Chapter 01: Value 
Establishing Depth with Color
There are a variety of techniques you
can use to establish depth, perspective and
separation of the planes in a panel or page.
Planes usually refer to Foreground, Mid-
dle Ground and Background. In some cases,
there may be multiple Middle Grounds. It’s
your job to establish those planes, push the
© 2007 Mark Sweeney www.mark-sweeney.com
The artist has established depth by making
the cast shadows fall further back as the boxes get
smaller; and the line art for each box getting a little
thinner as they go further back.
perspective, and create the illusion of depth.
As you can see below, simply add-
ing solid color doesn’t help push the depth
and perspective.... if anything it flattens the
depth - the furthest box looks exactly the
same as the closest box, reducing the depth
of the image.
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Depth
Hue
Hue: you can use different hues to cre-
ate depth by cooling off a color as it recedes.
This creates the illusion that cooler objects
are further away.
Even shadows can become cooler as ob-
jects move further away from the viewer.
Shadows are not just shades of grey or
black, but darker versions of the local color
the shadow is cast onto, with blue added to it.
Saturation
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Saturation: as objects move further
further into the background, their colors be-
come less intense. As objects move closer
to the foreground, the colors become more
saturated (purer color).
This is part of the technique of Aerial
Perspective. This is what makes things look
further away by making them lighter in tone,
bluer or cooler, and less saturated

Value
Value: as things get further away, they
become lighter.
Even shadows become lighter as they
move further away from the viewer. This
too, is part of using Aerial Perspective to es-
tablish depth.
Color Holds
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Depth
Color Holds: by taking the solid black
line art and changing it to lighter shades of
grey as the objects move further back, this
helps push perspective and depth even fur-
ther.
For even greater effect, you could also
add blue to the color hold as it goes further
back.
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Depth
Texture
Texture: as objects get further away,
their texture become less recognizable, and
denser. By making details, patterns and sur-
face textures smaller as objects recede, you
reinforce the illusion of depth.
Dimension: light and shadow are what
really give objects shape and form.
Now that I’ve added shadows to the
Dimension
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cubes, they appear to have more shape,
weight and mass.
Even with adding shadows to make the
cubes more three-dimensional, I’ve still
used the principal of receding values to push
the perspective. The darkest shadow on the
furthest box is much lighter than the darkest
shadow on the closest box.

Combine Techniques
Above is an illustration combing all the
techniques using color: Hue, Saturation,
Value, Color Holds, and Dimension to re-
ally push the perspective and depth.
Do you have to use every technique all
the time? No. But knowing each technique
can help you solve problems on how to push
depth, separation of the planes and perspec-
tive.
Combine Techniques
© 2007 Mark Sweeney www.mark-sweeney.com
Depth
The illustration below shows combining
those same techniques with a pattern on the
cubes.
Do objects always go from dark to light,
warm to cool colors? No.
This is where background colors can
determine what how perspective and depth
are established, and why good use of back-
ground color is very important.
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Depth

Value

Value: With dark backgrounds, you can can still make cool objects come forward.
reverse the values, with the brightest objectsBy making the closest objects the most
at the front, and darkest further back. The
saturated, this increases the contrast of the
key is contrast - objects with the most con-
object with the unsaturated red background,
trast will come forward, while those with making the bright blues pop forward.
the least contrast will recede into the back- The furthest objects are have their satu-
ground. ration toned down to the point where they
are almost grey, pushing them into the back-
Hue: even with a warm background, you ground.

Hue

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 Chapter 01: Value 

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