Watercolour Techniques
Colour Palette for Pears: Phthalo Blue, Cadmium Yellow, Lemon Yellow, Permanent Rose (mixed with Cad Yellow for the ‘blush’ on pears), Ultramarine Blue & Burnt Umber for underpainting shadow colour – Burnt Umber is also good for knocking the brightness out of the darker greens.
Useful Things: Salt – different types give different effects, Potato or craft foam or polystyrene for stamping, Dip pen and/or coloured pencils, Kitchen sponges or bristle brush for stippling, paper/thin card for masks etc.
EXERCISES:
1) Make swatches for a mostly green colour palette for pears using Phthalo Blue mixed with Cad Yellow and Lemon Yellow….use Burnt Umber to knock back the brightness if required. Use Ultramarine and Burnt Umber to make a blue-grey mix for the tonal underpainting.
2) Create a sheet of pear shapes using basic geometric shapes such as circles, ovals and triangles as a starting point. Adjust the shape to look more natural and add stalks and leaves.
3) Draw horizontal and vertical lines on an actual pear to be able to visualise the contours – this helps with shading to make your drawing or painting appear 3-dimensional. Pick a light direction and shade in shadows on your preliminary sketches – the deepest shadow will be where the object rests on the horizontal surface.
4) Make a two grids of 4 pears: the first will contain traditional techniques: - wet-in-wet; wet-on-dry; wet-on�dry over a tonal underpainting using transparent glazes of colour; wet-in-wet with salt sprinkled on top (to create a mottled texture).
Wet-in-wet and wet on dry can be used as separate techniques – or more usually, in combination with each other working in layers to build tone and intensity of colour. A variation of wet-on-dry is to use a ‘dry-brush’ techniques where a small amount of paint is used on an almost dry brush, applied with fine hatching strokes to slowly build up an area….this is a much more controllable way of painting watercolours, often used in botanical work - but takes time and patience!
5) The second grid of 4 pears will contain less traditional techniques:
• Printing with a potato or craft foam – potatoes work particularly well as the starch in them thickens and stabilises the watercolour making it easier to print with. If printing with foam or polystyrene, add a small amount of washing-up liquid to the paint to do the job of the starch – but not too much or you’ll end up with bubbles!
• Cut a mask/stencil from cartridge paper or thin card and stipple through it with a rough kitchen sponge or bristle brush.
• Paint a loose sploshy wash over your drawn pear shape allowing it to go over the edges and leave white space. When dry apply sketchy outlines with coloured pencil or a dip pen to add definition. You can also use the pencil to add scribbly areas of colour to the pear.
• Use up the colours on your palette to make a random sploshy puddle on a spare piece of paper (throw salt on it for extra textures if you want to!) When dry, cut out a pear shape and collage onto your grid.
6) Add stalks, leaves, a bit of spattering to bring everything together (and maybe even a bit of decorative detail with gold paint or pens). And there you have it – two reference pieces of watercolour techniques – annotate and keep in your sketchbooks or put them in mounts and sit back and admire them!
