Explained – Watercolours, Washes And Tones!…
What do you mean by washes and tones? Somebody asked me this very question recently. This article should give you an understanding of the subject. Washes can create tones as you will see.
Colours abound everywhere, but in actual fact, all colour consistency is their hue, for instance lilac, and then it has tone. When you actually paint the colours you see and use, are important to your work. Hues being lighter or darker, are the tone.
Now, how to alter your hue? If you require a darker hue, you will need to add a darker colour to it, although you may have difficulty deciding which one to use. The wrong one might really alter your hue. To get a lighter hue, all you need to do, is water down your pigment a little.
You can also make a darker tone by putting one wash on top of another. With overlays of wash you can actually build up your tone. As an example, mix up a pale wash in your mixing dish.
Then, on a rectangular sheet of paper, lay a flat wash all over it and then leave it to dry. Continue using the same wash that you mixed previously, starting about a quarter of the way down, lay a second wash over the first. Same again, leave it to dry.
So, now you may want to make your tone darker, so you need to add a little more paint to your dish you are mixing in. Now your overlay needs to go from the top of your page to half way down your sheet and then dry out. Add yet a bit more paint to your mixture to darken it.
Hooray! We have reached the last layer. This time you can wash from top to bottom of the sheet and let it dry. This will leave you with four tones.
You can lay a graded wash on dry paper, but you need to work fairly fast for this. You need to have your board so that it is slightly sloping, so that your colours will always be at the end of your brushes strokes. Then you should be satisfied with the result.
To clarify this, go and mix up a dark, blue shade of a wash. Then lay several bands of this dark wash with a size 12 brush across the top of your paper.
So, to carry on, add around five brushes full of water to your mixing dish and add several more bands of colour. Now, dipping your brush in some fresh water, continue painting the rest of your paper, with the colour fading on the way down.
I will explain now how to do a graded wash, on wet paper. Make sure you have clean water and a clean brush. A bit similar to a wash, but wet the paper all over. It needs to be moist, but not soaked.
Then mix up a dark colour wash and lay it across the top third of your paper from the top. Then, add some water to your mixing dish, and lay the wash over the second third of your paper.
Dilute the colour mix by adding more water and carry on with the wash to the foot of the page and leave to dry.
