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~Click on image to enlarge~
both - 8"x10" Oil on gessoed matboard
Here are two examples of the "toned" colors I use instead of painting on white canvas. The gray here (on right) appears a bit darker then it actually is.
In the past, I've used the color Red Light to tone canvas for landscape and figure painting. It gives a "glow" around objects and makes blues and greens read differently then just on a white surface.
The interesting thing is, the red background (on left) is in the same "VALUE" range as painting on WHITE.
The Gray on the right is what I'm used to using for almost ALL the pastel work I do. It "reads" as being a "MIDDLE VALUE" .....so, on a scale 1 to 10.....it's definitely a 5.
After attending artist John Preston's Plein Air Workshop , I've been applying a clear primer
(Art Spectrum's Colourfix Multi-media Fine Tooth Primer found at Dick Blick) to the panels I use that are brown.....the same color as cardboard. The"VALUE" range is the same as using the Gray.(Yep...#5)
In ALL my workshops, I tend to be a Drill Sargent....always repeating about the importance of breaking everything down into 5 basic values.....Light / Light-Medium / Medium / Medium-Dark / Dark. (with the most repeated being "Light/Medium/Dark".) Any 2 Dimensional work MUST have these to create the illusion of form.
So, I thought it would be interesting to show here, how different an object can seem based on the value range it is painted on. (I used the same color mixes for both paintings).
