Summer 2016 Watercolor Class Week 4

Watercolor Class Project: Working the Steps – Week 4

PV students if you want to review the strokes we did in class, look under the pages in the sidebar and you will find a list of them with photos.

Torrance class, most of your instructions are in the previous posts but I did want to show where I am in your class and to suggest that when you are looking at the photos on the picture page to zoom in to look at the detail and see where colors overlap colors, where there are hard line but mostly where there are soft blurred transitions between colors and between values.

I use water almost as much as I use color because water is your blending medium. I’m not talking about dripping brush loads of water, more often than not it is just a damp brush that I use to go over the edges to soften them or to blend them into existing colors or values.

HAVE YOUR REFERENCE PHOTOS IN FRONT OF YOU! I look at my reference photos before I start painting and double check each time I am about to put brush to paper so I know what I am doing.

Remember to keep your layers transparent so you don’t lose the transparent nature of your watercolor. To make something darker, you need to do layers. Every time you add a layer of color to another layer of previous color, that previous color will influence the new color both in its value (light to dark) and it’s intensity of color (vividness of the color), you just need to be patient and work the steps to get what you want.

 

Add uneven layers of color and blend with a damp brush
to create texture in your cliff walls.

Zoom in to see the overlapping brush strokes and where
they are blended. Also use the darker colors to shape the
lighter closer rocks and cliff.

Start with a lighter color that will become your highlights
as you add darker layers on top.

Use the same colors you used before in the water to  shape
the foam patterns in the water. Watch the direction of your
strokes if you want the water to look flat your strokes need
to be horizontal.

We only have 3 weeks left to finish this project so please try to have your paintings to this point for our next class.

Keep painting and I will see you in class.