March 15th 2014

We worked on 2 projects a floral and a landscape

Project 1 - Daffodils

daffs lq

Materials

VanGogh watercolour: Permanent lemon yellow, Raw sienna, Permanent Red, Ultramarine Blue, Paynes grey. Watercolour paper Fabriano 300gm, but any 300gm paper will do. Beware: All papers behave diffferently!

  1. Roughly sketch daffs in water soluble crayon - place flowers in the top half of the composition. Use thirds see composition.
  2. Wet paper completely over flower shapes and before it dries add yellows and a little red (becareful red is very strong you dont need much.
  3. Important: prepare cling flim before step 4
  4. When yellows are more ore less dry but not completely add dark mixture of blue and grey allow to mix on the paper. Try to blend in some yellow from the flowers to form some "found" and "hidden" edges. Avoid a strong dark blue line under the flowers.
  5. Place plastic flim BEFORE the dark blue dries. Place in diagonals.
  6. Allow to dry completely. You can remove areas with CLEAN water or add more darks.
  7. Find areas between flowers and paint with dark greens (Ultramarine+ lemon). Look at the original sketch.
  8. Paint leaves at the top. Make the leaves different tones, shapes and colours. They should be different not all the same!
  9. Add shadows to give flowers 3D effect with raw sienna and green tones

Project 2 - Winter Landscape*

snow landscape lq

Materials 

VanGogh watercolour: Cerulean blue, Burnt sienna, Raw sienna. Watercolour paper Gerstaecker 300gm.

  1. Sketch/trace basic drawing from the copy using a water soluble crayon (use a crayon colour close to the watercolour colours)
  2. Place horizon line above the centre line (5.5 - 7cm from the top)
  3. Turn board at 180 degrees wet paper with water and paint the sky with raw sienna starting with a light colour on the right and adding cerulean blue on the left allow paint to mix on the paper. Important: Paint over the trees don't stop the sky colour above the tops of the trees
  4. Allow to dry and turn board back to 0 degrees
  5. Paint the building next - avoiding the roof (leave the roof white). Use cerulean + burnt sienna allow colours to mix on the paper, this should be your darkest tone. Paint roof window in the same tones. Use a dark brown crayon to mark wood panels.
  6. Add trees in different tones of cerulean + raw sienna. Draw in trunks with pointed end of paintbrush or a stick. (Don't make them all the same height or distance apart).
  7. Draw in a diagonal for the foreground and apply a wash of cerulean + raw sienna. Don't forget to leave some white paper, snow has different colours but there is always some white!
  8. Add washes of burnt sienna to foreground draw in some grasses with a crayon
  9. Add toothbrush splatter effects
  10. Add more darks to foreground (fence posts) and some shadows under the background trees to "plant" them in the ground. Don't forget you need some darks in the foreground - see aeriel perspective

* Thanks to Jann T. Bass for the inspiration