Tone, or lightness and darkness, is very closely associated with colour. Most people find good tonal relationships in a picture difficult to achieve, because they find it difficult to dissociate tone and colour. Each colour has a degree of lightness or darkness which can be clearly seen when a black and white photograph is made from it. Good tone relationships can be seen to have been achieved when, in a photograph of a picture, the artist shows both legibility and a pleasing pattern of black, white and grey.

Children need considerable training in recognizing the relative tones of a colour. Just as in music they need training in recognizing whether note A is higher or lower than note B, so in painting they need to recognize whether colour A is lighter or darker than colour B. The need for this training is not usually sufficiently recognized, and unsatisfactory tone relationships can be seen in the work of otherwise competent artists. An appreciation of tone is necessary in dress and in interior decoration.

At the Infant stage this training in tone recognition can take its place along with colour recognition and similar activities. Questions such as "Which is the darkest colour in this picture?" "Which is lighter, Sally's dress or Linda's?" should be part of the daily work in the Infant class, so that children grow up with knowledge of tone and colour and become able to distinguish between the tones of colours whose tone values are near together.

Pleasing tone relationships are, like the other fundamental relationships in art, best learnt through experience. Children will quite early meet the problem of legibility, however. A figure is painted in a garden, and the child finds that it disappears into the background. The solution most children find for themselves, is that of oudining the figure in black so that it shows up. This works after a fashion, but it destroys other relationships within the picture, and in any case, it is really shelving the problem. The real solution is to make the figure either lighter or darker than the background. This suggestion can be made to individuals as soon as the problem arises, but as with many other problems, it seems wise to make it the basis of some definite work at the top of the school, so that it becomes conscious knowledge. A picture can be made with one really important figure or building against a background. Each child decides whether the figure is going to be lighter or darker than the background and paints accordingly. If we regard the possible range of colour as from white at the lightest to black at the darkest, with grey at mid-point, and we decide to paint the figure darker than the background, the figure may be painted in any colours between black and grey, and the ground any colours between grey and white. There will thus be a wide range of tone in each part of the picture making a pleasing tonal pattern possible, and the picture will also be legible.

It should also be remembered that strong contrasts are eyecatching and can provide a focal point for a picture. They should occur, therefore, in important places in the picture and generally speaking, should not occur in large masses of roughly equal size.

E.g. A picture consists of a house set in a country background. The house is painted in very dark colours. A small quantity of a light colour on the house will draw the eye and add interest. A very large quantity of very light colour in the background will make the house look as if it did not belong to the picture.

Very wide tone contrasts are to be avoided in general. I often find it wise to prohibit the use of black in a picture. This prevents children being led astray by local colour and applying black irrespective of the tone pattern of the picture.

If you can show children some photographs of pictures alongside their colour reproductions, it helps them to understand tone values. Work in one colour—pen patterns or pictures, for example—is a help here. Emphasis can then be entirely on tone values and children can discover that variations in tone are produced by variations in texture. Each colour has a natural tone value, which can be altered by the addition of black or white or another colour. Of the colours given on the colour wheel, purple is the darkest, and yellow the lightest. Going in one direction we find that blue is lighter than purple, green lighter than blue, and yellow lightest. In the other direction, we see that red is lighter than purple, and orange lighter than red. When colours are used, so that they are not in this natural order of tone, e.g. when a light purple is used with a dark yellow, the results are rather strange. Generally they are unsatisfactory, but used on a small scale they can add a certain excitement to the picture, comparable to the kind of addition a discord can make to a piece of music. This use of colour out of its natural tonal order is, in fact, called discord. Once again, these facts can be discovered from observation, and pictures and patterns made, which make use of discord.

Tone is also produced by texture. Areas covered with different kinds of texture will be found to have different tone values, according to the density of the texture. Thus a whole range of tones can be produced when working with the pen or pencil only.