Tuesday night watercolor class - Painting in progress



Nov 5 Update: Continuing to develop the painting, I carefully observe the variety of greens and yellows that create unique patterns over  the carnival squash. Using several yellows and a variety of earth tones, I allow the pigments to mingle directly on the paper, rather than overmix on my palette. You can see where I have dropped in burnt sienna and sap green in the warm yellow/gold washes. I continued to develop the green pattern, varying my greens from warm to cool, and again letting many of the pigments marry directly on the paper. I am working here on dry paper, as these patterns are abstract and have crisp hard edges that can only be retained by keeping the paper dry and applying wet washes and pigment directly to the watercolor drawing. I am also keeping the lighting direction, tonal value change and the overall form of the squash in mind as I paint and deepen or lighten the values as necessary.  





Started the Tuesday night Watercolor classes up again for the Fall and have everyone working on a Farmers Market theme. Everyone had a great start to their paintings on Tuesday night and I'm looking forward to seeing the progress of each painting next week. Will take some photos of student work and post when I get a chance. Here is what I am working on and will demo on for the class. At this point, I am just getting started. I laid in most of the soft yellow washes for the squash and have started defining the most prominent object in the foreground, shown in this photo. In the overall shot, you can see that I have also dropped in one of my darkest darks - the chalkboard. Although this is not the darkest dark in this composition, laying it in early in the painting process allows me to really get a handle on the overall tonal value of the painting. In other words, I have something to compare adjacent areas to. I like to get some of my darks in early, rather than waiting till the end. This way, I can work towards the correct tonal values all throughout the painting process and do not have to worry toward the end that I have to make drastic adjustments. For me, it's the way I balance my painting.





Wide shot of painting-in-progress with the inspiration photo taken at the Chicago Farmers Market clipped to board. Note: this is very early in the painting process. Pigments I am using: Raw Sienna, New Gamboge, Aereolin, Quinacridone Gold, French Ultramarine Blue, Winsor Blue, Sap Green, Rose Madder Genuine, Alizarin Crimson and Burnt Sienna.