2017 Fall Watercolor Classes Week 1

Fall 2017 Combined Watercolor and Watercolor Plus Page

I now have 2 watercolor classes: A beginning and an intermediate class. I will post the notes for the beginning class first, the intermediate class will follow. - LP

Watercolor Plus - There won't be a blog for the basic strokes we covered in our last class because there is a page set up especially for basic watercolor strokes. Look at the top of the sidebar (←) and you will see a list of permanent pages, click on the Basic Strokes to see what we covered in class.

Watercolor Project: An Autumn Proposal Week 1

This week we got the under painting done for our project. The first thing I did was to cover areas that I needed to be white with masking fluid. In the photos it will be the blue/grey color that is over the area for the roses and the ring. Once the masking was dry, I started in the bouquet area by wetting it first (you may need to wet it several times so the area will stay wet because we will be working wet into wet) before adding my paint.

Remember you work from light to dark in watercolor so add lots of water to your paint before you drop it on your paper. I started with the yellow areas first where the sunflowers will be. Please notice that I am not painting the sunflowers, I am just putting down the first lightest color by touching my brush with paint to the wet paper. let it do it's own thing. All other colors from here out will be darker, at best the yellow may give the following layers (glazes or washes) a bit of a glow DO NOT PAINT THE THINGS that will come later. I created the edges of the sunflowers and the rest of the bouquet in the next step when I put in the under painting for the background.

Work quickly just adding different colors into the bouquet area then let it dry.

When the bouquet area is dry, you will do a similar thing with the background by first wetting the area and painting in with a very watered down red (napthol or cad red medium). However, when you get around the sunflowers, the edges of the bouquet and the wine bottle, you want to paint around the edges with both the water and the paint. This will create so basic forms for later when we get into painting the "things".

I suggest that you paint the bottle after you paint the bouquet so they will dry together. Again, wet the area first then drop in the thin colors into the bottle. I used sap green and touches of ultramarine blue for the glass. I let that part dry before painting in the label with a little yellow and burnt sienna.

I got the shape off on my bottle a bit so I will have to fix it later but for now, I have the whole painting under painted, now we start the fleshing out the details part next class.

Try to get your painting up to this point by class if you can. Keep painting and I will see you in class.