I continue to work through Shari Blaukopf’s tutorials.
This week’s sketches focus on painting shadows of three dimensional objects. Shari chose three rather pedestrian objects. And yet they offer all the elements an aspiring watercolorist would need for practicing shadow painting.
Fire Hydrant
Waste receptacles, also known as bins or trash cans.
Car parked in bright sunlight.
I find that if I take sufficient time to make a good pencil sketch, the process of applying paint goes pretty easily.
If you are interested in Shari’s tutorials, you can find them here:
This blog is about my first watercolor on-line tutorial from Shari Blaukopf. She is a Montreal-based artist who specializes in urban sketching. First let me say, I enjoyed it. The reference photo is of a barn wood clad schoolhouse relocated to an urban garden somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.
My first challenge was to draw and ink the essential lines of the image. I took my time over this step, since it is critical in setting up the rest of the painting.
By the way, I’m working on Arches cold-press watercolor paper for the first time. This premier paper is much beloved by watercolorists.
Next I completed the preliminary washes for the sky, building and flowers.
After letting these dry thoroughly, I went to work on the shrubbery and trees. Shari gave instructions on how to mix eight different greens using various blue and yellow paint. This part was really hard for me, partly because I didn’t have all of the paints that she used in her mixes. I had to substitute.
To me, the various green areas look like they don’t belong together.
I let the paper dry for almost a week before I got around to adding the final details. First the lawn went in, then dark green for underpainting the brighter greens. The barn wood got more shading before all final details were added using a small round brush. After drying, I dabbed some white opaque paint onto the flowers to give a little sparkle to the scene. Here is my finished painting.
This is the first time I successfully painted a mass of foliage. I also learned how to paint a lawn and the order to use in painting flowering plants. I’m betting that I will use these techniques in many future paintings.
Daily Fiber 