Watercolor - Sea Turtle

This painting was done using a watercolor technique called direct glazing. How it works is you paint the painting in layers of color. First yellow, then orange and red, waiting for each layer to be completely dry before moving on to the next. Up to red isn't too bad, because you're just working in warm colors and thinking about what the values will be like with all of the layers together. When it really gets interesting, and kind of scary at times is in the next layers which are blue and green. These layers are great for darkening darks. The blue is probably my favorite because it's like a rainbow in every stroke! The green is good for toning down reds. I had to do that quite a bit on the shell of the turtle before it was really finished.

I really liked doing this process and I want to do more with it in the future. Here is a picture of how I did the yellows.

This was painting in yellow where ever I saw yellow and using darker yellows where I knew the values would be darker later. It's a really different way to think about painting, but it was fun. I definitely need more practice at it.

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And this is the final result! I had so much fun!