1st Still Life Tone Painting

I’d forgotten how much fun tone (value) painting is. It’s sketching with a brush. In some ways even easier than charcoal or pencil, because you can overwrite any lines at will. I started with a yellow ochre ground on the canvas. I mixed a slightly darker yellow ochre tone to begin drawing with, sketching with a size 6 Blick Matsre sythetic flat brush.

My first pro brush was a Windsor-Newton flat 6. I have a lot of Rosemary & Co. oil brushes I have not yet tried, but none are that same flat short bristle, I realized yesterday (that I’ll remedy). Using this flat 6 is dabbling with the paint, a line can be maybe 4" before the tip of the brush runs out of paint. But it works.

This is round 1, maybe an hour and fifteen minutes. The shapes are close, the values are beginning to come into place. From here, I’ll refine the values throughout, bring in more of the lighter tones, and even highlights, and probably add pigment to darken the yellow ochre a touch. But first I’ll work as far as I am able with the range yellow ochre natively has in value.

The photo at this point is a little different in angle and perpective. Once I have the tone painting where I want it I can use the photograph just for colors and some reference for the light. I’ll take a second photo of the still life closer to the proportions and placement I’m actually working with. Once the tone painting has the values and edges in place, color should come next, with values brought in.

The lighting is 5500K, so, daylight. The shadows should be slightly translucent and a bit warmer than the lighter values. That a photograph won’t truly show anyway, that’s artistic knowledge the camera lacks. Once the tone painting is done, I’ll set up another still life, still objects, still non-perishable fruit. Flowers will come later, they are way more ephemeral, I want to be quicker and more competent at the tone piece before I bring them in. I’d like to be able to finish the tone painting in a sitting (doable, just rusty these days in oils).

—spence