Toning a Canvas
Katie LiddiardDescription
Toning a canvas for oil painting means creating an initial thin layer of fairly neutral color on the canvas that will be underneath your painting, so no white canvas will show through. It’s one of the most important foundational steps you’ll learn as an artist, and though the toning will never be seen, it will help your painting succeed by creating a layer that keeps the painting working as a unified whole. Don’t skip this essential step!
To tone her canvases, artist Katie Liddiard demonstrates how she begins by mixing a combination of Van Dyke brown, a neutral brown, and ultramarine blue. She then adds mineral spirits to thin the paint to a soupy consistency. With a brush, Katie begins to scrub this mixture across the canvas. Katie then adds additional color, perhaps a yellow or green, to the existing mixture and continues to work, covering the canvas. While the overall tone is still neutral, adding a little color helps avoid a too-flat tone and adds subtle variation underneath the painting. While you’ll want to blend a little, you don’t need to smooth out all the brush strokes.
That’s all there is to it! Let your toned canvas dry overnight and your surface will be ready for the next steps. Don’t forget to clean your bush!
One of the most foundational things that you need to understand before starting any painting is how to tone a canvas. I'm Katie Liddiard, and I'll show you how I tone my canvases. I like to start out with some pretty basic mixtures of Van Dyke brown and a little ultramarine. Get that nice and soupy with some mineral spirits. Up to my canvas and just start scrubbing, nothing fancy, this is underneath the painting, you're not gonna see most of it. But if any of that white canvas is showing through in the final painting, it's gonna be nice to have that layer of tone underneath so that it's not just jumping out at you visually. Then I like to come back in with some other colors, just really quick, I might throw in some yellow, might throw in some green, add that little variety, keep it interesting. Again, if it's showing in that final painting, then it's going to just have that little extra interest, little extra sparkle, other than being a flat tone all the way across. But the main point here is just to cover that canvas and get it ready for your masterpiece. Kinda blend just a little bit more. And we're gonna let it dry overnight. It's as easy as that.
Thank you so much.