This is a lesson in color and value, and I think it's one of the most challenging aspects of watercolor. As a painter, I know how difficult it is to make that final dramatic statement of color and value that gives drama and focus to your painting. In watercolor, it's especially difficult, because when you apply your paint, the colors are a lot more vivid and deep while they are wet. You have to cultivate a value memory of how a wash or a more intense application of hue will look when it is dry. Some painters make a chart of colors to remind them. A good thing.
Another issue to complicate matters is that different papers absorb the paint differently. A softer, more unsized paper will turn your brilliant viridian into ethereal green, a sized and rough paper will granulate your pigments better and give sparkle to what might be a large flat area of color. Sigh. All I can say it takes practice and Noticing.
Here is an exercise to help you see value changes. The first flower is in values of black, Lunar Black, because it is such a pleasing warm black and can show a range within a value.
The second is monochromatic....and you can choose any color. I chose Alizarin Red.
The third is using a full range of colors .
First, for each exercise, I painted the very lightest value of the hue I was using over the entire flower for each example. Paint a mark of this lightest value above each of your flowers. This gives the first flower, the shades of black, to dry a little before you start on it with your medium value of grey. Squint and you can see it. Then start with the medium value for the black shaded flower, then go to the monochromatic flower and paint the medium value of your chosen color, and then paint the medium value color for the full color flower. Probably a medium shade of orange and one of green.
When you work in sequence like this, you don't have to wait for your piece to dry, you can go back and forth between pieces.
Now apply your appropriate darkest values to each flower.
Each exercise is like playing scales on a piano....you are honing your visual memory for value....the light and dark of colors.
Assignment. Read page 118 and 119. On a 1/4 size paper. Working large to small brush, lay in a background of a light graded color, then with a mediam value of colors , make some large zig zags and stripes and checker boards. Then with your smaller flats, rounds and riggers, using your darkest values of color, make patterns of different strokes. dancing. wiggles, dots, “smiles”, lines, circles, squares....anything you think you need to experiment with brush strokes. Remember, wet on wet will “bleed”, but maybe you may want that.
Go back to re-read lesson 2 on this blog.....I can almost guarantee it will make more sense to you now in relation to questions about color and value.
©Jennifer M. Carrasco 9/17/09 All blog entries on this site, visual or intellectual, are the property of Jennifer M. Carrasco (unless stated otherwise) and cannot be reproduced or used without her written permission.
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