Watercolor Garden Fantasy Week 3

My goal in the last class was to get as much of the painting in the background behind pagoda done as possible because from here we will start finishing up are paintings and we will need to remove the masking that we have put on the pagoda and the white areas in the stream that were covered with the masking.

Have your reference photo of the Botanical Garden pagoda and the stream where you can see it because these are going to give you all the information you're going to need for this part of the painting. They will show you where your shadows are, where the highlights are on the plants in the rocks, it will show you the darks and the lights in the water and it is your best guide when you are painting so have those photographs handy.

Remember when you are under painting an area you want to start light and then add dark with layers, if you get too dark too quickly it will be very difficult to bring back the light so it is better to do this in layers then it is to try and finish it in one fell swoop.

When you are painting the stream remember to follow the water. If the water is in one of the pools it will lay flat so your brush strokes need to be flat if it is falling over one of the many falls your brush strokes will also fall over to look like the water is falling, this will clue your viewer that the water is flowing down over rocks into another pool this is very important.

When you are as far as you can go with your bushes, trees, ground cover and stream without removing the masking, let your painting dry completely before you remove the masking.

Once you have removed the masking from the pagoda you will want under painted in a warm color, I used my cadmium yellow light with a touch of burnt sienna and a little tiny touch of purple and a lot of water to under paint the pagoda.

 

In the streams I went in with various values of green and blue to break up some of the white area that make up falls look at the stream photo and you will see that where the waterfalls over the rocks it has various different colors and values this is what you're trying to recreate you don't want to lose all of the white that you saved but you do want to make it look more natural.

Try to get your painting up to this point as best he can we could possibly finish this painting this next week so you might want to start looking for the next thing that you want to paint and I will help you get started. Keep painting and I will see you in class.