Watercolor Artist Blog

Notes from North Light: Your A to Z Guide to Watercolor

Jennifer Lepore — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:14:28 GMT

A strong drawing will allow you to paint loose while still retaining a good likeness. Follow along with this advice for painting people from Grant Fuller's Watercolor A to Z:
1. Draw from reference, checking your proportions.
2. Wash the figure and background together, leaving areas of white paper for the lightest lights.
3. Work darker and smaller, strengthening shapes.
4. Finish sparingly, adding some details, but allowing the viewer's imagination to fill in the blanks.

For those of you not familiar with this 2008 North Light book, you can learn more about Watercolor A to Z in Jen's Picks here, or check out Grant Fuller's recent feature in the September/October 2009 issue of Canadian Brushstroke Magazine here.

Notes from North Light: Sculpt Intricate Details of Light

Kelly — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:47:33 GMT

To achieve the beautiful effects of soft yet radiant light for the piece Dawn (left), artist Robin Berry uses small scrubber brushes as well as toothbrushes to blend and blur the hard lines created by masking fluid. Berry, a potter as well as a watercolorist, refers to this softening and rounding the edges as “sculpturing” the light, a process she likens to the act of molding clay.

For large areas, Berry first sprays the areas with clean water, then uses a wet toothbrush to scrub the hard edges with a small circular motion. For smaller areas, she uses a small scrubbing brush that's wet with clean water to gently scrub the area. If you need to repeat this, dry the paper well before doing so, as too much scrubbing can puncture the paper. As you can see, this gentle touch is worth the effort.

You can see how Robin Berry created this piece from start to finish in Watercolor Secrets, edited by Rachel Rubin Wolf.

Paint a Watercolor Portrait in 4 Simple Steps

Kelly — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:50:37 GMT

Watercolor Secrets contributor and Splash veteran Fealing Lin loves painting watercolors spontaneously. “Spontaneity can be merely an illusion if you don’t appreciate the nature of the medium,” says Lin. “I constantly squint my eyes to generalize the shapes, leaving the facial features and other details for last.” Here’s a look at her process in action.

Reference Photo

1 DRAWING THE LIKENESS
I drew the image with a 3B pencil, making the pencil lines dark enough to sustain the first color wash. I added small dots of frisket for the spots of light in the ribbon and the ribbon’s shadow.

2 APPLYING THE LIGHT-VALUE WASH
I set my easel at a steep 70-degree angle. This allowed the colors to run and mingle when I applied the light-value wash over the pencil lines and the background using the wet-into-wet method.

3 CREATING THE LIGHT AND SHADOW PATTERN
I used light-medium values to shape the light and shadow patterns at this stage (both cast shadows and form shadows). Cast shadows can be rendered with hard edges, but form shadows need softened edges.

4 COMPLETING THE FACIAL FEATURES AND DETAILS
I completed the facial features and details with all the light and dark values. I erased the frisket and made necessary touch-ups. I used a craft knife to scrape thin lines into her hair.

Fealing Lin’s work will also be featured in the upcoming Splash 11: New Directions, due out in May 2010. Visit the Splash website to learn more about their current competition Splash 12: Celebrating Artistic Vision. Deadline to enter is December 15th, 2009.