76 Artists&Illustrators
TECHNIQUE
all the hard work, yet colour gets
all the praise”. The successful
distribution of tones throughout a
painting will often be the single most
important element in the success
or otherwise of the artwork.
A poor tonal balance can mean that
the eye is not led around the image
as you intended or can even be drawn
away from the focal point.
Less experienced artists often
have a fear of adding rich darks, but
they are necessary to help emphasise
the highlights – too narrow a tonal
range may make an image appear
limp and bland.
Taking a photograph of your artwork
and converting it to greyscale can be
a very useful way to identify areas
that need some adjustment from
a tonal perspective, either through
lifting out unwanted paint with a
damp brush or sponge, or adding
further washes of colour.
I’ve saved many a painting with the
judicious application of a strong tonal
wash in just the right place.
- COLOUR
Have you chosen the right pigments
to use?
The wrong choice of colours can often
be the downfall of a painting. Colours
that don’t sit well together, or clash
when not intended, might be the
most obvious and visible problems.
However, the wrong choice of
colours can have a limiting effect
on the choice of techniques within
a painting too. A technique that
requires a colour to be lifted to create
the desired effect, for instance, will
prove almost impossible if a pigment
with a high staining quality is used.
When assessing the work of my
students, a poor colour choice is
often one of the most difficult
problems to put right – and quite
often this will result in the painting
having to be remade.
In order to prevent this, it is
essential to know your chosen
pigments. Play with them first,
discover for yourself which colours
stain and which lift easily, get to know
whether a colour is transparent or
opaque, whether it granulates or not.
A better understanding of the
CASE STUDY 2
Rob Dudley, Just Beyond Harford,
watercolour on paper, 46x30cm
I came across a lane on Dartmoor near to my studio
that had so many of the elements that I like to paint,
yet my original watercolour sketch (5) still proved to
be rather disappointing.
I felt like the format and scale weren’t right, so I
used two L-shaped corners of mountboard to assess
various potential crops and formats (6). Doing this
often presents some unexpected results and I was
able to pinpoint that the problem lay in the original
format. On reflection, the elongated portrait format
of the original sketch was far too tall and narrow.
It had taken the focus away from the farm buildings
and gave too much attention to the moor beyond.
The squarer format (7) I settled upon helped to
emphasise the huddle of farm buildings at the end
of the lane without the distant moor dominating.qualities of each pigment will result
in better choices when painting.- TECHNIQUE
Have you applied the paint in a
suitable way?
Reviewing an artwork can quickly
reveal that it needs to be done again.
However, even at this point, a trip to
the bin might be rather premature as
an unsuccessful painting still has
much to offer.
Often the mistakes in a painting
can be down to the failure of chosen
techniques: a drybrush mark that was
too wet, a wash applied before the
previous one had dried.
One might not be able to rectify
these mistakes within the particular
painting, but if one identifies them,
and practices them too, there is less
chance of repeating the mistakes in
subsequent paintings.
In fact, the offending painting offers
the perfect platform to practice and
discover new techniques and effects.
Try for example adding some pen
work, scratching out highlights with a
scalpel, or experimenting with pencil
or pastel overlays. These techniques
can be subsequently incorporated
into later paintings, keeping things
fresh and interesting.
Rob is the co-author of Painting Trees,
published by Crowood Press.
http://www.moortoseaarts.co.uk
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