Watercolor Painting for Dummies (61 page)
Read Watercolor Painting for Dummies Online
Authors: Colette Pitcher
Tags: #Art, #Techniques, #Watercolor Painting, #General
Every fall the turning leaves become a focal point. A great way to bring the beauty of the season home is to walk through an area with a variety of interesting leaves on the ground and pick up the ones whose shapes and colors appeal to you. Children love this exercise. When you get home, put the leaves in the telephone book to flatten and dry. They retain their color for quite a while. When you’re ready to be inspired by the leaves, get them out and make a painting.
This project involves positive and negative painting (refer to Chapter 4). Some of the leaves are formed by painting dark colors around the leaf and letting that dark paint define the leaf shape, which is what
negative painting
is all about. Other leaves you actually paint, which is the
positive painting
you normally do. The combination makes a lively, interesting painting.
Try modeling a painting on my example first. Then create your own leaf study with different shapes and placement. I painted this project with a minimum of planning. I wanted to experiment with negative and positive shapes within the same composition. I also wanted to create a
vignette effect
where the background fades at one side.
In your leaf composition, you need to choose a center of interest. Choose one or more of the following methods to make one leaf or several leaves the focal point:
Put the darkest dark against the lightest light
Increase the size
Add more detail
Brighten the color
Sharpen the edges
1.
Get an 8-x-10-inch piece of watercolor paper. Transfer the drawing in Figure 13-1 to your paper.
Although I didn’t plan this drawing, I give you a drawing to copy so you understand the technique. In your own leaf painting, you can choose to make a drawing or just wing it. If you choose to use the drawing here, enlarge it on a copy machine to the size you want and use watercolor paper in a corresponding size.
Figure 13-1:
A drawing to trace, enlarge, and transfer to watercolor paper.
2.
Activate your paints.
I used permanent yellow, antique brown, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, hookers green, rose madder, and cadmium orange.
3.
Wet the entire paper with clear water.
Use a 1-inch flat brush to quickly cover the paper with water so it stays damp.
4.
Paint the background by dropping in all the activated colors in a random pattern onto the wet paper to make an abstract multicolored
background, leaving white paper on the left and softening edges.
Load a big round brush (I used a #12 brush) with juicy paint that can make large drops. Pick up the paper and let the colors move and mingle until you’re satisfied.
To soften the edges, add water to the edge to fade the color so it gets lighter and lighter. Turn to Chapter 3 for more on soft edges.
5.
Flick water droplets into the damp paint for texture.
You can dip your fingers in water and flick them, or use a spray bottle for this effect. You’ll get blooms as described in Chapter 3.
You should have something resembling Figure 13-2.
Figure 13-2:
A loose soft background.
6.
Let the paint dry.
7.
Negative paint the leaves and stems.
Mix a dark green from hookers green and alizarin crimson, and use it to paint behind the leaves and around the stems and leaf shapes as shown in Figure 13-3.
Add water to the green areas between the leaves, and let the background green get lighter by adding water to the green as it reaches the edges of the paper.
Drop in other colors as desired. I used antique brown and burnt sienna to break up the green. This negative painting defines the stems and leaves by painting where they aren’t.
Figure 13-3:
Leaves begin to appear as the background gets painted.
8.
Positive paint some dark leaves against the light background.
Figure 13-4 shows the leaves I made darker using antique brown, burnt sienna, cadmium orange, and yellow ochre.
Figure 13-4:
More leaves appear in their darker fall colors.
9.
Paint some distant green leaves.
I added water to green and painted some leaves on the left edge a pale green to make them appear farther away.
10.
Use a liner brush to add details, such as veins in the leaves, and do any touch-ups.
I used burnt sienna for the veins. My final painting is shown in Figure 13-5.
Figure 13-5:
The final painting includes details in the leaves.
