Many artists utilise gradation in their paintings. They are useful to know about so you can direct your students to them, or these particular artworks, when discussing and teaching gradation.
What is Gradation?
Gradation means to gradually transition from one colour to another or from one shade to another.
Artists often use gradation to make their work look more three-dimensional, blending from light to dark or from one colour to another. It can be a great way to create form and depth or suggest distance and atmosphere. Some artists also use soft colour transitions to evoke emotion, create movement, or draw the viewer’s eye across the artwork.
Georgia O’Keeffe
O’Keeffe often blends colours subtly to create smooth transitions in her floral forms, skies, and landscapes, adding softness and a sense of depth. The arrows show areas of very obvious gradation.
J.M.W. Turner
Turner masterfully graduated light and colour in skies and seascapes, capturing the effects of sunlight, fog, and fire.
Other Artist That Use Gradation
Other artists have used gradation in really interesting ways too. Mark Rothko created glowing, soft-edged blocks of colour that feel full of emotion, while Claude Monet used gentle changes in colour and tone to capture light and atmosphere. Helen Frankenthaler let paint soak into raw canvas so the colours bled and blended naturally, and Gerhard Richter used a squeegee to drag paint across the surface, creating smooth, blurred transitions. Agnes Martin made calm, quiet paintings with faint lines and soft tonal shifts, and Vija Celmins blended tones with incredible precision to recreate the delicate textures of things like waves and night skies. Each artist used gradation not just to show form, but to create feeling and depth.
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