Analogous Value Charts

High School - Elements of Art: VALUE & COLOR

This is our third and last value scale - more of a chart, really - and the last step before getting into our main color project (see Monochromatic for the first).

These chart have two purposes:
1. the continuation of our learning to mix colors for a specific desired result;
2. acting a visual reference point for the up-coming painting.

Analogous means colors that follow each other on the color wheel, typically 3 colors, though in this case we created more than three.

Students choose 2 of the 3 primary colors (red, blue, yellow) in addition to black and white paint. I picked two charts for each color pairs to display here, as they are a bit repetitive otherwise.

Monochromatic Value Scale

High School - Art 1 - Elements of Art: COLOR & VALUE

Time to dive into colors! To start on this unit, we first talked about Value and its definition as related to art, referring to the range of lightness and darkness of a color.

For warm-up, students did a gray scale with paint showing 5 different values of gray by mixing black and white paint in the proper proportions.








The 2nd Value scale was a Monochromatic Scale, using only 1 color with black and white.

Painted Color Wheels

Middle School - Elements of Art: COLOR

After all that practice mixing colors with the Value Scales and Robots, students were ready to create their own color wheel.

We learned about all the colors, their places on the wheel, names of various categories of colors, and practice coloring one with color pencil. Whew! Finally, we were ready to tackle the real color wheel.

Students had to decide on a theme and come up with a variety of drawings to create the wheel. Once drawn, each color had to be assigned to its proper placement.

Warm Cool Protractors

Middle School

The idea with this coloring project was to practice control of a color pencil, with shapes being colored in from light to dark and dark to light. We were also talking about warm and cool colors so that element was added to the project.


We simply traced multiple protractors onto the paper, keeping overlapping lines visible. In addition to going from light to dark in each shape, kids also had to change from warm to cool colors whenever they went over a line. Once done, we filled in the background with black tempera paint to make the protractors stand out more.

Surprisingly, most kids turned out to have a real hard time with this one. That tells me we need to practice proper coloring techniques more...