Art conversations can take you in surprising directions. The other week, one of my regular art calls referenced tonking. “Oooh, what’s that?” I asked. Turns out, it’s just removing excess paint. I’ve seen that done before, in passing, but what a delight that it has a name!

The technique is attributed to Henry Tonks, who was a WWI artist and later a professor of art in London. I realized I’ve spotted this method in action in art videos: Nicholas Wilton uses a particular thick blue paper towel to lift paint from his work. When I tried it myself, I discovered a few things that clicked.

It Makes Collage Fodder

If I were to use newsprint or paper towels, I’d lift the paint, sure. But what if I used old paper that was lying around? I had picked up a sad-looking booklet, clearly left out in the rain.

I wasn’t set on using the pages as is, so I used them to lift up a layer of titanium buff paint. Oooh!! Yes that was a good accident, er, plan!

Here’s the piece I worked on, before the paint went on & after tonking removed a fair bit of it. Drag the cursor left or right to see each piece.

It Picks Up Texture

If I roll out paint on my collage, then take paint off with paper, am I not just printing a collagraph? I’m familiar with collagraphs, and often print my collages, to see what I get as an impression. But this is a larger piece, 18″x24″, and I’m removing the paint with smaller pieces of paper. And in this case, the base is the subject, whereas with collagraphs, the lifted print is the goal.

Still — same idea, right? Texture has built up on the surface, between collage and various mark-making additions, so naturally, it’s a rich surface for paint removal as well. In this case, I had gone heavy with a darker blue, which needed just to lighten up a bit. Little did I realized how much detail would come off on the tonking page!

Sometimes, in my art discussions, it’s fun to get conceptual and philosophical, but other times, a nitty-gritty technique is just the thing to spur a new energy and direction. Thanks to my multi-country every-other-Tuesday gang, that’s exactly what happened.