Art Every Day Month - November 17

Layers: Diluted Washes








I have been challenged to do a watercolor landscape from a photograph of an early winter sunset on a quiet, partially frozen lake.
All the colors in the photo are pale, but they do cover the full spectrum of color.
There are dark areas in the foreground of the photo, but I may crop them out in the painting, or I may leave them in to give weight to the bottom of the composition.
We'll see.

My experiments yesterday with graded washes showed me that to do this winter sunset project, I need to thin my watercolor paints much more than I have been.
So for today's 16-block challenge, I began working in layers of heavily diluted color to achieve the range of tones I would need for this landscape, letting each color layer dry before I applied the next.
At one point I was startled when I realized that the water I was rinsing my brush in was more intense than the paint I was carefully mixing to apply as a wash.

It seems strange that I could accomplish today's art challenge with the tiniest dabs of three colors of paint, but I am happy with the opalescent quality of the light that I am seeing reflected off the paper.

If it works, that's what matters.

Art Every Day Month - November 13

Flat Wash, Overpaint and Scrub

I began this painting with an overall flat wash of viridian, covering the entire surface of the quarter-sheet of paper.
A flat wash requires a steady hand and good timing in applying the wet paint: excellent practice for me!


After the wash was thoroughly dry, I started painting the sequence of today's 16 blocks with varying dilutions of prussian blue, using a wet brush to remove the underpainting or simply painting over it.


I discovered that a sufficiently wet brush and enough pressure would remove two layers of dried paint, so there are several areas where I have scrubbed back to the white surface.

This effect is similar to Day 6 in Layers: Transparent Washes, but this time it's not an accident, and the brushstrokes make it a lot more lively.