Toned Paper Drawing - Ran Art Blog

In the past, I did not like toned paper.

It took me many years to appreciate the power of toned paper.

For the paper brands and types I recommend, visit my guide for drawing paper.

The beauty of toned paper is that it brings the saturation down.

In reality, colors are not saturated; they are a bit dull or grayish.
To do that, we use the opposite color on the color wheel in the mixture.
Another way is to add black, gray, brown or white to the mixture, or use earth colors.
More on colors, pigments and the color wheel you can find in my color mixing guide.

When using toned paper, it desaturates the colors.

The problem with toned paper is that the color starts with mid-tones.

To add the light areas you need to use a medium that can do that.

The drawings in these examples are done with markers.
Markers cannot create light colors.

Therefore, for the lights, for details, for contrast, and for texture I used colored pencils.
Here you can see the drawing with just markers (1) and then with colored pencils (2).

Here are my recommended markers for drawing.

While these examples are new drawings, here is an example of a marker drawing I did several years back:

I like rendering my drawings realistically.
For more info on realism, check out my realistic painting guide.

For more tutorials, tips & techniques, you are welcome to visit my blog.

Ran

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