Still Life Workshop

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

When 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, 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

Darkest Lightest

Darkest Lightest

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DEMO

Subject

For this painting, I chose a bowl of sweet, cherry tomatoes. In the photo [top left], notice the clear direction of light cast across the subject from the top right-hand side. This is essential to provide a range of tonal values: highlights, mid-tones and shadows.

The better lit your subject is, the easier it is to paint so make sure you are working from a scene or image that gives you all that wonderful, tonal information. Avoid working from anything lit straight on, as this will generally appear flatter as a result.

Materials

• Paints Titanium White, Yellow Lake, Yellow Ochre, Scarlet Lake, Alizarin Crimson, Transparent Oxide Red and Ultramarine Blue, all Michael Harding oil colours • Brushes Rosemary & Co. Ivory short flat brushes, sizes 2, 4, 6 and 10 • Support Plywood board, 21x21cm, primed with acrylic primer • Low-odour solvent • Rags

Process

1I applied a wash of Transparent Oxide Red diluted with a little solvent to the board. I then wiped away the greasy residue of the oil

paint to give a smooth, thin and even coverage. This acted as a perfect mid-tone to paint on.

Using a size 2 brush and dilute Transparent Oxide Red, I drew the placement of the bowl, as that provided the composition’s main shape and structure. To do this, I marked out the very outer points of the bowl (the furthest right and down). I then joined up those points using straight lines only, avoiding the temptation to curve them – curves are hard to get right, whereas straight lines are much easier.

2I started drawing the tomatoes, beginning with one of the “main” ones that I felt was closest to me. Much like the drawing of the bowl, I established the furthest outer points of the tomato first and then joined them up using small, straight lines. I also gave an indication of where the tonal values appeared with a dark shadow line and highlight indication.

Once the first tomato was drawn, I moved to the next dominant one, then the next, and so on until I had them all established. Finally, I drew the two escapee tomatoes and the shadows they cast on the table.

3To help achieve a greater sense of shape and form, I lightly shaded in the darkest areas using the dilute Transparent Oxide Red mixture. It is important that this shading is not applied thickly, as it shouldn't mix into the layers of paint applied on top.

Notice how even with just a single colour, I was able to achieve a few different tonal shades. For example, the tone inside the bowl was darker (using a little more paint) compared to the shadow under the bowl (a little less paint). Already, the painting was starting to look three-dimensional – this is the power of tonal values.

4With the drawing completed, it was time for the actual painting part. I decided to paint each fruit using what is known as the “insideout method”: starting with the bright, main, bold colour in each tomato. I achieved this by mixing Scarlet Lake and Yellow Lake. Then using a size 10 flat brush, I established the first main colour on each tomato in a single stroke. For the darker tomatoes, 3

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I mixed in a little Alizarin Crimson and a dash of Ultramarine Blue to give me the dark purple shadows. Note that I kept all the strokes straight, not curved, to follow the form of the tomato. Also see how I painted slightly beyond the lines of the drawing – this helps the tomatoes to merge into their surroundings.

5I moved on to the lighter tones of the tomatoes. To achieve these, I mixed more Yellow Lake into the red mixture, with a little Titanium White added, getting paler on the tomatoes at the top of the painting where the light was at its strongest. I was constantly squinting at my subject to make sure I was describing the right tone as well as the correct colour.

6I began to fill in the gaps between the tomatoes, which are usually the darkest shadows in a painting like this. I achieved these darks by mixing Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine Blue, adding a little Transparent Oxide Red where needed to get the desired tone. When I applied the paint with a smaller, size 6 brush, I made sure the brushstrokes overlapped a little, providing soft blends or “transitions” from one form to another.

7After blocking in the fruit, I started to establish the colours of the bowl. I did this by mixing Yellow Ochre, Ultramarine Blue and a little Titanium White or Transparent Oxide Red where I needed the colour to be lighter or darker. To enhance the orangey-red of the fruit, I made some of the marks of the bowl bluer than they really appeared. The blue-orange complementary balance was a

welcome colour relationship in the painting. I also established the shadow under the bowl using the same colour mixture.

8To complete the block-in, I moved towards the light background (the lightest tone in the set-up) which I achieved by using Titanium White and a dash of the shadow colour mix from the previous stage. I made sure I was applying this background colour thickly, so that it did not mix with the edges of the tomatoes or bowl. If your brush picks up a bit of the orange or blue paint, simply wipe the bristles on a rag or paper – do not wash it.

9With the whole painting blocked in, I began finding the areas that needed fine tuning, softening, or restating. I made these adjustments with a size 4 brush, keeping it clean by wiping it on a rag.

I started by applying the highlights on the fruit. I broke them down into three different tones of yellow-orange, with increasing amounts of Titanium White where I needed them to be lighter. A little spot of pure Titanium White was used for the very lightest point on the tomatoes. I also picked out the pale grey rim of the bowl.

10 I worked on some of the harder edges, where two different brushstrokes came together, to slightly soften them. I focused particularly on the areas where two very similar tonal values came together. I softened them by using a clean size 4 brush and very gently moving the paint already on the surface. I like to keep a balance of both hard and soft edges across a painting, so there is an interesting range of marks and brushstrokes to keep the eye engaged.

At this stage, I like to double check that I’ve achieved what I set out to do, which means even more squinting. I wanted this painting to achieve a strong sense of shape and tone, almost feeling like you could pick up one of those tomatoes from the bowl. I also wanted to show the full tonal range from dark, hidden shadows to bright, little reflections on the tomato skins. Once I was happy that I had achieved this, I put down the brushes. www.peterkeegan.com 9