I love what Sue has been doing in the Oil Pastel Classroom, so I decided to take a page from her book and do something like it over here next door. I thought I’d do a series of threads that will be posted every couple of weeks. Exploring Soft Pastels—ESP

I thought I’d start with the basics. So today we’ll tone paper… Pretty basic, huh?

The idea isn’t just for me to show you, but for you to try it, too! You learn best when you get in there and give it a go. This week you’ll see something fairly basic, but I’d love it if you’d try this technique and take a couple of pictures to show us all.

So—the assignment this week is to tone a piece of Wallis paper and use it for a painting. Not a tough one to do! Just starting you off easy… In case you don’t have or cannot get the Wallis, I’ve also given you an exercise that will help you think about ground colors and how they affect your paintings, which can be done on any paper.

Okay, here’s the first one! I hope you find it helpful…

Because Wallis is so dazzlingly white and bright many artists prefer toning it to begin with. In order to lay down an even tone of color on pure white Wallis paper, without using water or any other wet media that may warp the paper and require stretching, try using a foam house painting brush. One advantage to toning the paper this way is that any charcoal drawing done on top of it erases with ease, and if you choose to wipe out part of the image you can recover some of this base color.

This works on either the Wallis Professional or Museum grade paper. Museum grade seems to look somewhat more even in color, but in the end both work equally well. First tape down the paper all the way around, so that you can lay the board flat and not have the paper move around.

Next you’ll use pastels to tone the paper. This is a good place to use harder, less expensive pastels like NuPastels or other cheaper brands like Mungyo–but any pastel will do. Put down two or three light layers of color using the open, flat side of a stick of pastel. You don’t need to fill up the grain of the paper. It just wastes valuable pastel and will be rubbed off in the process. I usually suggest beginning with one color for all the layers, but if you want to be adventurous you can certainly layer various colors over one another or lay them side by side for a different effect.

Now, hold the foam brush flat and scrub like crazy! You won’t damage the surface of Wallis doing this. The tough abrasive takes a lot of abuse. Scrub hard! I usually thoroughly rub in all directions while the board is flat so that I can be sure to push most of the pastel particles down into the surface. When done right the end effect is an overall solid tone of one color—not too splotchy or scumbled looking, and not so thick that it looks like you already painted a layer.

You can also use the leftover pastel dust most of us find in the trays of our easels. I don’t know why it is, but my leftover dust always seems to become a green-gray color, even when I use all kinds of colors in my paintings. At least it’s a good neutral color for most other landscapes. If you want to give this a try, all you have to do is dip the flat side of your foam brush into the dust and scrub away.

Before beginning to paint on this toned surface, use the foam brush to further sweep the paper while it’s upright on your easel, in order to remove any color that might contaminate your painting. When done this surface can be any color you choose, it will not dirty your pastels, and you can even wipe out part of the entire painting, recovering a version of the original toned color for another painting.

Here are two layers of the same color in place with the foam brush in action.

Here’s the look of the overall tone.

The charcoal wipes away easily. (I use Grumbacher EXTRA soft THIN vine charcoal for this–not just soft vine…)

I did a quick painting on the toned paper just so I can show you…

You can see that the colors are not contaminated, but are clear and bright.

You can quickly and completely wipe away part.

Or wipe away the whole image! This is the same piece of paper, with the image completely wiped away. The paper is then ready to be reused, just slightly darker than the original.

Many students ask me about what color to tone their paper for different paintings. There are as many different answers to that as there are people doing it, so my suggestion is that you try different things and see what happens. Here’s one experiment you might do.

Cut three 9×12” or smaller pieces of Wallis paper. Make three experiments with different colored grounds. I suggest you tone each piece as shown above (even the white one—just tone it white!), if you want to be able to erase the charcoal or the painting easily. (NOTE: YOU CAN USE ANY PAPER FOR THIS EXERCISE—JUST MAKE SURE TO USE THREE DIFFERENT COLORED GROUNDS.)

A. First experiment on a very pale, white or almost-white ground.

B. Next tone your paper a very dark color—or try black.

C. Then use a piece of paper that is a vivid medium value color. (Or try several.)

Paint using any image you like, but paint the same image on each different colored ground. Do not use the exact same pastel colors—it’s best if you let the color relationships inspire you to try different things. Don’t keep the paintings you’ve already done in sight or you might be tempted to try to make them look the same.

See what happens when you put colors on top of white, analyze what changes on the dark ground, and have some fun with the bright color. The idea is to be playful and learn at the same time, like a kid. Remember: the photograph is NOT the goal! Let the color of your ground give you new ideas, new ways to combine colors, and respond to it as you paint.

If you post any of these paintings here, be sure to identify the ground color (maybe shoot a photo of the paper before you start.)

These snow paintings are both 9×12”. Number one was done on paper I toned a very pale gray-white. Number two is on a dark purple—almost purple-black—tone. (The darks in the weeds are warm dark browns, not black, by the way.)

Snow #1

Snow #2

I did these a while ago as a demonstration for my class, which is why I didn’t show photos of the toned paper. :rolleyes: I haven’t done the bright colored ground version yet, but if I can find the photo I’ll do one and post it here later on.

If you have any questions, feel free to post them. I’ll do my best to answer them for you, and maybe others will have some input or ideas. There’s no ‘right’ way to do this—so if you discover something cool, share it with us. Try things—see what happens and let us know.

If there are others of you who want to teach something, just let me know. I’d love to share this series with anyone who has technical knowledge they want to share! I really hope this can become a repository of ideas we can all look back on.

And if you have certain technical questions you’d like to see addressed here please let me know. If I can’t do it, maybe I can find someone who can, or already has.

Okay—have fun toning and painting and I look forward to seeing your work!

Deborah