This project focused on tonal studies – learning to use the entire span from very light to very dark tones. There was also a shift from small and simple still life arrangements to the more complex topic of interior views.

Exercise: Composition of an interior

The task was to paint an interior view with a single dark colour. The composition was to entail a large area of mid tones, plus elements in very light tones and very dark tones.

I decided on a view towards the window, in the room that opens to the balcony. I began with a pencil drawing right on the watercolour paper. Instead of a quick sketch, I got carried away and made a detailed drawing, which took me two or three hours to complete… I had doubts whether I’d be able to build a generous watercolour painting on this groundwork, but I’m quite satisfied with the later results. There are too many details but the painting is less overworked than previous still life studies, despite using layers.

My main difficulty was that the light situation constantly changed over the day. It had been cloudy while I was drawing. I began painting at around half past 2 in the afternoon and since it is winter I knew that I had at most two hours left if I wanted to use daylight. The beginnings were quite ok but when I came to the darker tones, it had become so dark in the room that the contrasts were entirely different from those when I started. So I painted some darker areas out of memory and then left the painting as it was.

Problematic areas are the heap of things on top of the bookcase to the right – I couldn’t remember how this looked like and improvised but not very successfully. There are some errors in the shapes of the cat scratch tree in the middle area but I realized this only when I already had painted the main shapes so couldn’t correct anymore.

The windows were quite complicated and I would have liked to have more time to analyse the gradation of tones, but I became stressed by the vanishing daylight so they are a bit hastily made. I quite like how I painted the plant to the left, and also the sofa with its cushions and the light areas on its top. I also like how I captured the afternoon sunlight that shone into the room. I think this is achieved through the very light tones for the sitting areas in the cat tree and for the sofa, plus the light and shadow on the floor. I also like that my cat Micky is depicted. It was a nice occasion because he took a nap on the sofa while I was drawing the outline sketch. Later he went away so the colouring is from memory.

With this study, I used a separate paper sheet to try out the brush load before painting, I found this quite helpful, although I made less use of it than I thought I would. Before beginning to paint, I made a photograph of the view because I anticipated that the painting would take me longer than just the two hours I had with daylight. It might be an option for future paintings to continue from the photograph as an aide-memoire for tonal values. But I did not use the photo here and I think this results in a slightly inconsistent tonal distribution because shadows became more and more intense as the afternoon passed.

Guided reflections

How did you respond to the challenge of scaling up from still life to an interior?

Actually I had made this transition already in the exercise on drawing and painting because I chose an interior view as my first subject. I do remember how difficult I found this, because the elements of the composition are much larger and need to be scaled down to fit the paper area. The effect of space is also quite different – it is not about centimeters between relatively small objects, but the area can span easily several meters. I anticipate the difference implied in depicting landscapes!

How did you cope with selecting important features? Did you have difficulty filtering out detail?

I did a very detailed drawing to prepare the painting, but focused entirely on line, not on tonal areas. I tried to maintain the same level of detail over the entire view. But even with the many details I included, there was a significant degree of selection. Overall I’m quite satisfied with the level of detail included in the painting, the problem was more that the areas were incorrectly worked out due to my stress with vanishing daylight.

Has your ability to ‚read‘ and interpret tonal values improved with practice?

Yes I think so. Especially the restriction to a single colour permits to focus on tonal values and I found this quite helpful.

Has this exercise developed your sense of the importance of tone in composition?

I wasn’t aware of it but nevertheless I’d answer with yes, because I was surprised by the effect of incoming sunlight I achieved through the light areas. I also realize that the very dark areas are important to give depth to the composition

Exercise: Dramatic Interiors

 

Dramatic interior 1: From light into dark (left)

The task was to paint a monochrome interior view from one room into another, where the two connected rooms should have contrasting lighting. I chose the view from the kitchen into the hall. The kitchen was light, while I dimmed the lighting in the hall.

I chose an A3 sheet, smaller than for the previous interior because I intended to use a portrait format and felt that the larger sheet would appear too empty, as there was much less detail to include. I made an initial sketch focusing on line which I found successful. I noticed that I went into a slight three-point perspective, with the right outer contour of the kitchen door at an outward angle. First I thought I needed to correct this but then decided to keep it in the drawing to see how the impression would be in the final painting.

I chose prussian blue for this painting and began with a light wash over the entire sheet, then continued with a minimally darker wash to leave out the brightest areas which I had identified as the side front of the cabinet to the left, the lower left half of the doorframe, and the inner borders of the glass window in the kitchen door. I then gradually worked towards darker colours.

I tried to define the midtone which I found to be the lightest tone in the darker area. In the hall as the darker area I changed from the medium to a darker wash and tried to work out the shapes in increasingly darker tones. I found this quite difficult and think I overworked the wooden drawer cabinet in the hall. Its tonal value was so dark that I could hardly see any details and wasn’t able to isolate those elements which would have sufficed to give a rough indication of the object. Maybe I’ll have a look again tomorrow with a fresh eye. Maybe I should have painted it like the armchair, just dark shape without details.

Another less successful area is the gas heating box in the upper left, I think this element lacks contrast. Nevertheless, overall I am quite satisfied with the painting. I think it is a nice composition and I like the effect of light shining from the kichen into the hall. Micky had been sitting on the drawer cabinet while I was sketching, and I included him, but he later went away and I was left with insufficient memory about the tonal values of his shape. It would have been good to have a tonal pencil study or a photograph to aid with this problem, or maybe I should have left out the cat.

Dramatic interior 2: From dark into light (right)

I painted the second dramatic interior with switched lighting: The same view as the first, but this time the kitchen was dim while the hall was light. I made minor changes in perspective though, and I had the intention of reducing the amount of detail and using less layers than before.

With the results, I was quite satisfied. Contrasts could be stronger, but the light distribution is clearly different from the first image and one can see which room was darker. A bit problematic again was the drawer cabinet, I had difficulties to not overwork. And the cat scratching tree to its right isn’t painted well enough to be recognized. Problematic also the long dark bands representing the shadows between door and door frame, or between the white cabinet and the drawer.

Becoming better would mean to me getting the tones right with fewer layers and with a more generous approach, i.e. more water on the brush and covering larger areas at once. And maybe not bothering to paint linear details in watercolour, but use drawing instead. I think this painting would benefit if I’d draw in some lines! But I won’t because it’s not in the instructions. Maybe when I find the time to do some free, experimental work.

Third dramatic interior: From light to dark again

For this study, I chose a colour from a different set of watercolours, which I own for very long – Schmicke Artist Watercolours in pans. I bought them in my twenties because I wanted to learn watercolour painting, but actually used them only once or twice and abandoned the plan because I found the medium too complicated to handle. I really liked that I can now finally put them to use!

I first made a colour sheet to try out these new colours. In their pans, the colours look so similar that I wouldn’t be able to distinguish between them. The colour sheet is thus really helpful as a future reference, at least if I don’t change the order of pans in the box… From these colours, I chose a dark green. The view was from the brightly lit living room into the dim backwards corridor. The composition includes the door plus the immediate surroundings, but this time I let the door half open which created interesting perspective lines.

I chose a smaller paper sheet to help me getting away from painting too many details. I wanted to focus on the main shapes and I think this was successful (more than in the earlier studies). For example, the doors have quite an intricate pattern of light and shade but I painted only the main highlights rather than all the tiny differently shaded shapes. I also needed less layers for the effect I wanted. Less successful is the wooden floor, the darker basket is overworked, and sometimes I forgot to wait until one layer was fully dry before painting the next which resulted in bleeding. Probably it would have been possible to work out stronger tonal contrasts, but I did not want to rework it because I liked the lightness and unfinished character of the painting. I think I’m going towards the right direction, but need more practice.

Fourth dramatic interior: From dark to light again

Again I intended to focus on reducing detail, increasing contrast and using less layers. I had difficulties finding another view which did not simply repeat what I had already done. I decided to cut the composition again, as in the first two, to not include the entire height of the doorframe, but this time I wanted to include the upper half. I sat on a highchair which helped getting the viewpoint right. I chose Payne’s gray from the Schmincke set, and from all four studies I like this interior best for the colour. The neutral tonal value works well with the focus of the task which is a tonal study, whereas I find that the other colours have something artificial to them if used on their own.

I painted from a dim hall into the well lit living room. I like the effect but there is a particular problem to this setting: The light was not enough for painting. With a dark colour, I tend to paint very subtle tonal differences, but once I look at the painting in lighter lamp light, many elements become indistinguishable because the contrasts were too weak.

This time I decided to rework some problematic areas, for example the white chair before the white wall. It was slightly lighter than the wall and so I toned down the wall to increase the contrast. I also toned down the doorframe and wall in the darker room. This improved the overall impression of the painting. From all four, I like this one best – I think this is because it is the one with the least detail and best contrasts.

Exercise: Imaginary rooms

A hall by day and night

For this task, I imagined a room with a large window, a cabinet, a round table and a lamp. The first study was a daylight scene, the second the same view at night. I chose a dark brown tone and a small sheet of paper in landscape orientation.

    

I found the task quite difficult, not so much because of the invention of room and furniture, but because of the effect of the light sources. I think it is easier to observe actual light effects than trying to develop them out of the rules of angles in perspective. But the exercise points to the necessity and usefulness of observational painting to achieve realistic depictions. Even from observation, tonal values are difficult to depict correctly.

Inside a wooden hut

For another imagined interior, I had the initial idea of a garden house with a view into greenery, but that would have been quite a departure from the task to draw an interior view, if I focused on what happened outside the room. So I modified the idea and imagined the inside of a small wooden hut, looking at a window with an ancient simple chair and a carpet on the floor.

I found the painting difficult because I wasn’t able to draw on precise memory how the light falling into the room would behave. I was quite sure that the window frame would be very dark. I stopped painting quite early because I liked the image and was afraid to spoil it with unrealistically dark accents.

Guided reflections on observed and imaginary interiors

Which studies worked the best and why?

Generally, I’d say the observed studies worked better than the imagined rooms, because the visual information is denser – there are more details of the scene which contribute to the realistic effect. Particularly the first imagined room suffers from too small objects in an apparently huge, empty room. The second imaginary interior in the wooden hut works better, as window, stool and carpet are less lost in space.

With respect to colour, I think the first interior (balcony room, brown) and the fourth interior (dramatic view from hall into living room, Payne’s gray) work best. These are the studies where I feel the least discomfort with the restriction to a single colour. But I’m not sure about this, it may be that these are just the ones where the tonal values are the most rich, and they appear most neutral only in direct comparison to the other chosen colours (dark blue, dark green, pale brown).

If I had to choose one single painting for an exhibition, I would choose the fourth dramatic interior – view from dark hall into light living room, with the grand piano and the large painting in the background. It combines many successful elements: The tonal values are from very light to very dark, it is not overworked with an acceptable degree of irregularity in the tonal areas, and there’s enough detail but not too many objects. This results in something like focusing on the essential. The second most interesting study would be the view towards the balcony in brown. I like its livelyness and the effects of sunlight shining from outside inside the room.

How did the observed studies affect your ability to produce imagined rooms?

The observed studies helped to get a feeling for the degree of contrast resulting from different light situations. Generally, I think they sharpen observational capabilities which helps to build up a memory of „how things look like“, which can then be used as a resource when painting from imagination. But I also realized that I worked rather analytically in the imagined interiors to deduct where the areas of light  would be, based on some theoretical knowledge about perspective and geometry. This may have been a consequence of not having much recent experience with observational painting.

What potential is there for watercolour to convey mood and atmosphere?

I think there is a huge potential. I’m just having the problem of being emotionally too close to my studies to identify what kind of atmosphere they may convey to others. To me, the observational studies are very friendly and capture how much I like the place where I live.
The imagined studies are somewhat different. They convey a feeling of spaciousness which is something I really miss at home. I don’t know in how far this is a consequence of me following task instructions to include only one or two furniture objects. In this respect, the third imaginary study is interesting because it includes only few objects but these are much better able to occupy the image space. The painting is neither too empty nor overloaded with detail as the first observed interior (balcony room).

I think the great potential for conveying mood and atmoshpere has something to do with the chance effects that are inherent in the medium. The irregularities of brush strokes and pigment distribution in the fluid create interesting variations even in plain coloured areas. For the future, I would like to learn how to let more freedom to the medium and make good use of chance effects, instead of trying to control the medium by overpainting in too many layers.

Did you feel constrained by using monochrome?

No, it was actually a relief at this stage of learning for me, because I found it much easier to explore and use the range of tonal values of a single colour than those from multiple colours simultaneously in a single painting. It was only from the resulting painting that I wish I’d be able to extend the palette to include more colours. I do like monochrome paintings but including more colours will help to achieve a more natural, realistic visual effect.