Wednesday, December 23, 2009

"Getting my feet wet" with watercolors

Yes this is my new obsession... watercolors. But I'm not actually sticking my feet in them! I'm trying to loosen up a bit in my technique and there is an exercise in my new book that gets me to do just that. From Cathy Johnson's Painting Watercolors she says to "Jump right in and splash around. Cover your paper with big wet washes. Drop in different colors and encourage them to blend". So here's what I came up with. I decided to mask off the perimeter to give it a nice border.
In the book she continues "Now, let it all dry and see what the shapes suggest to you. See if you can define them into some form, or add calligraphic little brush strokes to draw a shape". You can kind of tell that I was aiming for flowers in a pot or vase when I was doing my initial "splashing". Adding the "defining lines" was fun for me because then it began to take shape.
I like how the vase on the left turned out. And I like the flowers in the picture on the right better. Here's closer shots of each of them:

I'm not sure what new image to paint is on the horizon yet but I think it's safe to say that I'll be watercoloring for a while.

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