Tone and value range awareness are both an acquired perception and a result of training. I see it spill out into my real life when I’ve spent a lot of time on a piece. The art itself becomes more interconnected, like an aesthetic ecology that develops and allows all sorts of subtle nuances. When the art is at that stage – we’re talking dozens to hundreds of hours – those interconnections begin to spontaneously generate in the world around me. They well up automatically and flow effortlessly everywhere, in everything.
A personally specific non-art example of such a developed awareness – when younger I spent days and weeks and months landscaping, raking topsoil before the sod went down. I could see all the little bumps and dips in the soil and smooth them out with ease. The next landscaping season it would take several days for my hand and eye to reacquire that acuity and have the rake automatically get it right. You can see artists’ beginner pencil work has a rough clumsiness in the markings and tonal choices. It takes a lot of time before their pencil work performs smoothly and cleanly.
I recommend that for anyone worrying about their relative awareness of creative nuance such as tone and value range, is to relax and let your eye find its own innate range of awareness. If you don’t reach a level you believe your work needs, then accept and adjust your creative choices. That is part of what fuels a person’s personal stylistic development. Artists will gravitate towards what best works for their physical hand and eye.
