Tonal Challenge

I’m getting ready to partake in the Kick in the Creatives June Tonal challenge. Each month this online group sets three different art challenges. Although I’m already participating in the 365 days of urban sketching people (a challenge I set myself), I like the motivation these month-long challenges provide.

The goal of Tonal June is to limit yourself to only one colour, to explore its tonal ranges.

My Travel Kit Watercolour Palette

I thought I’d start by working with each of the watercolours in my current travel palette, and experimenting with my Tombow brush pens.

The darker colours will obviously me more successful to work with because they’ll have a greater tonal range. So I may have to “cheat” and use some natural tint watercolour to extent the ranges of the paler colours in my palette. Not sure yet what I’m going to do after I’ve worked my way through these 14 colours.

Here’s the list of colours:

• Sap Green
• Indigo Blue
• French Ultra Marine
• Cerulean Blue
• Colbalt Turquise Light
• Potters Pink
• Yellow Ochre
• Burnt Sienna
• Van Dyke Brown
• Transparent Pyrol Orange
• Quin. Rose
• Pyrol Scarlett
• New Gambogue
• Hansa Yellow Light

I use a Winsor and Newton travel palette that’s meant to hold twelve half pans, but you can actually squeeze in two more if you remove the sponge this field kit comes with.

It folds away very neatly, and comes with a water bottle, small brush, and water container, and there’s more than enough choice of colours to paint any urban sketching subject.

During this tonal challenge I’m going to review why each of the colours is in my urban sketching kit, and master how to play with the different tonal ranges each colour can stretch to.

Follow along with my Tonal June Challenge progress here.