{"id":607,"date":"2006-02-01T14:19:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-01T14:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/?p=607"},"modified":"2022-01-31T14:20:23","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T14:20:23","slug":"its-all-done-with-tone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/2006\/02\/01\/its-all-done-with-tone\/","title":{"rendered":"IT’S ALL DONE WITH TONE<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How many times have you watched a magician pull a rabbit or other such impossibility ‘out of the hat’ and heard someone say ‘it’s all done with mirrors’? Leastways, that used to be a common declaration when referring to the magician’s art; these days, it’s more likely to be something like ‘it’s all done with computers’, or ‘it’s a camera trick’. What is important is that we freely acknowledge the art of illusion – we know that a deftly manouvered slight-of-hand is often all it really takes to make us believe the improbable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In watercolour, we are faced with the same problem; how to make people believe in a reality that simply does not exist!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major challenges to the painter is this: We are three-dimensional beings living in a three-dimensional world. When we look into a landscape in the real world, we are aware of space, that invisible element that exists, although we cannot see it, between us and what we see before us. Objects look real to us because they display all the same characteristics as ourselves (either this is true, or actually I’m wrong and all of you and the world out there really IS a figment of my imagination – eek!). How then do we best represent this three-dimensional world, and all the objects within it, on a two-dimensional surface?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The solutions are many and varied. As visual artists there are several tricks we can employ in order to pull off this great illusion. Aerial Perspective<\/strong> is one (making distant objects lighter and cooler in appearance), Linear Perspective<\/strong> is another (things further away from us appear smaller and closer together). I think, though, that the big answer to this can be wrapped up in one word – tone<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tonal values, tonal contrast, tonal variation and graduation. These are the things that are more likely to make or break our painting. A painting can be produced using only one or two colours (in fact, too many colours in a painting is likely to look cluttered and uncomfortable – jangly even), but the colours you use are relatively insignificant when compared to your use of tone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People who know me well will know that this is something I tend to bash on about rather alot (probably to the point of tedium), but I consider it to be of major importance. Imagine having an internal colour control, with which we can conveniently remove all our colour perception. Squinting at objects is an undignified but close-approximation to what things look like in this way. Think of how TV used to be before the advent of colour screens (or The Wizard of Oz – “We’re not in Kansas anymore Toto”), hopefully you’ll see where I’m going with this, without thinking too unkindly of me. Serious photographers have always known that black and white photography brings a dimension to the world of graphic interpretation that colour does not. Of course we respond to colour in a whole variety of ways, and as painters, we can convey a whole gamut of moods and emotions by choosing our colour combinations carefully, but however you feel about a subject – don’t disregard the importance of tone!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve tried to illustrate all this with a new Close-ups<\/strong> feature in the On-line Watercolour Workshop<\/strong> this month – specifically with regards to painting trees. Remember, trees are not two-dimensional – when they’re winter bare, they can be at their most interesting, but also their most challenging. I’ve noticed the tendency of many students to just paint a tree trunk with branches sprouting out from left to right and upwards without considering those awkward branches that point towards you. Quite simply, careful use of tone is required to create the impression of branches leaning towards you. By placing a dark tone next to the point at which a branch joins the tree can help to ‘lift’ it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How many times have you watched a magician pull a rabbit or other such impossibility ‘out of the hat’ and heard someone say ‘it’s all done with mirrors’? Leastways, that used to be a common declaration when referring to the magician’s art; these days, it’s more likely to be something like ‘it’s all done with computers’, or ‘it’s a camera...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tips","category-watercolour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":608,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions\/608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/artstuff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}