Watercolour Class - Project 2

So here's the inspiration for our second project.....

Bull rushes in the foreground - late in the season - they are dried out....and in the
background, trees that have lost a lot of their leaves? and it looks like dead trees
you see in marshy areas.....mostly just trunks and bare branches - some of them falling down.

First though you have to decide on the perspective you want for your painting.
Quick perspective sketches help you to visualize what you want your finished painting to look like.

1/3 bullrushes, 2/3 background - horizontal orientation
2/3 bullrushes, 1/3 background - horizontal orientation
2/3 bullrushes, 1/3 background - vertical orientation
1/3 bullrushes, 2/3 background - vertical orientation - the winner!

The next step is to play with your palette of paints - and come up with the shades that you want to use in this painting......

FUB, VB, WG, BS, QG, IB, WG(SG) - 7 shades will be used to mix all of the shades for this painting.

Something that I was quite surprised at in class - you have to learn to take good notes!  Imagine that!  Just like any other class, a big part of your success in absorbing what you are being taught, is in the notes you take.  DUH LOL!!!

So we have an instructor, who is sitting in front of us, she is talking, you have to take note of what shades she is mixing together, what her hands are doing, what kind of movement, what brush she is using, how she is using it........is it wet, is it dry, is it lightly loaded or fully loaded with pigment - are you applying it to wet paper, dry paper, or something in between!  It's a lot to take in, so mostly I focus on getting "the formula" for each shade down, and maybe make some quick notation of what happens first, then this, then that.....

For this painting......the paper has to be WET WET WET - you wet it and go off and mix your paints.

Once your paints are mixed, you wet it again.....

You check that your paint mixtures are right....and we start to put the background shades in the area of the bullrushes.....it's wet on wet, so it spreads and blends and you are just putting a base coat down for the rest of the painting.  When it is almost dry, put a few bullrush shades in where you think you might want them......look at the photograph, but don't copy the photograph....think about the placement of your bullrushes - where you want the eye to be drawn to...not the middle though - off to one side!

There is a lot to think about.