Toning a Canvas

The most important step which can influence a painting's final output could be the way you begin it, they are two different approaches to it...
1) Maintain the original white background
2) Toning the background with color of your choice

Note: Canvas is term used for any sort of painting surface, and the surface could be a board, paper or a canvas such as linen or cotton...

Now the most important question arises is"Why do you tone a Canvas?" well they are multiple reasons for it,

1) At beginning stage of painting if started on a white background, an Artist might not get the clear idea or read of the color used, most colors appear darker on white surface

2) "Unity to the Painting" Many Artist do not prefer to paint uniformly, or should we say toning gives a major advantage and scope to the Artist to leave some patches unpainted on the surface. it also prevents the foreground colors to be too dominant over the surface.Toning helps in avoiding the appearance of distracting little white dots on a surface, it might be really annoying to the areas particularly which are painted in darker shades.Hence toning a Canvas acts as a harmonizer to a painting, playing a role of a thread holding knots of different colors together and thus creating a "Masterpiece" :)

Second question arising would be "How to Tone a Canvas?"

1. Adding a transparent tone to the selected white surface to be painted : Now the toned ground could be either transparent or opaque....it all depends upon the creator, well the reason to select a transparent tone is because it helps light to reflect up through the colors of the painting which helps giving a luminosity to a painting...The transparent ground is also known as "Imprimatura", well just google the term you would know all the related details.

2. Choice or range of colors suited for toning a surface : It all depends upon the colors of the final painting, The earth tones are preferable because they have less oil content and dry quicker, secondly they are nice mutual toner and are "Unobtrusive", which indeed becomes an important/critical factor for the outcome of final painting. (Earth colors preferred :Yellow Ochre, Raw Umber, Burnt Umber, Burnt Seina. Ultramarine blue could also be combined with respective earth color)

3.To get started mix the chosen oil paint with 50% of solvent + 50% of medium, you could also use only solvent for mixing.Make sure the mix is too thin, that the proportion of solvent to paint should be 60-40%
In case the mix is thick and applied, the result could be darker surface and hence the luminosity may not be achieved.

Note: Solvent could be mostly readily available turpentine, i use combination of turpentine+linseed oil to the mix.

4 Apply the prepared thin color mix to the entire surface using brush, it may not be evenly applied that's perfectly fine :), allow it to dry for few minutes.

5. Now take a plain dry cloth used to rub off the surface, keep rubbing until nice uniform mid tone is achieved. In case the toned surface still appears to be darker then expected we can always use some turpentine to achieve the lighter tone, the lighter tone is always a better choice to proceed with...

Note: Toning could also be done with acrylic colors where the duration to dry is minimized...The final painting could be started in a time span of 24 hours after the canvas is toned perfectly.