STILL LIFE WORKSHOP
1. Tonal Values
Ask An Artist’s PETER KEEGAN presents a new three-part still life painting workshop, beginning with an in-depth look at how to identify and capture accurate tones
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hen struggling for artistic inspiration, it is often the simple everyday scenes, such as the humble still life, that can present us with the most interesting and challenging artistic problems. From a bowl of shiny fresh fruit to the vegetables on the kitchen chopping board, the still life can present you with all the painterly fundamentals that can elevate the simple to the sublime. Over the next three issues I shall be taking you through the various stages of a still life painting with a different focus each time. In this first article, we shall look at tonal values. Tone really does underpin everything in a good painting and, for me, the key to successful representational painting is the correct depiction and rendering of tonal values. Simply put, tone is the relative lightness or darkness of a colour: all colours have a tonal value that fits somewhere on a scale from light to dark. Some colours are tonally very dark, almost black, such as Alizarin Crimson, whilst others are very light, such as Lemon Yellow. To illustrate this, look at these two colour wheels on the right. The one on the left of the diagram is in full colour, whereas the one on the right shows desaturated versions of those same colours. They are in effect the pure tonal values of each colour. When thinking of tonal values, 68 Artists
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I imagine I’m looking at the world through a black-and-white TV screen. Suddenly a world of colour is simplified, and it is those whites, greys and blacks that give the world depth, shape and form. That is the secret to understanding tonal values. If you have created a painting that looks a little flat, the problem is often a tonal one; adjust your values by making your darks darker, your lights lighter, or a combination of the two and you will achieve that greater sense of depth for which you are striving.
How to see tonal values So how does one see tonal values? Luckily this is straightforward – and you don’t need a special tool or expensive technical equipment. The simple answer is: squint. Squinting is possibly the most useful technique for a painter and something I wish I’d known about years ago. I do it all the time when I paint nowadays, so much so that
I find myself squinting at things when I’m not even in the studio. The less you see, the easier it’ll be. As you squint, your eyelashes come together and start to take away the clarity in front of you. The world becomes fuzzy and hazy, as if looking at something on a foggy day. As well as clarity, squinting removes strong colour and thus it becomes easier to observe how light or dark things really are. It takes a little time to get used to this new way of “seeing” the world but, once you’ve cracked it, it can unlock a new way of painting and understanding how tone really works. If you wear glasses, you might even want to take them off. I wear glasses to read, drive and watch TV, but never to look at a subject when I paint. Sometimes I don’t even need to squint as my poor vision gives me the same results. I will still pop my glasses back on to see my palette or ensure I’m sipping from a coffee cup and not a turps pot though.
Tonal values of colours Lightest Darkest
Lightest Darkest
