What is tone?
In art and design, tone refers to how light or dark something is. Tones could refer to black, white and the grey tones between. It could refer to how light or dark a colour appears.
In real life tone is created by the way light falls on an object.
The parts of the object on which the light is strongest are called highlightThe area of lightest tone in an artwork, often used to suggest the area of brightest light. and the darker areas are called shadowThe area of darkest tone in an artwork, used to suggest areas that are shaded from light..
Tone can be used for a range of effects:
- to create the illusion of formA three-dimensional object. The appearance of having three dimensions.
- to create a particular atmosphere
- to create contrastHow different elements of a piece of art or design are. Particularly used to describe the difference between light and dark tones. and focus attention
- to suggest depthHow great the distance between the nearest and furthest-looking parts of a composition appears to be. and distance