Teaching Yourself to See Tone

Until they get their eye in, a lot of art students find it hard to accurately portray tonal (value) differences in their art. In other words, the darks are not dark enough, the lights are not light enough or the mids are too light, too dark or not rich enough in colour.

Even experienced artists can lapse from time to time if they don't keep a discerning eye on the tones in their work. Some artists also find that it's harder to see the full range of tones as they get older - even more reason to keep tone in mind in the creation of any artwork.

Here are some quick pointers to not only correct the tone when needed but also teach (or remind) yourself how to see tonal changes:

1. Take a piece of white cardboard, draw a long rectangle and divide it into 10 equal sections. Paint the leftmost section white, and paint the rightmost section black. Mix a small amount of white and an equal amount of black together and paint the middle section this mid-grey. Then gradually paint in lighter greys as it goes towards white and darker greys as it goes towards black. You should end up with a scale, which progresses evenly from white to black.

This is firstly a good practise exercise to get familiar with relative differences. If you like to draw, it's a great one to do with pencils. But the real use comes in when you use it to measure the tone on your subject and compare it to the tone on your artwork. You may be surprised at the difference.

2. Make a black-and-white copy of your work (e.g. by photocopying the original, a scan or a photo) and really look at the tones. Are they really representative of your subject? Do they change evenly on round objects? Are your blacks and whites pure? Sometimes colour really distorts our perception of tone, so a black-and-white version can really give you a sense of what's really going on.

3. Learn to paint using the grisaille approach- a purely tonal underpainting in only one colour (hue). This will get the tones straight in your head before you add colour (or alternatively, leave it as a study to refer to as you paint the final work).

Tone is one of the basic building blocks in representative styles of art. No matter how beautiful the strokes or finish, without this solid foundation, an artwork won't come together. Poor tones can warp and image as you walk away from it, or mean that the artwork fails to capture the viewer's attention. Moreover, incorrect tones will greatly impact on believability, in many cases, even more than proportions. Concious measurement of tone and practise using the range of tonal values is key to successful works.

3 of the Most Common Issues in Student Works

While on a rainy day mission for art supplies today, I walked past a few students’ canvas works on display out the front of the shop. Across more than ten artists, there were three things consistently holding back the works from realism or believability – tone, colour mixing and form (shaping). These are some of the most common issues amongst all art students and can define the difference between a student and a professional.

A lot of the techniques to address these issues aren’t readily available to art students. Many books don’t cover these either because the writers don’t know, can’t explain the issues well or because they’re well guarded secrets in this competitive industry.

In a nutshell, tone means the range of lights and darks. A lot of people’s works don’t reflect the full range of tone, either because they don’t see the full range, or don’t know how to mix their colours well, creating  greys, muddy colours and blanched white colours instead of clean, strong mid and dark tones.

The most common colour mixing mistake is to mix across colour systems before having a good working knowledge of how the colours will blend. Colour mixing is a complex science, and more than I can go into at this point, however, to keep it to one rule – only mix warms with warms and cools with cools, til you have extensive experience mixing across. Make a decision early on which way you want to go and stick to it.

The third issue I saw today was form. Many students find it hard to conceptualise the objects they are painting as three-dimensional, and/or, can’t translate the three dimensions of the objects onto a two dimensional flat space. The result is flat work with a lack of believability.

Think about how our eyes work. Our eyes are set up to measure depth quickly and accurately. Every day we navigate through rooms full of furniture, around shops full of products, through hurried, unpredictable crowds or around moving trains, buses or cars. Our eyes are well trained to search for the cues that tell us where the object is located in space – how far across, how far up and how far back, (X, Y and Z axes), as well as the dimensions of the object itself - its size, depth, texture and even weight. To trick our eyes, we need to have these cues well aligned, particularly when working on a flat, two-dimensional plane.

The easiest way to tell our eyes that an object has depth is to show part of the side of that object. Avoid sharp edges as this makes the objects look flat, like a paper toile. This is particularly the case for rounded objects - rounded edges don’t end quickly in reality so don’t paint them as hard lines. To show the side, it may be necessary to adjust your objects or your point of view slightly, otherwise, smudge your edges just enough to suggest that not all parts of the object end at the front.

While this is a quick overview, most students will find that improving these three areas - tone, colour mixing and form - will have a huge impact on their work.

Rainy Day Lighting Problems and Solutions for Artists

I thought of writing this post when I woke up this morning to an overcast day. It put a bit of a dampener (he he, pun intended) on my plans to go drawing in the Botanical Gardens. It’s not just the rain or wind that can affect our plans as artists, but also the change in light conditions – even for those artists who work entirely indoors. The light changes between sunny and rainy or overcast days can be dramatic and can affect the way we see our subjects' tones, colours and features, let alone how well we see the artwork we are creating.

The light on overcast days is very different to that found on sunny days. It is glaring and  more diffuse. Ambient light is reflected off a layer of low-lying clouds and direct light is diffused through the same cloud layer. I often notice on overcast days that I can’t do my usual trick of looking out the window as I work on my computer as it’s just so bright. 

This change in light conditions can have a huge impact on your work if you use natural light to illuminate or enhance your work, particularly if you are working on an artwork over a few days. Not only is it a different type of light, but because it is glaring and more diffuse, the dark tones and shadows that fall on your subject won’t be as strong. Any painting or drawing done on these days runs the risk of looking a little flatter without this depth of tone.

The easiest way to overcome this is to (lightly) cover your windows from the glare and place a bright light, such as a strong, adjustable desk lamp in front of those windows in the direction the sunlight usually comes from. Adjust the lamp’s position (or add more lamps) until your subject matches the work you have already laid down.

Dark rainy or stormy days have a different problem entirely. While lights and lamps will give off the same light as they would on a sunny day, the background light is reduced.Without this ambient light enhancing the mid and light tones, and with the dark tones the same or darker, the contrast, (the difference between light and dark), is reduced. Reduced contrast on the subject can mean that the artwork looks flat.

Some still life artists only work with covered windows or at night to avoid being at the mercy of changes in light. If cutting down the light in the room doesn’t suit your work pattern or living arrangements, your best option is to enhance the level of ambient light in the room.

You have probably noticed how overhead lights on dark days don't seem to help unless it's very dark, as the light is only from one direction and doesn't fill the surrounding area with light. So, rather than having one or two overhanging lights, a series of smaller lights regularly spaced will create a good replacement for sunnier days. The next best solution is to surround the space with bright lights, directed away from the subject. Bouncing lights off surrounding walls, particularly white walls, works a similar way to natural light within an interior. If you have a very large space to light up, you may like to try both techniques together.

Remember though that natural light is warm light. It is naturally more yellow or orange, whereas many electric lights, (most infamously fluorescents), are pure white or blue-toned. You've probably noticed the difference in how you look under a fluorescent (unflattering) light compared to a more golden (flattering) light, and the change on your subjects is the same. While you do want a bright light - that is, a strong light with high wattage - you need to look for yellow-toned or warm-toned lightbulbs or light filters.

We'll be adding a tutorial on lighting rigs soon if you want to check it out at blueberrybeetle.com. I aim to enlist the assistance of our local animator to give us tips so it should be fairly indepth. We should be up and running within a few weeks.

10 Things for Artists to do on a Rainy day

There are a lot of things to do inside during rainy or overcast weather, even for the most hardened plein air artist! These tips also work well when you're experiencing 'artist's block'. They'll keep moving you ahead or give you the rest you need to come back refreshed...

1.    Bright, overcast (not rainy) days are the perfect days to take photographs of your work. Set up a dry, clean place outside, (or inside if you don’t want to risk the raindrops), such as an easel or a white backdrop. Unlike flash photography, you don’t need to take the photograph on an angle, even for framed work under glass. The bright, diffuse light of an overcast day is perfect for illuminating your artwork for photos.

2.    Take the opportunity to clean up your art supplies – sharpen those pencils, give your brushes a wash (and haircut if you use oils), clean your pastels or clear up your work space. This is not time wasted – the next sunny day you’ll really appreciate having everything clean and ready to go.

3.    Spend the time solving any long-standing difficulties you have. Are there certain things that you find difficult to draw or paint, such as knees, noses, shiny fabric etc? Find artwork from an artist who is good at those things and copy what they do. It doesn’t have to be in the same medium – classical statues are one of the best ways to study these difficult areas, even from a photograph. You’ll be amazed how much you can learn by seeing how another artist has dealt with the same issue.

4.    Sharpen up on the basics, like shading the basic shapes or tonal paintings. Most artists need to review these from time to time to ‘keep their eye in', and you’ll find that as you gain experience in art, the exercises which you may have found boring as an early student become more and more relevant. Tone, and how to effectively create tone and form, are the most common problems that both students and professional artists struggle with. Many don't even see that this is the aspect of their work that needs improving.

5. Start, sort or add to your reference material collection. For example, if you paint flowers, spend the day collecting pictures of flowers either to work directly from or to get ideas from. Sort and file them into categories to make them easier to find. Otherwise you can paste them into a scrapbook or pin them onto a board to inspire you!

6. Do something else creative that isn't related to your art. Often artists think that because their job is creative, they don't need another creative outlet. But if art is your income or you are training for it to be, then it is your work. You still need another hobby that doesn't have any stress or obligation attached to it. A hobby will also re-energise you ready to paint, draw or scuplt again.

7. Draw or paint your friends and family. So often we forget to draw those close to us. This can really connect you to those you love and they usually enjoy sharing something that it such a big part of you. And whatever you create will be a wonderful momento for years to come.

8. Spend the day drawing from memory or imagination. This can really re-energise your art. Let your mind and pencil wander...

9. Look up artists working in a similar style or on a similar subject matter to yourself. Collect pictures of their work and/ or sketch their work and put both together into a scrapbook of ideas and inspiration. Sometimes these can become beautiful visual diaries that you can keep or give to those close to you.

10. Create a mandala painting or a sand meditation painting to bring peace and tranquility to your inner artist.

first post....

first post yah!