Balancing Botanical Tones

In order to balance tones in a botanical painting, a tonal drawing is produced first which, by its nature, is not complicated by the use of colour.  When the tones have been balanced in the drawing, the drawing is used as reference for the painting.

This watercolour technique allows great control over the paint and allows a painting to be developed methodically whilst always being sensible to the eye.   To achieve this, thin layers of watercolour wash are used to create tones, the deepest tones having the most layers.  

At first, watercolour washes simply indicate all of the tones in the painting from dark to light in turn so that the painting is a pale version of the finished painting and all of the tones are balanced in relation to each other. 

Then the entire painting is gone over repeatedly adding thin layers of wash each time from dark to light in turn so that each time all of the tones strengthen whilst being balanced in relation to each other. 

The process is repeated until all of the tones reach full strength and remain balanced in relation to each other.

This watercolour technique also informs the botanical drawing process, and a drawing can be produced using a similar method of layering pencil tones so that all of the tones are balanced in relation to each other throughout the drawing process.  The drawing can begin like the painting by firstly indicating all of the tones from dark to light in turn so that the drawing is a pale version of the finished one and so that all of the tones balance in relation to each other.  Then the drawing can be gone over many times, strengthening all of the tones in turn from dark to light so that the tones gradually gets stronger and they all remain balanced in relation to each other. 

The process can be repeated until all of the tones are at full strength.   In this way the drawing is sensible to the eye throughout the whole drawing process and in this way is much easier to produce and much more accurate at the end of the process.   Producing the drawing in a similar way to producing the painting will also help to show the way forward with balancing the tones during the painting process.