stepbystep

This painting demonstration is an illustration of one way to do a painting. Of course there are many ways. This is a method that I use often but not always. It is usually an exciting way to paint.

I began with a small pencil sketch and a value sketch (an indication of where the lights and darks will be on the painting).

The sketch was then transferred to the painting surface, a 22" by 30" sheet of Arches cold press watercolor paper.

I then thoroughly wet the back and front of the paper using a large brush except for a few areas that I want to remain white. This took maybe 5 minutes, wetting both sides several times. When the sheen was about gone (another 5-10 minutes) I started the painting.

The idea in this step is to cover the entire surface of the painting except for those parts that will remain white. Remember the paint will dry lighter than it appears when first applied. I covered the entire surface with manganese blue and quickly while wet added cobalt blue and quinacridone gold. The cobalt and the quin gold were not applied to the entire surface but were varied for interest. The sky color was carried over the entire painting to help relate the rest of the painting to the sky (10-12 minutes).

You can add all the paint you want while the surface is wet. You can also wash off some color that you don't like using a brush with clean water. Once the paper has started to dry you will get "blooms" on the paper where wet is running into dry. I have a bloom on the left side of the painting. Don't worry about blooms at this point. They may even be desirable depending on your paintings needs.

The painting must dry completely before going to the next step. If the painting feels cool to the touch of the back of your fingers, it is not dry!

You can use a hair dryer to speed up the process. In this case I was at a stopping point so I left it to dry overnight.

Now I have started to add the middle values in the building (the sky was not touched again). I am still using the 2 inch flat brush, a smaller flat brush and a large round brush, about a size 24. I am using the brush lightly, trying not to disturb the underlying paint too much. (Some of these photos were taken with the painting at an angle on my board so it may appear that the lighthouse tower is about to tumble!)

This is the stage where "the devil hates a coward". The foreground needs something but not too much because it is not intended to draw attention away from the main subject.

Here I jumped in and rather quickly put down some washes and let it dry. I knew I was going to create some rocks so I have some gray and blue washes in the foreground.

I floated some clean water onto the sky area behind the tower and then put in some green washes. I thought this soft-edged tree line would be satisfactory but it wasn't so I added some more defined and hard edge trees.

Dark trees were added to both sides of the tower to bring it out more. Some foreground darks were added to balance the other darks.

Most of the painting is made up of middle values which are the most colorful parts of a painting.

I used a smaller round brush, about a number 8 or so, to make some lines in the rocks and to sign my name!