Demonstrations of Watercolor Painting

The next few pages you will see Demonstrations of Watercolor Painting.

You need to affect viewers with creative expressions with your style.

But Jim "I don't know what my style is".
That may be true, when you were taught how to write your A B C's at school did they teach you how to sign your name?
It just evolved didn't it.  You are going to wind up with a style somewhere on this line in Demonstrations of Watercolor Painting.

Realistic,Traditional,Impressionistic,Abstract.

There is no right or wrong style to paint.   Not every viewer will respond the same way.

I have always felt that "newbies" might start toward the left and then cruise a little towards the right.  And stopping anyplace on the scale that pleases them.

So that being said Demonstrations of Watercolor Painting we shall do.

Let's start from the left and work toward the right.
For those of you who would like to go from right to left turn the page upside down and proceed.

I wonder if anybody would try to do this.

Realistic and traditional washes. Demonstrations of Watercolor Painting.

Flat wash

The tip of the brush just touches the bead and pulls it toward you. The bead must be controlled without cascading down the paper.

The above must be on dry paper.
A fully loaded brush
The board is tilted at the top about 2" high.
Start a bead of paint and continue to add more paint to the bead by just touching the tip of the brush to the existing bead.

Paint the bead with a fully loaded brush all the way to the bottom. Mop-up the excess paint on the very bottom edge with a very dry brush, just touching the bead and it will soak right into the brush. Lay the painting flat to dry naturally.

Graded wash

Continuing with Demonstrations of Watercolor Painting same instructions as above, the only changes you are going to make you are going to slowly add water to the bead instead of pigment.

Variegated wash

All this means is you add additional colors onto wet paper, examples below.

If you wish whilst the painting is still wet you can take the board and tilt it back and forth letting the colors run into each other as above.

Granulated Wash in Demonstrations of Watercolor Painting.

Colors that granulate are "SEDIMENTARY PIGMENTS" such as:
Blues...Cerulean...French Ultramarine...Manganese.
Red...Cadmeium Red...Rose Madder...Genuine.
Yellows...Yellow Ochre.
Green...Viridian.

Side Bar.    These are the colors that float to the bottom of your mixing water leaving a film of pigment if left overnight.  And it can be said very broadly sedimentary colors will not stain.
French Ultramarine granulates well if you use just a touch of Burnt Umber.

Glazing.   Must always be painted on dry paper.  Basically glazing is applying one color on top of the other and it does not have to be the same color, but it could be.

Wait until the previous painted area is bone dry before applying another color (a glaze).
Glazing gives the appearance of looking through a piece of stained glass in Demonstrations of Watercolor Painting and can be very beautiful producing luminous color.

Colors that are suitable for Glazing need to be Transparent--Non Staining Pigments.

Reds...Permanent Rose (comes with many names). Rose madder Genuine...Vermilion 

Yellows...Aureolin...New Gamboge.

Blues...Cobalt Blue...Antwerp Blue (some manufacturers will not produce a transparent color).

Greens...Veridian...Hookers Green (some manufacturers will not produce a transparent color).

Here are a couple of thoughts that are important.    Not only in glazing but in Demonstrations of Watercolor Painting in general.
You can paint wet on to dry paper.
You can paint wet on to wet paper.
You can paint damp on to wet paper.
You can paint damp on to dry paper.

You cannot paint wet into damp paper    If you do you will develop a  bad case of blossoms sometimes called cauliflowers or worse.

Students end up with blossoms and constantly tell me "I don't know how that happened"

They will occur when the Timing is wrong. They applied a wet brush onto a damp surface.
The moisture from the brush pushes the previous painted pigment out of the way forming a bad "tide mark".

Now that you know how to form a blossom you can paint bushes,foliage,flowers by shaking clean water over a damp area.  The drops of water will hit the damp paper and start forming great looking blossoms.

IN DEMONSTRATIONS OF WATERCOLOR PAINTING BEWARE.  If you must dry with a hair dryer don't have puddles of moisture on the paper.  Tilt and run them off first.   A hair dryer is also an air pusher,  pushing pigment into the wrong spots.

Move the hair dryer back and forth fairly rapidly across the paper Dont stay in one spot.  You are asking for blossoms to develop.  You will dry one spot and the wet paint will creep back into the dry forming a blossom.

So dry the painting all at the same time.
It is a much better plan to let the painting dry naturally, this gives maximum character to the wash.

A few sentences ago we mentioned timing in Demonstrations of Watercolor Painting.  This refers to learning a few simple things to remember.

Also match the wetness of the brush to the wetness of the paper.  Continue to work the painting area while the paper glistens.  Stop immediately if and when it starts to look dull, it's drying.

For shapes to be recognizable but have a soft blurry edges maybe objects in the fog or mist this is what you do.

Trees in the mist.   Wet the paper , have pigment ready (not too much water, but not paste).
Dip the brush in the paint, hold the brush vertically with bristles up, take a tissue and just squeeze the base of the hairs where they meet the metal.

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This will remove some of the water, don't touch the pigment on the tip part of the brush, we just want the water at the base of the hairs removed.  

Now paint the very top of the tree (see painting trees on this site).  Now after you have painting about 1" of the tree repeat the above instructions on removing the water.

Why did we do this, because the tip of the brush has mopped up some of the water sitting on the paper and we want a fairly dry brush.

DEMONSTRATIONS OF WATERCOLOR PAINTING

This is an eight step by step Demonstrations of Watercolor Painting.

The first thing we do is produce a Thumbnail Sketch, about 2" x 3".

This shows where the lights and the darks are going to be placed in the painting.

This is called a Value Sketch, this is the most important part to start the paining from.

It was many years ago I discovered Value is more important than Color.  If your Values are reasonable any color will most likely be appropriate.

You should see Values in the following Demonstrations of Watercolor Painting.

So what is all this Value stuff, it's not what the painting is worth.

Expressed in it's simplest form, it is the lightness or darkness of color.  It transforms a two dimensional piece of paper into the illusion of three dimensions.

Step #2.... you need to have some idea how the big shapes will look, ten big shapes is normally plenty.

Step #3..... Mix up a puddle of blue, Ultra Marine for a warm look, Cobalt Blue for a neutral look, Cerulean Blue for a cooler look.  Your choice.  This is painted on dry paper with quick confident large brush strokes.

Step#4.....Mix up Yellow, a separate puddle for Blue, separate puddle for Burnt Sienna, use an Orange or make one (Red & Yellow) add Blue and various Brown will appear.

I work from right to left painting the size of a dime.  Lets start with Yellow and drop in some Blue and you can change colors every time you paint and area the size of a quarter (inch by inch).

You will notice a tissue was applied to the edge of the hills about in the middle of the picture.  You can now drop in a Brown color whilst everything is still wet.

This is Step #5..... Damp the area with plain water from the base of the house to the fence line.  Paint in Yellow with a stripe leaving no hard line now roll down Green forming a bank.

Step 6...... I placed some Rubber Latex (Frisket) along the bottom in the shape of flowers, let it dry.  Don't use a brush, just the tip of a handle will work.

Now paint the foreground the same as the bank.  Changing colors often and let them all blend on the paper.

HELLO:  We are still in the middle of a Demonstrations of Watercolor Painting.

Step #7....Paint in the cottages and other details.  The roadway just brushed with dry paint.

Step #8...... Now add in the rocks with Reds, Browns and Blues etc.  Just before they dry scrape with a razor blade pushing the paint away off the paper to form rocks.  Then paint in other details.  The real secret in making these rocks is to catch the paint just as it's damp and then you can push the paint and expose some of the paint underneath and they will form pretty nice rocks. This concludes the eight steps in Demonstrtations of Watercolor Painting.