At least I feel that way. I set myself a goal this week—I
wanted to learn a few new watercolor painting techniques because I feel like
when I contemplate working in watercolor, I only know the "first gear"
approaches.
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I feel like Tim Saternow (West 20th St from 10th Ave, 26 x 40, 2008,
watercolor painting) is skillfully able to create cloudy opaque passages
and virtually transparent ones in his watercolor works. |
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In order to rev it up a little, I did some sleuthing and
found some great techniques that might be out of my league right now, but it
was still enlightening to look at the watercolor art created with them, and
they definitely inspired me to keep moving forward.
#1. I've always loved the transparency of watercolor, so
much so that I think I forget that opacity is a possibility. But to put opaque
pigment over transparent, all I have to do is spread a wash on wet paper, then
go in with paint of the same tone but very dark. Because the tones are unified,
the differences in dilution really stand out.
#2. Cold press paper is popular with watercolor artists, but
I wanted to explore hot press paper, which is the smoothest watercolor paper
out there. Aiy! It was tough. It absorbs moisture fast, so I found that you
have to use more water than usual to keep the pigments from streaking in a way I didn't intend. But it did
let me see a lot of the tonal ranges of any one color, which is helpful because
I'm just learning to understand all that a color can do on my watercolor palette.
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Peggy Williams is a master of light and shadow.
Her strokes are almost imperceptible and
give a sense of a form with just one swipe
(Warrior, 18 x 25, 2006, watercolor painting). |
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#3. Light and shadow are tricky for me with watercolor
painting because I'm always thinking of the objects like the sky, a tree, land,
or a sunset in a flat one-dimensional way. I put them down as if they are
cutout pieces of construction paper. To break out of that I learned that you
can alter your strokes with a flat brush, for example, to visually create
irregularities in tone that make it seem like an object is moving forward and
back in space. Zigzagging sap green over cadmium yellow gives a sense of a
tree's leaves blocking out the sun. I want to continue practicing this, but I
had never thought of one stroke being able to do so much.
By spending time with Watercolor
2009 CD Collection plus Watercolor
Flower Portraits and Watercolor Fruit
& Vegetables Portraits I was able to come away with several advanced
(for me) watercolor painting lessons as well as several inspiring next steps.
It's exciting to know that working with a medium can always be like discovering
uncharted territory. It's got me excited and ready to go. I hope that's how it
is for you, too! Enjoy!
