What Are Tonal Values in Oil Painting?

Tonal value just means how light or dark something is, with the colour taken away. If you took a black and white photo of your painting, the values are what you'd see.

It sounds simple, but it's what makes a painting look three-dimensional. Get the values right and the painting holds together. Get them wrong and lovely colour won't save it.

Squint and simplify

When you look at a subject you'll see hundreds of tones. You don't need them all. Squint at it and the small details disappear, leaving the big light and dark shapes. Those are what you paint first.

My four pre-mixed tones

I use a simple scale from white at 1 down to black at 9. For every painting I pre-mix just four tones from it: a high light (2), a low light (4), a high dark (6) and a low dark (8).

That's two tones for the light side and two for the shadow side. I block those in over the underpainting, and the whole structure of the painting is there before a single detail goes on.

Why it works on any subject

Whether it's a rose, a spaniel or a snowy landscape, it's the same four tones. That's why I can teach one method across every subject inside MazArt Academy.

The picture at the top is my Winter Blues reference turned into tones. You can see how few shapes a painting really needs. If you'd like to paint it, the Winter Blues tracing pack is free.

Save it for later

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