Beverly Ash Gilbert

"My Favorite Place"

Your homework assignment for next week is to determine what you are going to draw for "My Favorite Place". You must create your artwork on your own, but are encouraged to bring in some photos of "My Favorite Place" and some questions before you get started so that we might help you with material or technique choices.

The following are paintings I have permission to post 

• First you must decide on your focus - is the sky or ground more important in your composition? Give your choice most of the space eg. 2/3 of the space is generally successful in conveying the relative importance.
• Note that the sky comes all the way to the ground (not just a strip at the top of the page!)
• Sky in an outdoor landscape is the main light source.  It is also usually in the background (trees, mountains, grass in front). Therefore it should be painted FIRST
  
• Watercolor is an excellent medium for the sky and water; wet-on-wet flows for easy gradation of color. Can combine with pencil or pastels nicely
• Taping your paper to a board (with low adhesive blue tape) allows you to paint off the paper without messing up your table, gives you a nice 1/4 inch border, allows you to transport your piece even while wet and allows you to tilt the paper to enhance the flow of the colors.
  

• 1/2 to 1" flat paintbrush
• Med. to lg. round paintbrush
• Watercolor paper (we didn't have good quality today and it balled up, tore and wrinkled) - you should get high quality paper for your Reflections project. 
  
• Watercolor tubes allow much more flexibility in color mixing and color intensity than the more commonly sold cakes (if you want to do more work with watercolor, you can find a Reeves 24 tube set that will last a long time for $13.50 at Ben Franklin craft store).  The paint colors we used today were:
  

1. Paynes Grey
2. Ultramarine Blue
3. Burnt Umber
4. Sap Green
   

• Tape your paper to a board (any will do!)
• Water is always horizontal, therefore use a strip of tape about 1/3 up from the bottom of your page to block off where your water will go. 
  
• Use a 'Whisper line' to draw in mountains at about 1/3 from the top of your page

The sky:

• With your flat brush, wet the sky up to the line you just drew for the mountains
  
• Mix Ultramarine Blue and a little Paynes Grey with water
• Load your brush and paint across the top of the page
• Without putting on more paint, brush across just below this first stroke, and overlapping it slightly.
• Wet your brush with water as needed and keep painting across as you move down to the mountains
• It isn't necessary to reload your brush with paint with each of these strokes - the water will allow the darker strip at the top to flow. Though you may add more paint if you want it darker.
• Smooth out any definate lines with water if needed
  
• Painting the entire sky should only take a couple of minutes - much more than this can overwork the paper and it will start to crumble or tear.
• With the sky still wet, bunch up a paper towel or cloth and dab at areas to lift the paint for clouds

The Mountains:

• Mix grey with lots of water for a pale wash
• Since mountains are darker at the bottom, start the wash at the bottom of the mountains while your brush is loaded
• Add more water and continue to paint across the mountains until you come to a 'snow line'
• Dab the top of the grey with a cloth to soften the horizontal lines and give the illusion of snow
• With round brush, dip the tip into grey and dab it along the tops of the ridges (rocks too sheer to hold snow), you can pull the grey with water down to create shadows for near and far peaks
• Mix sap green, burnt umber and grey with water to simulate the color of forest land
  
• With flat brush pull forested area UP from the water line, dab with paper towel to soften the top edge
• Add more trees with sap green using your round brush in an upward motion from your water line.
  

Lake:

• Carefully (slowly) remove the tape to reveal the water area
• Using the same colors as the sky, load paint onto your flat brush (moderately wet)
• Very lightly brush back and forth (horizontally) across the lake area, leave a few white streaks for ripples and don't paint right up to the hills to allow for the shoreline. This step should only take about 10 seconds - any more and you may overwork the paper and make the water too opaque
• Allow the water to dry for only about 2 minutes (still damp, but not dripping), then load your paint with a wet mixture of the hill colors and maybe a dab of the sky mixture.
• Paint DOWN from the water line to reflect the hills and mountains in the water. Make sure your pattern mirrors the line of the hills.  Remember the shore line is a line of symmetry. Dab at the edges to soften any stark lines
  
• When the lake has dried, you may remove tiny ripples by wetting your flat brush and drawing it along the water in small, horizontal lines (not too many).

 

This project was adapted from: Fenwick, Keith: "Paint a watercolor landscape in minutes: Skies, Mountains and Lakes; Winsor & Newton Acturus Publishin Limited, 2002.

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