Watercolor Painting for Dummies (34 page)

When planning what you’re going to paint, you need to decide what combination of values you’re going to use and where you’re going to put them. Figure 7-2 shows several versions of the same basic scene of a sailboat and its reflection in the water with different combinations of light, mid-tone, and dark in the foreground, middle ground, and background. The foreground is the sailboat and its reflection in the water, the middle ground is the surrounding water and the mountains behind the boat, and the background is the sky.

Figure 7-2:
Value patterns switching light, medium, and dark values in foreground, middle ground, and background.

The six paintings each have one of each value — light, mid-tone, and dark. Although each study has lights and darks in tiny quantities throughout the painting for definition, the big areas are foreground, middle ground, and backbackground. I simplified light, mid-tone, and dark to these three areas. By changing the values and areas, I created six different value patterns:

Choose your favorite value pattern and translate it into color, retaining the dark, medium, and light values. Figure 7-3 shows my effort from the Figure 7-2e value study.

Figure 7-3:
Three values separate foreground, middle ground, and background.

Make a separate sketch, called a
value study,
just considering the values and where they go, then choose which one works best for you to work up in color. (“Starting Small with Thumbnails” later in this chapter talks about preliminary thumbnail sketches.)

One way to use value effectively is to put a dark item against a light background or vice versa, as in the sailboats in Figure 7-2. Better yet, do both within the same item.

Imagine a fence post in a painting. The fence post is pale gray, nearly white, weathered wood against a field of dark amber wheat stalks. As the fence post reaches the horizon line, it changes to a dark silhouette against the brilliant blue sky, as shown in Figure 7-4. This
transposition of value
is an excellent way to entertain the viewer. Even though the object is all the same color in theory, it changes value depending upon what value it’s near.

When you’re planning your painting, look for areas that could use transposition of value. Are there areas that can present a light against a dark and transition into a dark against light? This is a good device to attract attention to a center of interest or a significant content issue.

Figure 7-4:
Transposition of value ideas explored in a thumbnail sketch.

A typical watercolor format is with the longest length of the paper horizontal — your desktop printer calls it
landscape
view and so do other artists. But don’t forget other formats. You can choose the other view your printer knows, vertical
or
portrait,
where the paper is longest vertically. You can break out of these standard views and paint in a square or make your painting any other shape you choose — oval, short and wide, tall and thin, you name it.

Traditionally paintings are rectangles. But because this is art, I would never want to stifle your creativity if you think out of the box. In art, go for it. Try for the award for originality. In the meantime, I’m going back to traditional thinking.

One rectangle may not be enough. Perhaps you need to make a larger statement. You can make several paintings work together to form the overall look of a large painting. Two paintings that go together to make a big painting are called a
diptych
(sounds like
dip-
tick). Three that go together are called a
triptych
(sounds like
trip-
tick). You can frame these separately or together using a mat with several holes. (Chapter 3 has more on presentation and framing.)

Figuring out what size to make a painting is an important decision to make early. Miniatures cost less to produce, frame, and purchase. Murals are hard to ignore. You may find the answer somewhere in between.

You can get watercolor paper in any size you want, including a roll of watercolor paper as tall as you are and yards and yards long. It’s physically challenging to paint, frame, and install a piece that large, but if you want big paintings, there is no limit to the supplies. (Chapter 2 has more info about sizes of watercolor paper.)

When choosing what size to paint, look ahead to the end result. When you finish your painting, you probably want to mat and frame it so it can hang in a major museum — okay, maybe it hangs at home first.

One thing to consider is framing. You can buy standard sizes of premade frames or order a custom frame to fit the size of your painting. Custom framers can make any size frame you need and help you choose the best mat colors and frame molding for your masterpiece.

You can save some money by painting to standard sizes to fit ready-made mats and frames. Some ready-made frame sizes are 8 x 10 inches, 9 x 12 inches, 11 x 14 inches, 16 x 20 inches, 18 x 24 inches, and 20 x 24 inches. A quarter sheet of watercolor paper is 11 x 15 inches. Adding a 21/2-inch mat on all sides fits into a standard 16-x-20-inch frame. If you’re on a budget — and what artist isn’t — using a standard frame saves you a pile of bucks. Turn to Chapter 3 for more on matting and framing.

You’re composing, arranging, and organizing a scene. You need to group items to draw the viewer in and create interest. You provide the path for the viewer’s eye to travel within your painting. You also need to leave some areas where not much is happening to give the viewer’s eye a resting place. The items in the painting are connected by value or color or line or whatever you decide to use to take your viewer on this path to look at everything you want them to see.

Without organizational formats to place the important elements in a painting, the result is chaos. Your job as an artist is to create order, not chaos.