Free Watercolor Lessons & Techniques
"How to Paint a Watercolor Painting"
By Donna Weber
http://montanahorsegallery.com/
Naturally, you'll start with the white of the paper. From there, I take a color I'll be using in the painting and begin to draw my image. In this instance, I'm using a mat board that's been coated with gesso. I like this surface because the watercolor is so easily erased if a mistake is made. At this point, I've chosen to do a complimentary color scheme, yellow and blue.
A little more drawing, I think I'll put the leg on this little foal. I also corrected the area around his lower ear by wiping across the mistake and repainting it.
He's laying in straw, sleeping peacefully, so I think I"ll add the basic color of the straw that's around him. Artists call this basic color, the "local" color of an object. I've also added a few details to his little face.
This foal is laying in straw that's in a stall. In my painting, the light is falling through a window, but there are boards and items in the way of the light. These items create a random path of shadows. I don't want black shadows, mine are going to be colorful so I'll throw in some blues for the shadows. As I go along, I've added shadow color to the foal. I'm not trying to make anything exact here, I've just thrown some blue color in here and there. The foal doesn't have his "local" color yet.
Shadows and light in the straw become complicated. If you paint like I do, you don't want to draw every single straw this foal is laying on. I'm dipping my brush into clean water. Next, I hit the brush against my left hand to shake drops of water across the paint. This will help to create very random places of light and shadow. I tried not to get very many of these drops on the foal as he's mostly in shadow. The foal is a kind of brown color, so I'm adding that to him, in places where the light hits him, at this stage.
I'd like some of my straw to look like straw, so I'm taking my wet brush and dragging just the tip of it across a few places. This brings a few of the straws out into the light and lets you think there is some straight, straw looking stuff in there with the foal. I've drawn the straw so it curves under the foal's weight, giving the impression he "weighs something". You don't have to draw every single straw if you don't want to. I've also pulled the brown color over the blue shadows on the foal. It's tricky to drag one color over another on this gessoed mat board. You need to use a juicy wet brush and be quick about it, or you'll lift the bottom color off and it will totally mix with your top color. It's ok to me if some of this mixing occurs, but I like the look of one glaze over the top of another better than the color I get if the two mix.
This stage has been detail work. I brought out the mane of the foal, strengthened some colors in the straw and on the foal. I brought out the white spot on his forehead.
More detail work. At this stage, I'm strenghtening any places that seem weak to me. I've added muscle to the foal and shape to his head.
In this last demonstration photo, I've added some ink to the outline of the foal and signed my name. I hope you've enjoyed this demonstration on how I do a watercolor painting.