Learning objective

  • To understand how to darken or lighten a colour when mixing paint.

Success criteria

  • I can add white paint to one colour to create a tint.
  • I can add black paint to one colour to create a shade.
  • I can investigate creating a wide range of colours by mixing tints and shades.

National curriculum

Art and design

Pupils should be taught to:

  • To improve their mastery of art and design techniques, including drawing, painting and sculpture with a range of materials [for example, pencil, charcoal, paint, clay].
  • About great artists, architects and designers in history.

See National curriculum - Art - Key stages 1 and 2.

Before the lesson

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Resource: Knowledge organiser: Art and design - Painting and mixed media (one each).

Lesson plan

1: Recap and recall

Before starting this unit you might want to check children can recall:

  • How to use shapes to build initial sketches.
  • How to mix colours with natural pigments to make natural colours.
  • How to select equipment or paint to recreate specific features.

2: Attention grabber

Display slide 1 of the Presentation: ‘Mont Saint-Victoire’ by Paul Cezanne. Ask individual children to come to the board and identify a dark green or light green. Ask how they would mix a dark green colour, or a light green colour. They may well suggest adding water, adding yellow, white, blue or black. 

Presentation: 'Mont Saint-Victoire' by Paul Cezanne

Display slide 2 which introduces the terms tint and shade. To check their understanding, challenge individual children to come to the board and identify a green tint or a green shade from the Cezanne painting on slide 1.

3: Main event

Model yourself or use the Pupil video: Tints and shades to demonstrate colour mixing tints and shades.

Pupil video: Tints and shades

The children now work in their sketchbooks, practising mixing tints and shades of one starting colour. They paint small patches of colour across the page, gradually adding white to make tints and then black to make shades.

  • What do we call a colour that has black added to it? (A shade.)
  • What do we call a colour that has white added to it? (A tint.)

4: Wrapping up

Ask the children to carry their sketchbooks around the classroom and try to find someone else who has mixed the same (or almost the same) tint or shade of a colour. Tell them to stand by that person once they think they have found a match. Alternatively, children could sit beside someone who has started with a very similar colour and try to identify the closest matching colour in both their sketchbooks. 

  • Was it easy to find a completely matching colour? Why/why not? (Probably not, because they will all have added slightly different amounts of black or white to their colour.)

Adaptive teaching

Pupils needing extra support

May need reminding about painting basics: keeping a clean water pot, adding black and white paint a small amount at a time, holding the paintbrush near the bristles for greater control; could use slide 1 of the Presentation: Odd painting out to help them in discussing the paintings.

Pupils working at greater depth

Could investigate the range of colours they can make even with very similar starting colours; should mix two quite similar original colours, e.g. two different greens, and then mix tints and shades of both to observe the differences in colour.

Assessing progress and understanding

Pupils with secure understanding indicated by: being able to share their ideas about a painting; being able to describe the difference between a tint and a shade in painting; mixing tints and shades by adding black or white paint.

Pupils working at greater depth indicated by: being able to use some key art vocabulary to describe similarities and differences between paintings; mixing tints and shades confidently by adding black or white paint gradually.

Vocabulary definitions

  • abstract

    Art where the subject doesn't necessarily look like it does in real life.

  • detailed

    Looking at features of something which can often be seen most clearly close up.

  • figurative

    Creating pictures or sculptures that look like real things.

  • landscape

    A picture of countryside.

  • muted

    A colour that is not bright.

  • patterned

    A design in which shapes, colours or lines are repeated.

  • shade

    A dark tone of a colour made by adding black.

  • tint

    A light tone of colour made by adding white.

  • vivid

    Something that is very bright.

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