TECHNIQUE
CASE STUDY 1
Rob Dudley, Low Tide on the Yealm,
watercolour on paper, 46x30cm
This Devon landscape painting (1) didn’t turn out
as I’d hoped. The design seemed to work and the
inspiration appeared strong enough: my focus was
the shapes and shadows of boats left high and dry
by the receding tide. But something wasn’t right.
On closer examination, I felt the problem lay in
the tonal distribution within the painting. Taking a
black-and-white photo of my painting (2) confirmed
my suspicions. I could see that the tones used for
the boats were too similar to those used on the
shore, and they were not standing out to the
degree that I wanted. However, as the second
black-and-white photo (3) shows, I was able to
rescue the final painting (4) with some strong dark
washes and minor adjustments to the foreground.done with the aim of selecting the
correct format for the work – portrait,
landscape, square or otherwise.
However sometimes paintings will
work within a particular format but
not at a particular size. A brush mark
in one painting might represent a
hedgerow as the scale of mark fits
within the size and format of the
paper used, but on a larger piece
of paper it might have little if any
relevance or meaning.
Try painting on different sizes of
paper, analysing how the marks and
washes are altered by the scale of
the paper used. Size matters.
An appreciation of the relationship
between image to paper size will
likely lead to better choices when
choosing your paper or canvas.
Over the years, I have saved some
old picture mounts that I have cut into
two L-shapes. I find them useful to
move over unsuccessful paintings
and see how potential crops might
look in order to discover whether
I could have composed the painting
more effectively. Sometimes the
crops reveal unexpected and
interesting compositions.
In using the L-shapes on your failed
painting, you may find a successful
image that could be cut from it.
POINT 4 TONES
Have you evenly distributed the
shadows and highlights?
One of my guiding principles when
painting is the old adage “Tone does
1
2 3
4
Artists & Illustrators 75