Howard, Frank: Colour, as a means of art: being an adaptation of the experience of professors to the practice of amateurs (London, 1838)

28 TONE.

vibrations, Tone in its present application may prove
to arise from a similar regularity.

Tone implies a degree of transparency, which,
in Oil colours is attainable with great facility, by a
process termed glazing : viz. passing a transparent
colour over a previously prepared tint. There are
also some other practical methods of producing it,
which are more advisable in certain cases, but
which need not be further noticed here. In Water
colours, the greater number of pigments used are
transparent, and the legitimate method of using
them, proceeds upon the principle of working
entirely in transparent media; which has at all
times excited great hopes with regard to that branch
of Art, as affording a better means than Oil colours
(in which the light tints are all composed with
opaque white), of producing the brilliancy and
truth of Nature, in combination with the transparency
(tone) which is required in a work of Art. And it
is to be regretted, that in some few and those
popular instances, this advantage arising out of the
legitimate use of Water colours, should have been
thrown away, without obtaining any equivalent,
other than that of hiding or correcting blunders; and
that attempts should have been made, by the use
of opaque body colours, and a similar method