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Colour Counting: A look at tones and shades

This activity relates to the National Profiles, Level 4, The Arts.

Lead up work

Students should complete tone and shade graphs using black and white to illustrate how tones and shades can change with the addition of white and black.

Activity

Refer students to Nora Heysen’s paintings;

Freesias, 1985
Flowers in a Delft Vase, c.1946
Spring Light, c.1938

Arrange students in groups of three or four. Ask each group to closely study one of the paintings to discuss how many different greens there are in the painting, how many different blues, how many different pinks and how many yellows.

Practical

Ask students to rule up a bar, 5cms high and divided into 10x2 or 3cm sections.

Paint one square in a pure primary colour and add white paint in equal amounts until the final square is white.

The aim of the exercise is that the first square will be pure colour, square five will be half pure colour and half white, the final square will be white.

Repeat this exercise with black.

Discuss with students how a pink object in a painting will not be a flat uniform pink (or blue or green). Tones and shades add volume to flat shapes on a canvas.

Level 4, National Profiles, The Arts

This suggested activity relates to Level 4 of the National Profiles, The Arts.

A student

  • Experiments with a variety of ideas and explores feelings when producing visual art works
  • Selects, combines and uses specific skills, techniques and processes to develop two and three dimensional art works
  • Recognises and uses descriptive language and visual arts terminology such as depth, design, form
  • Talks and writes informally about personal observations and features of visual art works
  • Identifies specific features when comparing and discussing paintings, drawings and sculptures from different times and cultures and uses this knowledge in visual arts activities