Professional Essays - Toning / To Mitigate Partial or General Crudenss

Cold colours that are too crude, are, when toned with brown, equally true and deep. In this case the colour would seem to be opposed by the toning--but the effect is quite as satisfactory, perhaps more so than in the case of warm crude colours that are toned.

All colours that are crude from whiteness, or lightness, are improved in like manner by a toning brown.

The silvery depths of white even are made more telling by a golden browning, near, and more or less upon them. [The sparkling quality is indispensable in white and in flesh, and, in general, in all light objects--the delicate half-tints are revealed and multiplied by such treatment, which, however, is not to be confounded with the imitation of shine. The sparkling quality depends on [relative] brightness, sharpness and crispness, and ultimate tone, for such a quality is more precious and is even increased really by the glazing, as the points of brightness are less obscured than some of the surrounding portions.]

The toning brown should be used everywhere to mitigate crudeness, even in partial tints [that may be too vivid] and spots--for where, on a very light [p. 363] scale, the toning is proportioned--not only in draperies, skies, landscape and inanimate objects, but even in flesh.