What is TONE and FORM?

We see extremes of light and dark in our visual world. All around us are an almost infinite range of shades and tones in between.
As artists we use the understanding of tone to help us to emphasize contrast (the difference) between light areas and dark areas, to describe the illusion of three-dimensional shapes (FORM), and to give interest and mood to our image making.

To help you see these contrasts, moods and the illusions, try this exercise:

- Set up a still life with some oranges, apples, a box or cube and a bottle or tin can.
- Using a desk lamp, shine a light from one side of the arrangement, so that the objects are partly in shade.

Notice how the area in shade darkens gradually on the rounded surfaces. This gives the illusion of FORM to the piece making it appear solid.

TRY: Explore the tonal possibilities of your good drawing pencils. Choose from a 6B, 2B, B, HB, 2H. Take a sample of three or four pencils. Draw nine boxes in a row. Number them 1-9. Repeat this three times or whenever you want to test the range of a new drawing media. Starting with box 9 and your chosen pencil, try making as dark a tone as possible. Fill the box. Next, go to box 1 and gently shade as lightly as possible. Go to box 5 and using your judgement try to create a tone midway between the darkest and lightest tones. Do the same with boxes 3 and 7 and finally boxes 2, 4, 6 and 8. Fill the boxes in this order: 9,1,5,7,3,6,2,8,4

e.g.

Try this exercise with different drawing media – charcoal pencils, oil pastels, crayons etc. You do not need to use the box format as you get more control over the media, but it is a useful way of testing the RANGE of TONES which your pencils can give.

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