Luisa’s Scrapbooking IdeasCapture Family Memories With Fun Scrapbooking Ideas

A significant part of any painting, whether a pet portrait or abstract picture, is the relationship in colour and tone. Tone is the degree of light and shade in the picture, it exists independently of colour and can be measured on a scale which progresses from white to black. The perception of colour is created by the eye’s response to light in different wavelengths; pure colour exists only as light, and as far as painters are concerned, all colours are also modified by tonal value. Pigments are not pure colours, and their range and behaviour is totally different, so painters can only hope to simulate the true colours of nature, by skillful use of the palette and visual tricks. Paintings are not mirrors, but a visual short-hand of reality, which only make sense if key colours, tones and outlines have an internal logic and consistency.

Controlling light
Since colour and tone both rely on light, it is a great help if both the lighting of the subject, and the surroundings in which the painter works, is controlled. Portrait painters usually prefer to light their subjects from only one direction, enabling them to become familiar and easily predict the way the light falls on a face. Others will favour painting at specific times of day when the lighting conditions are an average quality, and shadow lengths are suited the painters style. An alternative technique is to diffuse light, which softens the light and removes harsh shadows. To accomplish this, paper saturated with drying oil and allowed to dry can be used to cover windows, or pasted onto screens to create the desired outcome. If you use pale coloured paper it also has the benefit of harmonizing the colours in the subject. This is also a useful trick if you are having to paint in a room which is subject to full sun. By contrast, poorly lit studios should be painted white to reflect as much light as possible back into the room.

Using a Claude glass
A Claude glass is a black-coated mirror used to assess the tonal relationships in a painting. Being black, it denies the colours in the subject reducing them to tonal values. This then makes it simple to veiw the tonal relationships in the picture with any errors quickly being shown. You can make your own Claude glass by coating one side of a piece of glass with black paint or by putting a piece of smoked glass in front of a mirror. For landscape scenes, it is useful to have a Claude glass with a curved surface, this lets you to consider the whole scene at once.

Your palette
Least of all, it is just as important that you know and understand the colours you use on your palette. This will only come through experience, but to be a good colourist an artist has to know how colours relate to each other, how each individual colour reacts when blended and how well it performs as tints. Expert colourists exploit preferred colour effects, tending to use a limited palette of colours but knowing and understanding them perfectly.