Winter 2019 Watercolor Class

Creating a Composite Painting - Week 1
(I have edited this post to include the sketch I worked from and this weeks stage of the painting. - LP

As I have said before, there are times when you have a great photo of something but it is in a terrible setting, this is when you need to get out our artistic license and create a fitting background for your subject. This starts with having good reference photos to look through to give you ideas.

When I am out taking photos, I purposely look for things that I might need someday for something I am painting whether it is clouds or rocks or trees or water or fill in the blank, I take photos just to have for reference when ever the need arises and it does quite often.


For this demo, I looked through images I have taken over the years to find a subject and came across these 3 woven grass baskets. As you can see I took the photo on my counter in front of some appliance probably because I had good lighting coming in from a window. I knew that the background was irrelevant because I could put in anything I wanted. Next I needed to find a background so I went back into my computer files.

 I found some interesting rocks that I had taken photos of when I was in Arizona, this was all I needed to create a sketch and then a drawing that merges the baskets and the rocks into my soon to be composite painting.

The first thing I did was to make some small sketches to decide how I wanted my painting to look. Did I want it vertical or horizontal? Close up or at a distance? Doing sketches lets you compose your painting to see how the different elements work together, what composition works best and where your light source is coming from. In this instance, I lucked out and the light was coming from the same direction in both photos.

Once I had my idea down I sketched it directly onto my paper. Usually, I will do a more exact drawing on good drawing paper or tracing paper, this way, if I want a larger final image I will scan it into my computer and print out a pattern the size I want using the Poster 8 software (the link is in the sidebar under Lerri's Links). The reason I usually go this route is because I want to make all my corrections on paper that is better suited for being erased so I don't damage my watercolor paper which usually has a softer surface and doesn't take erasing very well. It also allows me to save the pattern for future use if I want to paint it again.

Once I had my drawing on my paper I started doing washes of color over my paper. This is about 3 layers of wash on the background rocks and I am starting to sort out the different rocks and cracks. I have a long way to go.

Here you can see my drawing a bit better but I could have used this closer composition as well, I will save that for next time.

Don't be afraid to merge 2 or more photos together to get the painting you see in your head, that is the beauty of at and as I have said, artists are the original photo shop, we are only limited by our imagination. Keep painting and I will see you in class.

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This last week I added more layers to build up the values (darkness) and the intensity of the color as well as drop come color into the rocks. I added a bit of detail into the rocks I think one more session and I will call it done.