174. As you increase the color-intensity in any tone it attracts more attention, and unless you increase the intensity in the opposite tones there will be a disparity which will disturb your balance. When the intensity in any tone is too great, you can increase the color-contrast or the value-contrast of the opposite tones until the balance is achieved.
175. Up to this point I have been speaking of Tone-Balance in the abstract, of Tone-Balance as such. I have spoken of Tone-Balance as something apart from Position, Measure, and Shape-Balance, as if tones could balance without having any positions, measures, or shapes assigned to them. The fact is that a tone does not exist until you give it a position, a measure, and a shape. It follows that Tone-Balance is, in all cases, more or less complicated by considerations of position, measure, and shape.
176. The principle of balance being that equal attractions balance at equal distances and unequal attractions at distances inversely proportional to them, it follows, that if the attraction of a tone is increased by quantity, the attraction of quantity may be balanced against the attraction of contrast. The calculation of such balances may be made on the [Diagram of Values and Colors].
Diagram 21
In this case, for example, we have the indication of a possible balance of two parts of Light Red and one part of Dark Green on a ground-tone of Middle Violet, the difference of contrast in one case making up for a difference of quantity and of contrasting edge in the other.
177. So far as Tone-Balance depends upon positions, measures, and shapes, the problem is the problem of Position, Measure, and Shape-Balance, which we have already considered.
Given certain tones in certain measures and shapes, the inversion of the measures and shapes involves an inversion of the tones, so we have a Tone-Balance as well as a Measure and Shape-Balance. The inversion in any case may be single or double.
Diagram 22