Painting A New Watercolour

Step One: The Planning and Drawing

Once I have the paper ready, I sketch out the scene and apply liquid frisket to areas that I want to stay free of paint at this stage. In this case study the three lilies and some of the leaves of the cattails are isolated in this way. This is crutial in the planning stage. To get this wrong, you can't simply go back and correct it. You'd have to start over. Everything is planning in watercolour.


Step Two: Base Colour

Once I have the paper ready, I sketch out the scene and apply liquid frisket to areas that I want to stay free of paint at this stage. In this case study the three lilies and some of the leaves of the cattails are isolated in this way. This is crutial in the planning stage. To get this wrong, you can't simply go back and correct it. You'd have to start over. Everything is planning in watercolour


Step Three: Flushing Out The Main Features


Of course these photos are a little deceiving because the painting appears to be almost done. But, the frisket is still in place. The under water areas are taking shape. The darkness of this area, is applied very wet so that the colour moves around freely. I cann also drop in some raw colour to facilitate algae etc. I also stopped short of the right to replicate the strong light washing out that area.


Step Four: Finishing


With the frisket removed I am now able to finish the lilies, add some tone to some of the over-hanging leaves and leavind some pure white (or exposed papaer) this helps with the strong light effect. I pull back some of the lily pad stem from the dark area to help with a sense of depth. It is at this stage that I also splatter different colours into the composition. I feel this loosens up the scene.

From here I crop the painting and prepare for matting.







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