The value of a color is the lightness or darkness of a color. You can achieve this by adding white to lighten the hue… or by adding black to darken the hue. The hue itself does not change… just the value.
Let’s start with the hue red. The center square in this illustration shows you the color red without any other color mixed in… a pure hue. When you add a drop of white to the red, you get the light red color in the upper box. A pink. This lighter red color, or pink is the TINT.
If you add black to the color red, you get the dark red color in the lower box. A maroon. This darker red color is the SHADE.
Now, let’s do the same exercise with the pure hue blue. When white is added to the blue, you get a light pastel blue. And when black is added to the blue, you get a darker blue… a navy blue. The pastel blue is a tint of blue, and the dark blue is the shade of blue.
You can repeat this process for any hue in the color spectrum.
How To Mix Colors
Now that you understand the concept of creating tints and shades of color, I want to explain the actual process of mixing paint colors as practice.
In theory, adding black to a color will produce a shade of the color. But in reality, black paint is too strong, and will produce muck when added to your primary colors.
Instead of using black to create shades… use a brown like raw umber.
You’ll will discover that you need very little brown to create the shade maroon. It doesn’t take much to darken the hue.
When adding brown to yellow, use even less brown. Yellow is a weak color… and will quickly turn to a brownish muck if you add too much brown.
Blue, on the other hand requires a little more brown to darken.
So, to review:
Add white to a hue to produce a tint and add black or brown to a hue to produce a shade.