PRACTICAL WATERCOLOUR
Value gives us depth, shade, and shape and without it, a painting will lose its way. Value describes how dark or how light a colour is, so it's an umbrella term that encapsulates other terminology. It often gets described as tone, for example, you hear the phrase tonal values, which isn't technically wrong, but it is useful to separate the meanings to understand colour mixing better.
Values and their relationships to mixing
Values occur naturally as tints, tones and shades whilst you are mixing colours, but if you're not sure what you are aiming for, you can end up mixing and remixing the wrong values, which may lead to confusion and frustration. To simplify my approach to painting I use five values, which I term white, light, mid, dark, and black. When I am looking at a subject, I ask myself, which value is that? Often, I work it out
