Watercolor - Glazing Colors Exercise

This exercise shows how you can create different colors by glazing(A wash dried + B wash). My class did a little different format than I did. The approach I took was something I saw on James Gurney's blog(the creator of the Dinotopia books). His watercolor exercise is here. The diagonal colors are the pure pigments and the two sides show how the colors combine as glazes and the differences between having each color layered underneath and on top of all the other colors. Under each swatch there's a little formula telling what is there. Color A is the color underneath and color B is on top. A + B = what you see. It was great fun!!

Watercolor - "French Horn Portrait"

First off, sorry about the dark shadow from the mat board. It's not part of the composition. :)

The assignment or purpose of this painting was to gain experience with painting darks with watercolor. I got my reference and inspiration for this painting from my friend Jessica Willey. She gave me permission to use pictures from her blog for photo reference. You can visit her blog here and her portfolio blog here. This reference is from a set of portraits Jessica did for a girl who play's the french horn. Painting the girl was fun with the interesting lighting going on and I'm really pleased with how she turned out. The large dark wash in the background was harder for me, but with time and some happy accidents/tender mercies, it turned out great!

Prints Available

Watercolor - Texture Experimentation

In preparation for our next assignment, a painting structured around textures, we got to experiment with making whatever kind of textures we wanted. My favorites were saran wrap, rice, and twisting a stiff fibrous tube(I don't actually know what it is). Here are some close ups.

This close up has rice, cork, shower poof, that fiber tube thingy, salt, garbage bag, and crumby paper towels.

This one is a little fuzzy, but it's a close up of how the saran wrap turned out. I like it a lot.

This one has sea sponge, the fiber tube twisted on it's end, and basically those same things repeated in a few "squares." Oh look! There's the saran wrap again. ;)

I'm not sure what I'll do for the texture painting, but I want to do something with either saran wrap, the swirls, or rice. We'll see!

Just how do you paint on those Spori desks?

Very carefully. ;) Having snacks on hand helps too.

Watercolor - "Pineapple Limes"

Prints Available

This is my first finished real watercolor painting. As a class we worked from the same reference material that our teacher did for a painting that is currently in a local gallery. So it was a master copy of sorts, but it was so interesting all of the different directions people ended up with. It was a very challenging piece, even frustrating at times, but it taught in experience faster than traditional teaching could have alone. I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

Watercolor - Stayers and Spreaders

More getting to know my pigments. The idea is to lay down a pigment, let it dry, then go over it with a wash to see if the pigment stays put or spreads through the water. Very important to know and incorporate into watercolor painting. I think I didn't let the colors dry all the way, because colors I know to be stayers were acting like spreaders, like my cerulean, and spreaders were acting like stayers, like the phthalos. C'est la vie.

Watercolor - Three Washes

This assignment was our first introduction to watercolor washes. It was definitely a learning experience.

I liked the middle one best. It's negative painting on an indirect graded wash.

Watercolor - Color Experimentation

This was the first assignment from my watercolor class this semester. Part of learning how to effectively use watercolors as a painting medium is understanding certain traits that they have. This exercise was to show opaque pigments, which show up better on the black stripes, transparent pigments which rub away with water really well(thus the white line), and staining pigments which don't rub away as much. It was a good exercise to get to know the colors on my palette.