunks, then right and down over the rock forms, and then curving left and running along the bottom.

While all these lights aren't actually connected, their contrast with the surrounding values help them create the "S" movement. Squint at the painting and you will see what I mean.

Spring Celebration, © 1993 Ellen Fountain
12" x 7", watercolor on paper

In this sample, value contrasts not only create form, but also capture the "mood" I wanted for this piece...a gray winter day, with bright patches of sun on dried grass and foliage.

Winter Light, © 1993 Ellen Fountain
4" x 9.5", watercolor on paper