*Note: I was unable to center a lot of the photos for this post so the layout is a little different than that of my other posts so far.
Now that I know I'm capable of painting monochromatic landscapes, I decided to push myself to create a slightly more challenging multicolored landscape with more textures and values. For my final post, I wanted to paint a beach landscape with mountains in the background and sand and grasses in the foreground.
I'm a very visual learner, so it's easiest for me to copy the basic paintings that the author provided in the book and then put my own variation on them. Here's the final version of her landscape:
This final painting looks pretty daunting, especially because of all of the different textures the author used in the sand and grasses, but according to her, the simple colors and shapes prevent the painting from becoming too confusing (Robertson 42). Although I was worried that I wouldn't be able to complete such a difficult-looking painting, Robertson is right; the color placement is the only hard part of this landscape.
First, I began by sketching the grass and horizon line where I wanted the sea to meet the sky. Next, Robertson recommends to "soak your paper in a clean container for a few minutes. Remove the paper and gently shake out the excess water. Place it on your board and remove the air bubbles with your 1-inch flat brush" (Robertson 43). Wetting the paper before hand enables the colors to spread better and creates softer lines. However, the watercolor paper I have will fall apart if wet, so I was unable to do that step.
Next, I mixed yellow, orange, and brown to get a cheddar color, and then diluted it with water to create a butter yellow color. I brushed this color all over the sky and ground, but left the sea blank. Then I went in with a slightly diluted shade of blue and brushed that around the yellow in the sky.
Then, I took a dark blue and filled in the ocean, using darker values near the horizon and lighter ones near the coastline.
At this point, I realized that I had smudged some of the ocean above the horizon, and since I don't have white paint to cover up my mistake, I decided to turn it into mountains.
I added more brown to the grasses/sand and also created a light green by mixing green and yellow. I layered the light green over the sand and grass areas to add more depth to the painting.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to give the painting as much depth as I would have liked to because I didn't have the correct brushes to create textures with, so everything is the same texture. However, if I were to do this again, I would create the sandy texture by splattering black and white paint onto the sand with a toothbrush. I would also create a wider variety of grass colors and sized using a fan brush and varying shades of brown. All in all, I think I did a good job creating my first multicolored landscape with the limited tools that I had.
What would you use to create the appearance of waves in a watercolor painting (both tools and colors)?
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| Final Landscape |
Robertson, Jeanette. Watercolor 101: Techniques for the Absolute Beginner. New York: Sterling Pub., 2007. Print.
