High-key, low-key and mid-key are common terms in art, each one describing a particular creative style. But what exactly is the meaning of high-key in art? In this post, we’re going to look into what high-key value art means, and how it contrasts with low-keyed art. You’ll learn what defines a high-key artwork and get to see some high-key digital art and painting examples!
Color is one of the things that make our life beautiful and vibrant. As artists we know that color is also one of the most – if not the most important element in an artwork.
Color brings life to an image. It helps the artist to convey a particular feeling and create a certain impression on the viewer.
Still, the very nature of color is hard to define, and its perception varies from one person to another.
Understanding the basics of color theory is important for every artist. Today, we’re going to discuss the meaning of High-Key in art.
What is the meaning of high-key?
High-key describes a set of colors that range from pure white to mid-tone hues.
High-key images usually refrain from using black or dark tones. If at all, the presence of dark tones is reduced to a minimum.
In general, high-key value art evokes a bright, airy, and happy atmosphere. The use of low-key colors, on the other hand, creates a more dramatic and moody effect.
Related: → What Does Low-Key Mean In Art?
In art, high-key can be applied to any type of media, be it photography, painting, pencil drawing, or digital art.
When creating a high-key photo, the photographer avoids any too dark shadows on the subject and in its surroundings. This can include a specific high-key lighting setup or high-key post processing techniques in Photoshop.
In traditional or digital art, the artist only makes use of colors that belong to the lighter end of the color range.
To better understand the meaning of high-key vs. low-key – and middle-key – in art, let’s have a look at the value scale.
What Is the high-key and low-key value scale?
You can think of the value scale as a continuum of hues, ranging from white on the one end to black on the other.
Colors in the upper end of the scale are high-key, while the darker tones in the lower end are low-key. Everything inbetween is referred to as middle-key or mid-key.
The high-key spectrum comprises white and a range of different light gray tones. The low-key values consist of black and a certain number of dark grays.
Mid-key tones are right in the middle, consisting of lighter to darker gray tones.
Even though the example value scale is for black and white, this doesn’t mean that high-key and low-key artworks necessarily need to be black and white.
But then, what’s the definition of high-key and low-key colors?
The same value scale also applies to color. Colors aren’t a single shade, and mixing colors with different parts of white or black results in a whole range of high-key to low-key color variations.
A high-key blue, for example, would be a pale, pastel tone. On the low-key side, you can create a very dark and saturated navy blue, moving close to black.
The mid-key range would be a blend between pastel and dark blues.
As high-key colors need to be mixed with white, they are also called tints. Low-key colors, which are mixed with black, are also known as shades.
High-Key Digital Art Examples:
What is high-key and low-key in art?
When creating any type of art, be it traditional art like a painting or drawing, or digital art, such as a photo manipulation, you have the possibility to choose any range within the value scale between white and black.
For a high-key piece of art, you would curb the value range towards the lighter end of the scale.
Conversely, low-key in art means that you would mostly pick colors from the darker end to create a low-key image.
Accordingly, you would cut out both ends of the scale and only use the middle tones, if you were to create a mid-key picture.
Most artists choose one of the value ranges intuitively, depending on the look and feel they want to give to their artwork.
A high-key composition feels light and cheerful. Most of the color values are in the lighter range, and dark accents are only used to give emphasis to certain parts of the image and create contrast.
Likewise, low-key value art uses a majority of values from the darker range. Highlights appear sparingly and only serve to accentuate those parts that the artist wants to draw the attention to. That’s why low-keyed art often looks mysterious and dramatic.
Why use high-key in art?
So why would you want to create a high-key artwork?
One of the main reasons why high-key is a popular style in art is because bright colors look more vibrant than dark colors. Dark colors always include a certain portion of black; that’s why they tend to lose saturation the darker they get.
The same goes for bright colors. All bright colors contain some amount of white and, beyond the mid-tone range, they become less saturated, too.
However, if you create high-key value art, you merely use colors in the upper range of the value scale, so that your dark tones are actually in the mid-key range. Those mid-tones are not as saturated with black as the really dark, low-key shades, which means your image will be substantially more colorful.
Despite that it’s hard to use the full value scale in one artwork, choosing only values from a specific range makes your work look more harmonious.
You don’t render reality the way it really looks. Instead, you are using colors that reflect the contrast between the values.
This is a much more complex way of creating art, but also a great technique to achieve interesting and stunning effects.
Some of the most famous high-key painting examples come from the period of impressionism. The impressionist movement originated in France in the 1860s. The painters’ main objective was to depict the ‘visual impression of the moment’ by shifting the effect of light and color.
Therefore, the impressionists used to paint in high-key. This allowed them to make their paintings look brighter and more vivid.
Here are some high-key painting examples of one of the founding fathers of impressionism, French painter Claude Monet.
High-Key Painting Examples from Claude Monet:
(All images displayed in this post are copyright to their respective owners and solely used for educational purposes.)
I hope this post was able to help you understand the meaning of high-key in art and inspire you to create your own high-keyed (or low-keyed) artworks! Be well and see you in the next post, Angie 🌟
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This post did a great job of breaking down the complexities of color theory into understandable terms. I’ve always struggled with color harmony, but your explanations and examples have given me a clearer understanding.
Hi William, thanks for leaving a comment. So glad to hear that the article was helpful!