Watercolor Painting: A Comprehensive Approach to Mastering the Medium (14 page)

The problem in this case lies in the assumption that the walls are white. For watercolor purposes, they are
not
white. If you were actually painting the walls, and not a picture of them, it is true that you would be dipping into a big can of white paint. This is the source of the confusion. Your brain is telling you the walls are white, but your eye knows that they are not the lightest shapes in the picture.

In a watercolor, you cannot get any lighter than the white of the paper. It makes sense to reserve it for the lightest part of the scene, and darken everything else relative to that. If, as is the case in this hypothetical painting, the lightest parts were yellow and blue, you would probably want to apply a faint glaze of color over the white, which would darken it a little. This shifts the
value scale for the entire painting. The walls must be made dark enough to make the fluorescent lights seem bright by comparison, but not so dark that they do not seem white, and so on, all the way up the scale to the darkest darks. How dark we make a shape in a watercolor is always a
relative
matter.

What we “know” is firmly rooted in the language of meaning.
Saying the words “old gray barn” calls forth a host of associations, somewhat different for each of us, but always evocative and persuasive. Our ideas about a subject can profoundly affect what we think we see. In the early stages of making a painting, I like to direct my questions to the abstract qualities of the image, to keep from being misled by meaning. There is plenty of time to check in later to make sure the story is being told, but for now, I want the simple, visual reality. When we are assessing value, it helps to use the language of pure form. It can be very difficult at first to ignore your insistent brain, but after a while it begins to feel like a vacation.

Take a close look at the outbuildings in this photograph. Which is darker—the sunlit part of the “gray” barn, or the shadowed part of the “white” building? What we call something can create conflict between the brain and the eye.

Seeing the two surfaces as shapes rather than buildings eliminates any confusion about their relative values. It also helps to squint.

TOM HUGHES,
LOW TIDE, STONINGTON,
2005
WATERCOLOR ON PAPER
22 × 30 INCHES (56 × 76 CM)

Even though the light on the rocks in the foreground has not been left white, it appears brighter than the “white” boathouse. Proximity to much darker shapes makes the sunlit, upward-facing rock surfaces seem relatively brilliant. What do you think: Is the boathouse pure white paper?

Let’s take a moment to talk about the white paper. With a transparent medium, light passes through the paint and bounces off the paper, back to the viewer’s eyes. As the source of light in a watercolor, therefore, the paper is very important, but it is not
sacred.
I definitely prefer paintings that allow the paper to remain visible through the paint, but this does not necessarily mean that pure white paper must be reserved. If there is nothing white in the picture, then there does not need to be any white paper.

Students have told me they were taught that “If it doesn’t show some white paper, it’s not a watercolor.” Excuse me, but this is nonsense. Teachers tend to make proclamations, and some people take them as gospel. The words get passed along and rewritten a bit each time. I once overheard a student say, “Tom says that no one should ever take a drawing class.” Yikes! I wonder what else has been attributed to me over the years.

I think it’s actually a bigger problem to leave too much white than not enough. Even in a scene with large light areas, saving the white paper for where it is really needed can increase the illusion of convincing light.

It is unfortunately quite common to leave a little gap of white paper between shapes, partly as a dam to keep washes from merging, and partly just to produce some kind of sparkle. The result is usually a flattening of the space. Since all the shapes are surrounded by little hard-edged halos, they all have equal prominence. The painting looks like a collage of cut and pasted components, or a mosaic, with white grout lines between the tiles. With so many gratuitous whites, the few that are trying to represent important lights cannot stand out.

In
Craigville Phantom
on
this page
, the relatively small whites are no bigger than the “halos” in the orchard scene below, but they are there to fill a pictorial need.

ANONYMOUS (SORT OF),
CHANNEL ROAD ORCHARD MOSAIC STYLE,
2011
WATERCOLOR ON ARCHES COLD PRESS PAPER
11 × 15 INCHES (28 × 38 CM)

Even though our brains know where the elements of the scene are relative to each other, our eyes are getting a different message. The mosaic quality of the painting creates the sense that each shape is in the same plane as its neighbors. Please tell me you
don’t
like this painting.

TOM HOFFMANN,
CHANNEL ROAD ORCHARD,
2010
WATERCOLOR ON ARCHES COLD PRESS PAPER
11 × 15 INCHES (28 × 38 CM)

Allowing adjacent shapes to touch contributes to the feeling of space. It seems possible to walk around the trees without bumping into
white lines.

TOM HOFFMANN,
CRAIGVILLE PHANTOM
, 2010
WATERCOLOR ON ARCHES COLD PRESS PAPER
14 × 20 INCHES (36 × 51 CM)

The slivers of white on the right-facing surfaces of the fence do much of the work of describing the sunlight.

All this discussion hopefully underscores why it is so important that you ask:
Are there whites to reserve?
If you have decided to save some white paper, it remains for you to choose the appropriate technique. Please don’t automatically reach for the masking fluid every time you want to save part of the previous layer. That stuff makes a very distinctive kind of highlight—one that can be spotted from across the room. It may be just right for the window reflected on an eggplant, but it would be all wrong for the highlight on a pear.

When it comes to reserving lights, you have several options, and each produces a somewhat different look. Practice and become confident with lifting, scraping, masking, applying wax resist, and, most of all, simply painting around your lights. As your familiarity with the range of possibilities grows, you will be able to decide which one is right for the job, rather than always choosing the same technique by default. You may think masking fluid is easier than painting around the light area, but in fact it takes much longer, interrupts the flow of painting, and creates a calculated look.

Generally, I prefer creating lights by simply leaving them. I can pre-wet the area if I want a soft edge, or leave it dry for a hard edge, but in either case, I put the paint where I want it and leave it alone. For me, the default approach to reserving lights comes down to this: If you don’t want paint somewhere, don’t put it there.

Right now, someone somewhere is probably saying, “Tom says never use masking fluid.” It is true that I don’t use it, but you should do whatever works best for your painting. There is no right way to paint, but there is a best way to learn: the way that gives you the most options. So, by all means, mask away, when it is appropriate. Just don’t become a junkie.

And one more small rant: Do not paint with a brush in one hand and a paper towel in the other. How confident will your stroke be if you are already thinking about removing it? If you are unsure of the mark you are about to make, you have more awareness work to do. Where’s your practice paper? Remember, the goal is to actually
become
a better painter, not to
appear
to be one.

For every new layer you apply, some of the previous layer probably needs to be reserved. Locating these relative lights by drawing with pencil or pale paint makes it easier to apply the new layer with confidence. It is truly amazing how easy it is to paint right over a highlight ten seconds after saying out loud, “I don’t want to cover that highlight.” It is almost enough to make me go for the masking fluid.