hello and welcome back to art bites today we're going to be looking at tone tone is quite a simple
visual element to understand but it also is one that can be used to great effect in a wide variety
of ways tone refers to how light or dark something is so tone can refer to black and white and all
the gray tones in between it can also refer to how light or darker color might appear in real life
tone is created by the way light falls upon an object the parts of an object in which the light
is the strongest is called the highlight and the parts of the object where the light is the weakest
or the darkest these areas are called shadows the areas in between those sort of muddy gray
tones are the mid-tones the middle tones tone can be used for a range of effects so it can be used
like it's being used here in MC Escher's work for the to create the illusion of form it can also be
used to create a particular atmosphere like this work of Monet's or to suggest depth and distance
such as in a landscape painting contrast refers to the difference between tones so in this painting
by Claude Monet the lightest and darkest tones are quite similar so it can be described as a
low contrast image this tends to create images which are more subtle and perhaps more calming
whereas we've compared this to one of Monet's other works in his haystack haystack series and
we can see this image has a greater or a higher contrast because the light and dark are likes
and darks are much more different this creates a much more dramatic image before I'm going to
talk about how we're going to create tone I want to talk about the way we hold a pencil so normally
when we're writing we hold a pencil quite close to the tip and it gives us the ability to create
those tiny swirling motions that are text however when we're working in art it is often easier to
hold the pencil roughly in the middle so what you can do is if you move your pencil around
to find the balancing point she's around about if I just move it a bit further out there and if you
grip the pense from that point that will give you a much more fluid motion if you hold the
pencil much closer to the end you can create much softer tones because when you are working with
your pencil using that very tip it will be much gentler because you are not pressing down as hard
what we're going to create today is we're going to create a tonal scale now tonal scales are quite a
good way to practice using tone within artwork particularly if you're working with a pencil or
with paint now to create a tonal scale will have white at one ends and that'll be our lightest tone
and we're gonna leave that white because sometimes when you're drawing you need to leave things paper
white I'm gonna work our way through to the grays right through to black at the other end so having
left one end paper white remember we need to keep that white we're getting gonna create our
lightest possible gray so I'm gonna hold my pencil as close to the end of the pencil as
I can so I'm pressing down with the least amount of pressure possible and I'm just gonna start to
fill in this area with the lightest possible gray I'm barely pressing down at all and I'm trying to
make these little swirling motions rather than back and forth motions because that will help
to blend the pencil into what into itself what you shouldn't be doing at this point is blending
that with your finger because what will happen then is not able to get graphite all over your
finger but you'll end up with quite smudged work and quite inconsistent work once you've done that
first that lightest of lights you're then gonna do the same across the next box and you know
work that way till you filled the whole box and then after that you will then go back over the
top and build up a second layer of tone on top of that first one to make it's slightly darker
repeating this process notice I'm bringing my fingers further down my pencil this allows me
to put slightly more pressure on and I'm still keeping those small swirling motions because it
helps me to blend that pencil into itself so I don't end up with those really streaky lines the
often see you'll notice you can see some of the texture of the wood coming through as I'm drawing
from my table underneath so now working our way further down the pencil applying more pressure
and I'm just going back to any areas that I don't feel are dark enough or
aren't consistent finally working my row right down to the tip of the pencil this
is the point that I'm really pressing quite hard there's a possibility at this point that
I might start to break the blades in my pencil what's fine that does happen but I'm pressing
down really heavily now but I'm still trying to maintain the consistency of my tone I'm
trying to keep it all the same I'm going back over areas I don't think I'm quite happy with
now we've got white paper white through to our lightest Gray's right the way through to our
black right at the end our next technique is gonna be scribbling now you'll often get told
in school not to scribble this is one of those few opportunities you get to scribble properly now to
do scribbling to apply tone we're applying a reasonable amount of pressure and we're
leaving lots of gaps in between our marks I'm just building that up and the darker we want it to get
there's fewer gaps we news and the more pressure we create now scribbling when we're using it to
apply tone we can use scribbling to apply tone for really textured objects so if I was drawing a tree
I don't want to get the texture of that tree or if I want to drag it the texture of something
with hair I could use scribbling to achieve that texture whilst also achieving that tone so in my
final one I'm going really quite heavily and I'm trying to fill as much of the space as I possibly
can but still leaving some of those gaps try and keep some of that texture that is scribbling so we
still have our paper white we're going to our lighter versions right through to our darker
versions again our next technique is hatching so again we're gonna leave the first block empty
because the first block is always white and we're gonna start to work with these parallel lines now
this is something you can do in pen as I'm doing here so it's much more flexible methods than
something like our smooth blending which is what we started with like scribbling hatching relies on
the amount of white space available between your lines so I'm gonna leave quite a bit of space and
as I want to get darker I'm gonna start to bring my lines closer and closer together and I'll get
more and more of them because this is something you can do in pen this is often a technique you
might seen used in illustration perhaps in comic books as well also with cross hatching you'll
get the same so we'll be discussing that in a moment so you can see as I'm starting to get my
lines closer and closer together and getting more and more of them in it begins to create
this impression that it is darker compared to those earlier values where they're more spread
out so our next technique is cross hatching cross-hatching again relies on parallel lines
but as the name suggests cross-hatched lines cross across each other so we're gonna leave that first
base white again because again we're focusing on the white space in between our lines we need
to leave an area without lines so I'm crossing my lines over and just like hatching as I build
those lines up I'm trying to build up more of them and trying to remove that space in between
them and as I try and get this darker and darker I'll get less and less whitespace and more and
more lines now with cross hatching and hatching your lines don't have to reach the edges of the
paper all the time sometimes it's appropriate particularly depending on the shape and the
texture of the object you're trying to portray to actually not have all your lines meeting the same
end so some of my lines are a little bit shorter a little bit longer than others and that's okay
notice as I'm doing this I'm lifting my pen off the paper each time if I keep my pen on
the paper I end up with quite a zigzaggy line which I want to avoid and wanting separate
parallel lines so that concludes our video on tone this week so remember tone is all
about how light or how dark something is contrast is about the difference between
those tones and we've had four different ways of creating tone smooth blending
scribbling hatching and cross-hatching to keep up to date with our latest videos make
sure you hit the subscribe button and as always thank you very much for watching