Watercolour Course November 16th for Improvers

Project 1 – People in the landscape

Materials - Winsor & Newton fine grain 300gm paper.
Van Gogh watercolour - madder lake deep, ultramarine blue and raw sienna (add either cerulean blue or vermillion in tiny amounts right at the end for focus

1. Simplify the people shapes – practice drawing on scrap paper to get more confidence. Use 1 or 2 colours and allow colours to flow into one another. Imagine white shirts by painting background shapes. Put all heads on the same level
2. Draw a long rectangle slightly narrower at the bottom; draw 2 legs of slightly different widths with some space between knees, legs meet again at the feet. Add the head last -the head should be 1/8 the size of the body. (Beginners make the head too large - if it’s too small you can always enlarge it!)
3. Tape paper to the board and draw the frame (for finished frame 24x30 use 17x23)
4. Draw a line (soft pencil B+) ½ way horizontally.
5. Draw all heads on this line put the feet on different levels depending on how far away the people are from the viewer. Draw people roughly putting some in groups one behind another and some facing sideways.
6. Decide on your centre of interest (COI). You can use either colour to lead the eye to the COI or strong tonal changes
7. Sketch in the line of umbrellas ½ - 1 cm above the line of heads breaking the line above your COI. Sketch in the details of the buildings
8. Paint the people first – they’re the most difficult - if you mess up the people right at the end it’s demotivating
9. Then paint the areas under the umbrellas changing the tone and colour as you work roughly around the heads – don’t worry about leaving a small white area around the heads but it’s better if it’s irregular
10. Paint in the buildings lighter at the top and darker where they meet the umbrellas turning your board upside down if necessary. Paint in very rough windows, balconies etc (not too much detail on the buildings – the people are more important)
11. Give the umbrellas some form by using a pale blue grey to denote shadows
12. Give the street some horizontal shadows by glazing using a pale ultramarine + madder. Go over the top of any feet
13. Add any highlights with white gouache (use very sparingly!!) Don’t use for large areas
14. Splatter with a toothbrush to give texture to the street using the same pale ultramarine + madder colour

For more on painting people click here

Project 2 – Landscape with mist and cows

Materials - we used – Winsor & Newton fine grain 300gm. For a more robust paper use arches 300gm fine grain
Van Gogh watercolour – burnt sienna, ultramarine blue and raw sienna/ lemon yellow. Lemon yellow will give brighter greens; raw sienna will give more sombre look.

1. Sketch out landscape, think in diagonals
2. Sketch in cows as the centre of interest (COI)
3. Mask cows or be prepared to paint roughly around them
4. Mix up some Chinese white gouache  and wash over horizontally from ½ way up to the bottom of the sky very roughly
5. Allow to dry
6. Paint featureless sky with pale wash of 80% ultramarine +20% burnt sienna – keep board at an angle
7. Wash in background hills with darker sky colour add burnt sienna for foreground hills and greens (lemon yellow/raw sienna + ultramarine for the foreground
8. It’s important not to overwork the glaze on top of the gouache. Paint over once with large brush and avoid going over the same area several times (avoid the gouache mixing with the glaze colour to give a chalky effect). Allow to run down the paper.
9. Allow to dry and remove mask carefully
10. With damp paper tissue dab out soft cloud shapes over the area with the gouache try to avoid sharp edges and regular shapes
11. Add line of bushes/trees in darker  greens diagonally to cows (don’t forget trees need birdholes!)
12. Paint in cows.
13. Add darkest darks in foreground with splatter work and texture

For more on composition click here