Watercolor Painting for Dummies (62 page)

1.
Get a piece of 6-x-6-inch watercolor paper and transfer the drawing in Figure 13-6 to your paper.

Chapter 8 tells you how to enlarge and transfer drawings to your watercolor paper.

2.
Activate your paints.

You’ll need Antwerp blue (or Winsor blue, phthalocyanine blue, or antique bronze), lemon yellow, cerulean blue, burnt sienna, violet, burnt umber, cadmium red, yellow ochre, and ultramarine blue.

3.
Paint the shadows on the bear, as shown in Figure 13-7.

Using a #10 round brush, wet the body area in some diluted colors. I used cerulean blue, burnt sienna, violet, and lemon yellow. Use these very delicate pale colors under the chin, across the face including the eye socket, across the tummy, on the back foot, down the right front leg, and at the base of the left front leg.

4.
Paint the background while the shadows dry with strokes of wet-into-wet color.

Wet the background with clear water so it’s damp but not puddley, and paint in soft-edged strokes of Antwerp blue, burnt umber, cerulean blue, and a tiny touch of cadmium red. I used a lot of water to dilute these bright colors, and you may not even see them in the printed background, but the colors add a little pizzazz. Mix lemon yellow with Antwerp blue for a green to add to the background. Refer to Figure 13-7 for guidance.

5.
Spatter water in the background and let it make blooms.

Chapter 3 talks about blooms; Chapter 4 covers spattering.

6.
Paint the foreground.

I wanted the foreground to look wet like ice and reflect the bear for interest and sparkle.

Figure 13-8 shows the painted foreground.

Work on one side or area of your painting at a time to make it manageable. Let one layer dry and paint another layer if needed. I painted the blue first, then the dark brown. After the foreground was all in and dry, I softened some lines by nudging them with a damp stiff bristle brush.

7.
Paint the darks — the eye, nose, ear, mouth, claws, and the dark under the paws, tummy, and back foot.

Make the black by mixing burnt sienna and ultramarine blue. Use your liner brush to add the finishing details and the smile on the face of your polar bear. See Figure 13-9 for guidance.

1.
Get a piece of 8-x-10-inch vertical watercolor paper and enlarge and transfer the drawing in Figure 13-10.

Chapter 8 tells you how to trace, enlarge, and transfer the drawing onto watercolor paper.

2.
Activate your paints.

I used burnt sienna, yellow ochre, hookers green, cerulean blue, light red, alizarin crimson, and ultramarine blue.

3.
Underpaint the first layer of the meadow by wetting the area of the grass below the lighthouse with brush loads of clear water. With a large round brush, paint some burnt sienna and yellow ochre and let the colors flow into the wet areas (see Figure 13-11).

Make the edges soft by adding water toward the edge of the painted area to make the grass fade out as it approaches the bottom right, which remains white in the final painting.

The unpainted area allows viewers to imagine something of their own. It’s a little different. The technique has won prizes at art shows for me (judges like something different), but if it’s not your cup of tea, just make the white space into a road or more flowers and grass.

4.
Let the paint dry
.

5.
Wet the same area and paint it with green.

Soften the edges and allow some darks and light. When the shine is about to disappear, sprinkle some salt on the paint to create texture. (See Chapter 4 for more about the salt technique.)

6.
Let everything dry.

Your painting should look something like Figure 13-12 after you brush off the salt.

If the salt doesn’t work, you can always try again or spatter paint for some texture instead. (Spattering is covered in Chapter 4.)

7.
Dampen the area of the sky with clear water and then stroke in some cerulean blue.

Leave some white for clouds, but paint blue sky over the lighthouse dome.

8.
While the sky is still damp, paint the distant mountains at the horizon with a purpley-gray mix of alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, and a bit of burnt sienna (see Figure 13-13).

Keep the top of the mountain soft, which is easy to do because the paper is damp.

9.
Paint the gray areas on the lighthouse.

Mix a blue-gray from ultramarine blue and burnt sienna. Paint the dark of the dome at the top; then add water for a lighter gray, and paint the shadows on the side of the building, as shown in Figure 13-14.

10.
Paint the red roof and the blue ocean (see Figure 13-15).

Mix a dirty red from burnt sienna, alizarin crimson, and the gray mixture you used in Step 9. Light red is a similar color if you have it. Paint the roof, including the left edge and the box on the top.

Paint cerulean blue in the two ocean areas on either side of the lighthouse. Paint a strip of blue at the horizon and add water to your paint as you come down for a graded wash of dark to light blue ocean.

11.
Finalize the details.

Paint the windows, the rods, doors, shingles, and siding with the dark gray. Paint grass both positively and negatively at the same time by making a grass mound. First, paint lines that look like grass using a liner brush and dark green paint (mix some alizarin crimson into hookers green); on the bottom edge of the grass, zigzag your brush to make the area around the grass. You just painted two lines of grass at the same time. The positive grass is darker green and the negative grass is lighter because of the dark background.

The stylized flowers are dots of cerulean blue, purple (mix cerulean blue and alizarin crimson, or use a purple if you have one), and yellow. See Figure 13-16 for guidance on these details.