November 9th 2013

We worked on 2 projects a floral and a landscape

Project 1 - Sunflowers

Materials

VanGogh watercolour Ultramarine blue, Madder lake deep, Permenent lemon yellow Burnt sienna. Watercolour paper Fabriano 300gm, but any 300gm paper will do. All papers behave diffferently!

1.    Sketch flower and leaf shapes – you can use a soft pencil (4B) or water soluble crayons (yellow + green tones).

2.    Wet background shapes with clean water - think in repeating diagonals

3.    Mix very light tones of blue + yellow and pink + yellow (test colour on scrap paper)

4.    Drop in green and pink allow to flow on paper – avoid mixing to get 1 grey tone you should still be able to see green and pink. Keep background pale don’t worry if it flows into petal shapes

5.    Allow to dry

6.    Paint petal shapes in mixture of lemon yellow and madder allow to mix on the paper - add some green tones in places (lemon + ultra) while paper is still wet.

7.    Wet centre of flower with water then remove water from part of the centre with a paper towel so that the paint will not flow into that part. Drop in a very dark tone of burnt sienna + ultra. Choose one area to put salt crystals while paint is still wet. Do not remove salt until completely dry! Add green tone to centre of dark area.

8.    Add leaves and stalks using different tones of lemon and ultramarine using a sharp sick to draw in veins on leaves.

9.    Remove paint on dark areas by dropping on clean water and taking out colour with a paper towel or cotton bud. These colours are all non-staining (see staining colours).

10. Spray with toothbrush