A wee discussion about my demo painting from last lesson.

Some critical thoughts:

• underpainting with lots of water, not much colour. this foundational underpainting is important because it provides the highlights, low lights and values. Key because if you paint too dark too soon, you'll end up with nowhere to go. Mostly, it is not possible to paint light value colours over dark colours = transparent medium!
  
  
• an important process is to paint around whites, then another value in some areas - each consecutive value should allow some of previous values to show. you could say that the shape of each successive value is smaller and smaller (not necessarily the case but that's for later).
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• there are some issues to solve - excellent, I'll be able to show you more of my critical thinking process, next class.


• this is not the only way to paint watercolour but it is important to learn and understand and use as a springboard in developing your style. It's my goal to teach you how to use water so that your paintings look like watercolour paintings.

Value Scales

A key learning for visual artists in all painting mediums is to understand values. Without a good value structure paintings may look unfinished or worse, wishy-washy and dull.
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in watercolour, a typical process would be to paint lightest (2) and mid light values (3) around whites (1, white paper) and get progressively darker and use less water. This may seem slap dash and messy - and it is, but it's important to get background colours blending and light values working.

Several values can be laid down quite quickly in just 2 or three washes (layers), the key is to know where you're going and do it quickly - a plan is essential and may include any or all of these design tools: composition thumbnail, value thumbnail, detail sketch, colour sketch, monochrome sketch etc.

HOMEWORK:

1. Use a soft pencil to make your own value scale.
2. Compare these values to your previous sketches, drawings and paintings.
3. Write down your observations.
4. Photograph your paintings and sketches.
5. To one or two sketches, add the necessary lights or darks and do another critique. What are your discoveries?

It seems to me that a painting of an urban scene must have a people or two.

just like a rural scene might need a cow/goat/sheep - some life!

the problem is they must be credible, they must be drawn and painted well - if not ... well ... lets not go there!

so how to start?

start by drawing, get lots of photos of people walking/standing and drill them down to basic shapes - geometry!

I can't tell you how many pages of people drawings I have done - page after page after page, then I do more pages and pages and pages. In other words you can't draw them too much.

think of these three basic shapes U W O 
U - turn upside down, it becomes a torso
W - legs
O - head

once you've done lots of practice getting the ratios right (length of leg to body, size of head etc) you will naturally start to loosen up, let them merge, make a crowd etc. relax your hand and let your hand/eye coordination work for you. Keep your pencil marks light, fluid, gestural and lyrical (only use sharpened "B" pencils). avoid erasing pencil marks