Winter 2020 Watercolor Class

Project: Desert Refuge Week 3

This part is for the Wednesday beginner's class because the first thing I did was to make the water a bit more colorful. If you like your water, you do not need to do this, I did this only because I thought that the water was too light and this brings it closer to the water in the Monday class.

The first thing I did was turn my painting upside down so gravity could help me with this and also make it easier for me to paint. Next I wet the water area including where the reflections are but was careful not to keep going over and over that area otherwise I would stir up the colors that were already there and create a mess in the water.

Starting at the top of my paper, I used ultramarine blue and painted across and down about 2 inches, then rinsed my brush and lightly dried it and with the damp brush right along the bottom of the blue I helped the wet paper bring down the blue color into my painting. You should be getting a graded color: Darker at the top and lighter as it goes down the page. If you need to and while the paper is still wet, you can add some more blue by repeating the above. Let the watercolor and gravity do most of the work, you just need to guide it just don't guide it so much that you lose the graded effect. When it is where you want it, you can turn it back around just watch for excess water and drips. The above blooms were caused with the little bit of moisture I had on my paper flowing back into the darker color, just let it do it's thing and you will be happier.

In both classes we needed to add the change of color near the waterline of the  dirt of the levee. I did this with my angle brush but it can be done with a round or a flat brush, the round brush takes a bit more work but results are about the same.

For the angle and flat brushes I first mixed a color of burnt umber and a touch of blue to make a cool brown color. I rinsed my brush and dried it,then loaded the tip of the angle brush (flat brush just load color onto a corner) leaving the rest of the brush without color. Placing the tip with the color at the bottom of the levee next to the water and placing the rest of the brush ON THE PAPER, I made the ins and outs of the edge of the wet dirt of the levee, occasionally pulling up at an angle so I didn't have just a straight line across the bottom of the levee.

This will take practice for both classes and I do recommend you practice BEFORE doing this, it is a fun and very useful technique but like all things does require you understand what you are doing to make it work.

Even though we didn't do this in the Monday class, I do strongly suggest if you do not have a good understanding of how your little liner brush works (it is the round brush with the very long bristles), you need to practice.

You want the trees to look like the trees on the left not the right. Start by getting your paint to be very ink like and roll it around in the paint and spin it in your fingers and you lift from the palette to get a point on the brush, then hold the brush and the very back end and start at the bottom of your tree by pressing the brush, then lift and drag. Try to lift it to the very tip to create a very thin line.

When you want to make a branch, go back into either the trunk or a limb, follow the limb or trunk up then "branch off" with a new branch with dragging and lifting. Look at trees to see how they branch and see how the branches come in and out of the leaves because this is next.

The branches of the trees were done with the liner brush (see above) and a mix of burnt sienna and blue to create a dark brown. If you practiced look at the photo and get close, doesn't have to be perfect, no one will know.

The reeds were also done with the liner but this time you will use a circular motion and will hit the paper on the up take of the stroke. Again, practice. Big circles make taller reeds or grasses, smaller circles make smaller reeds or grasses.

Once you are feeling confident, add some darker green reeds with Hooker's and blue mixed to an ink consistency as well as some of the dead golden colors of sienna and yellow and/or orange. This photo is of the Wednesday class where I added some cattails to the top of the reeds your choice.

Wednesday's class

These two photos show where each class is when we stopped for the day. Try to get yours to whichever class you are in because we will be finishing up the project probably in the next class.

Keep painting and I will see you all in class.

Monday's class