Watercolor Painting for Dummies (62 page)
Read Watercolor Painting for Dummies Online
Authors: Colette Pitcher
Tags: #Art, #Techniques, #Watercolor Painting, #General
Although I would like to say I met this bear in the Arctic, he was actually in the zoo. His oh-so-cute pose is what inspired the painting in this project.
This polar bear is white, but I painted him in a rainbow of colors. After all, white is the reflection of all colors. The cool blue tints bounce off the ice into the lower shadows. The warm light from the sun gives the fur a yellow cast from above. The bright light washes out the detail like an overexposed photograph. To make the critter really stand out, a dark background and foreground create contrast. There is a subtle reflection of the bear in the ice and water in the foreground.
Notice how the dark color runs diagonally from the upper left to the lower right just to keep the composition interesting.
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.
Figure 13-6:
A polar bear drawing for your copying pleasure.
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.
Figure 13-7:
The bear’s body reflects many colors, but still appears white.
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.
A. Keep the middle area light because the white of the bear’s body is reflected there.
B. Paint Antwerp blue around the bear’s reflection. Add water to make lighter blue. The foreground contains brownish-green ripples among the blue. To make this color, mix Antwerp blue and burnt umber. This color reflects the background. Paint the area wet-into-wet to get some blurred edges. I dropped in some diluted cadmium red in the foreground water in a couple of spots.
You can let the area dry and make little long oval shapes that retain their hard edges. Follow Figure 13-8, but remember, it was painted quite spontaneously. Use the picture as a reference and just paint similarly for the same look. You can go crazy trying to copy exactly what took a few seconds to paint spontaneously.
C. Make a
glaze
(layer of diluted paint) of yellow ochre and paint over the white reflection area. This makes the bear’s white body be the brightest and most prominent object in the painting.
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.
Figure 13-8:
A foreground reflects the bear.
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.
Figure 13-9:
The final polar bear smiles.
This painting shows a different style of lighthouse architecture. It isn’t the typical tall cylinder.
I placed the lighthouse in the upper third of the page and wanted a very simple lead-in to the center of interest. I loosely painted flowers with more detail in the near foreground, and I used salt to form flowers in the grassy foreground. I got lucky in that the salt cooperated and produced larger blooms the closer they get to the viewer. Yes, lucky. You can manipulate watercolor to your will, but sometimes you benefit from a little luck as well.
To capture this lighthouse, follow these steps:
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.
Figure 13-10:
The foundational drawing for a lighthouse scene.
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.)
Figure 13-11:
Yellow ochre and burnt sienna mingle for an underpainting.
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.)
Figure 13-12:
Green paint and salt make a textured foreground.
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.
Figure 13-13:
Sky and land make a background.
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.
Figure 13-14:
Shadows define the building’s planes.
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.
Figure 13-15:
A red roof adds color next to the near-complemen-tary 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.
Figure 13-16:
A lighthouse has long been a symbol for guidance.
