How to Match Color Value

Being able to get a firm grasp on matching color value enables you to move from flat shapes to forms with dimension. (Photo/Drawing Credit: Myra Naito)

How to match color value (shading) is an important skill if you want your drawings and paintings to look remotely believable. Value is what causes our eyes to register form, depth, and distance. If everything was the same flat shade, we’d have a difficult time determining the space around us.

According to American Academy of Ophthalmology, the human eye is capable of perceiving up to ten million colors. Didn’t know there were that many? Well, think about the three primary colors (red, blue, yellow), the secondary colors (orange, green, violet), and the tertiary colors (red-orange, yellow-orange, blue-green, yellow-green, red-violet, blue-violet). That’s 12 basic colors.

Now imagine all the possible combinations of those 12 colors. Take for example, red and yellow. You can add varying amounts of yellow to the red. Each amount is a different color. And now, your number has just skyrocketed. Add to each of those new colors varying amounts of white (tints) or black (shades) and you’ve already lost count, haven’t you?

This one leaf is in both bright light and shadow, dramatically illustrating how value leads our eyes to understand that it is a 3-D form. (Photo Credit: Myra Naito)

Next, imagine a leaf on a tree. That one single leaf is not a uniform green, is it? One part of the leaf is in direct sunlight, making the green much lighter, possibly almost white. The other side of the leaf falls into shadow, making it darker. That difference in value is what tells our eyes that the object is indeed a leaf and is three dimensional in the space that it occupies.

But how do you go from vibrant three dimensions to trying to represent it on a flat, two-dimensional canvas? The key to making it believable lies in how well you match color value. Your darks have to be dark enough and your highlights have to pop. Granted, if you’re doing children’s illustrations, you could probably get away with a simple light green and dark green. If you’re going for photo-realism, it’s going to take more work.

Both of these tools can help you learn to match color value. Left: Homemade viewfinder cut from mat board. Right: Store-bought grey scale value finder. (Photo Credit: Myra Naito)

In order to match color value, it’s actually easier to start with black and white. Try to get shades of grey to match. It helps to make or buy a viewfinder. They are available on Amazon, but if you make one out of mat board, make sure it’s black or grey. You want a neutral color. It’s basically a small window that isolates a small area, making it easier to focus on just that area. In this case, if you’re using a black and white photograph, place the window of the view finder so that the area you’re trying to match is inside.

The viewfinder is merely to help isolate the area and get your eye to focus. You’ll know you have a match if, when you blur your eyes, the line between your original image and your swatch disappear. (Photo/Drawing Credit: Myra Naito)

On a clean sheet of white paper, slowly start building up layers of graphite. Check periodically against the area in the viewfinder by holding your drawing right next to it. If your drawing is too light, keep adding graphite slowly. I caution you about going at it slowly because it’s kind of a drag to remove graphite and start again. Just build up layers patiently until you have a match.

Both viewfinder and store-bought value finders are valuable tools to have in your arsenal or art supplies. (Photo Credit: Myra Naito)

There are also grey scale value finders available on Amazon. You would simply find the value that most closely matches what you want to draw and use that swatch to guide you.

How to match color value from a color image is another story. It’s the same process as with black and white, but it’s a lot trickier for our eyes to determine if it’s a match. For most people, including me, you have to kind of squint and blur your vision when looking at your pencil drawing next to the color image in the viewfinder. If you did it accurately, there should not be a noticeable jump from the value of the color image to the value of the pencil drawing.

You can hone your skills by practicing with a color image to draw from and then checking against its grey scale counterpart.

Now, understanding and having a firm grasp on the black and white part is essential for me and most likely will be for you too. My clients usually give me color photos of their pets and I translate that into a black and white drawing. Sometimes I will go straight from the color photo and draw it in pencil. But if I need to get the commission out ASAP, I’ll run the color photo through Photoshop and set it to greyscale.

And voila! The resulting image takes out the guesswork. And, if you want the image a little more dramatic, you can play with the contrast, brightness, shadows, etc.

But if you are trying to hone your skills, it would behoove you to also practice with color. It’s a good way to train your eyes. You could always run the greyscale and use it for checking to see how you did.