Watercolor Painting for Dummies (57 page)
Read Watercolor Painting for Dummies Online
Authors: Colette Pitcher
Tags: #Art, #Techniques, #Watercolor Painting, #General
This painting project is a fantasy seascape inspired by Catalina Island, California. The pier and beach really exist, but I took some liberties to move the trees to frame the scene. See what power you have as an artist? You can move mountains as well as trees. This technique is a fun way to color a painting. The mood and color suggest a sunrise or sunset.
1.
Choose an 8-x-10-inch piece of watercolor paper, turn it horizontally, and activate all of your paints.
Make puddles of cerulean blue, pink, lemon yellow, lilac, and ultramarine blue to use for the sunlight colors. You’ll use additional colors as the painting progresses.
2.
Choose where you want your horizon line.
Mine is pretty close to middle of the page, a dangerous place compositionally, but this painting has a lot of elements that help break up the space. You usually don’t want to divide the page in half.
3.
Use a 1-inch flat brush to wet the area from the horizon up using clear water.
Make this even, shiny wet with no puddles and no dry spots. Pick up the paper and let the excess water run off to ensure even wetness. I even tap the edge on a cloth towel to absorb excess water.
4.
Apply sunset colors (see Figure 11-15a for guidance) in the sky (from the horizon up).
A. Start at the horizon edge and apply cerulean blue diluted to a pale value using the 1-inch flat brush and making sure the color doesn’t leave hard edges. By painting wet paint into wet paper, you should get soft edges.
Paint long horizontal strokes across the entire width of the page. Paint right off the edge of the paper onto the table. I keep a towel in one hand and pick the paper up and wipe up the wetness that goes on the table.
B. Apply lilac next to the blue, then pink, then yellow, then ultramarine in the same manner.
Clean the brush by swirling it in clear water between colors. Apply these different colors quickly so the paper won’t dry before the paint can blend.
C. Pick up the paper and let the paint drip off, then touch the very edge of the paper to a towel to absorb any excess water.
If the paint is too pale, add more pigment. If the paint is too dark or intense, spray water over it and let some run off. You can work until the paper starts to dry. If one area starts to dry, then let it dry completely.
When you like the colors, you’re done. If you don’t like the colors, you can work them again in another layer in the same manner. If you got a blossom or a hard edge that you want to remove, wet the entire area and scrub it with a stiff brush.
Figure 11-15:
Painting the fading light of the sunset.
5.
Let the paint dry.
6.
Wet the area from the horizon down with clear water and paint the water from the horizon line all the way to the bottom edge using the same technique as in Step 4. This will be the reflection of the sunset in the water.
From the horizon down, paint yellow, pink, lilac, cerulean, and ultramarine blue. Figure 11-15b shows how this should look. It’s okay if you have different colors or different widths of colors.
7.
Let the paint dry completely.
8.
Trace the drawing in Figure 11-16a, enlarging it as necessary, and transfer the drawing to your painting.
Chapter 8 explains the details of transferring. You should end up with something like what’s shown in Figure 11-16b.
Figure 11-16:
A scene is drawn on top of the water and sky.
9.
Paint the silhouettes of the tiny palm trees on the mountain horizon, the mountain, and the pier (see Figure 11-17).
It’s time to mix some more colors. The dark green in the two tiny palm trees on the horizon is a mix of hookers green dark and alizarin crimson. The mountain and pier are a mix of purple, ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson, and Payne’s gray. The silhouettes all blend together, but some variety in color within the dark shape makes a better look.
When you paint the mountain, make sure you paint around the trunks of the palm trees. The top of the trunk is painted dark against the light sky, while the main trunk is light against the dark mountain. Use the same color for the top of the trunk as you did for the mountain, but warm up the color with a little burnt sienna added to the purple. This is an example of transposition of value as discussed in Chapter 7.
Figure 11-17:
Painting the pier and mountain, and starting the palms.
10.
Paint the tops and bottoms — but skip the middle — of the palm trees.
The palm tree tops are painted with a light yellow-green at the edge of their foliage. For now, stop with the light green for the large palm tree. And as long as you have light green on your brush, paint some of the grass around the base of the trees too.
For the two palm trees on the right, continue painting the fronds so that they get darker toward the middle and bottom. Add brown to the dark green as you paint down to the trunk.
Paint the bottom of the two trees using diluted burnt sienna from the bottom of the mountain to the base at the beach. Leave the middle of the trunks light for now.
11.
Paint the big palm on the left.
In Step 10 you started some yellow-green sun-kissed palm fronds. Mix a darker green and fill in the palm, as shown in Figure 11-18a. Enjoy the interesting edges that define the palm. While you have the dark green on your brush, add some dark green grass to the bottom of the two right-side palms.
Use a pointed round brush to paint the trunk using burnt sienna. Paint jagged edges to look like ragged bark. While you have burnt sienna in your brush, wash a little more color over trunks of the right-hand palm trees.
Figure 11-18:
Finishing up the palms and coloring the sand and rooftops.
12.
Paint a watered-down burnt sienna over the beach. Put the red roofs on the dock buildings while the sand dries. Refer to Figure 11-18b.
Rough texture works well for sand, so with a relatively dry brush, pick up some pigment and use the side of the brush to quickly stroke the paint across the paper, letting the paper sparkle through. More on this technique in Chapter 3.
The roofs are a mix of burnt sienna and a bit of brighter cadmium red.
Save the red to paint when you’re almost finished with the painting because red will run if it’s touched by a damp brush, even after it’s dry.
13.
Soften the trunks of the two palm trees on the right by nudging the edges with clear water. Add yellow to warm the middle sections of the trunks.
Look at Figure 11-19 to visualize Steps 13, 14, 15, and 16.
14.
Use a liner brush and dark green paint to pull some grass up next to the base of all the palms.
15.
Use ultramarine blue to paint shadows and add waves near the shore.
There are shadows for the three palm trees, the grasses, and where the pier touches the water. Make sure the shadows fall toward the viewer and away from the sun.
16.
After everything is dry, add any last details you want, like bark on the big palm.
Grab yourself a tall, cool drink and enjoy the view!
Figure 11-19:
A Catalina Island sunset.
In This Chapter
Getting ready to record Fido
Looking for pets at home
Going for larger game
Crowing about barnyard birds
I
love animals. The big dewy eyes. The unconditional love. The hair on the couch. I’ve had almost every type of animal as a pet: cats, dogs, horses, peacocks, skunks, chickens, mice, rabbits, cows, geese, pheasants, quail, fish, and Shetland ponies. I still live on a farm, only now the domestic animals have been replaced by plenty of wild critters: foxes, raccoons, owls, deer, hawks, snakes, birds, and bunnies.
Time doesn’t allow me to care for pets now. But don’t feel sorry for me — or for yourself if you don’t have critters running underfoot. If you long for animal companionship, the solution is here. As an artist, you can paint your pets and immortalize them forever. You can own exotic animals without department of wildlife permits. Just paint whatever your heart desires. Easy maintenance, no stray hair, no vet bills.
Animals can be a metaphor for human activity. Your paintings will become that much more interesting if you can incorporate symbols, stories, and depth into them. In this chapter, you paint several animals that are furry, slick, or feathered. You also handle values from black to white in animals, and you can apply this knowledge to other paintings with or without animals.
