Hues Shades Tints

Value (Hue, Shade and Tint): an element of art; the lightness and darkness of a line, shape, or form; a measure of relative lightness and darkness.

Hues, Shades and Tints refer to a color and variations on a color.
Hue means the pure color as it would fall on the color wheel.
Shades are hues with added black.
Tints are hues added with white.
If an artist restricts his palette to a color and its tints and hues, then it is called “Monochromatic.”

Sample Projects:

Converging Lines Op Art (3rd Grade) art lesson.
Color Value Silhouettes (4th Grade) art lesson.
Gradient Tint Mountain Scene (4th Grade) art lesson.
Monochromatic Abstract Painting (4th Grade) art lesson.
Shaded Vase (4th Grade) art lesson.
Claude Monet's Impressionist Style (5th Grade) art lesson.
Drawing a Paper Ball (5th Grade) art lesson.
Make a hue/tint/shade chart or color wheel. Tempera or acrylic paints are much easier than watercolor for this project since they are opaque.
Use a face from a magazine and copy it into black and white. Divide it into color blocks or into tints or shades. Create a palette by putting a dab of pure color in the middle and pure black on one side and pure white on the other side. By mixing different proportions of black and the color and white and the color, create two or three different shades and two or three different tints. Paint over the face by trying to match which is a hue, tint, shade or pure black or white. (Einstein example below)

Einstein photo painted over as value study

Painting of Sunrise at Mt Tseu Toshi Fumigoto

Sunrise from Mount Tseu Toshi Fumigoto (Japan) 1991

Additional Examples of Artists using Hues, Shades and Tints

Teaching note: Many of these atrwork examples are monochromatic (with perhaps a few extra splotches of color). Note how a single color can create a strong feeling or mood in the painting.

Gray Tree by Mondrian, 1912