Reflections of Fall

Tutorial

This painting tutorial was put together for a class that I was teaching on watercolor.  The class was a short one so I didn’t have a lot of time to demonstrate and we all tend to paint slowly when we are learning new techniques.  A well executed painting is a well planned painting—making the planning process of color schemes, composition, etc very important.  The planning often takes almost as long as the painting itself.  This choice of subject worked well as it wasn’t one that required a lot of pre-planning.

Using a large round brush, I started this painting by laying in the blue sky with a wash. Skies are usually painted their darkest at the top of the page (overhead) and fade into the horizon.  I’ve chosen to keep my sky fairly simple and fairly light.  Allow the sky to dry completely.

Next—paint the setting sun.  While the sun was still wet, I loaded my brush with clear water and wet the rest of the sky above the horizon line.  Place the water right up to the edge of the sun, allowing the paint to seep into the rest of the sky.  Don’t overwork this—let what happens naturally, to happen!

Start painting the distant bushes at the horizon line and gradually lift your brush as you go upward so they aren’t as thick at the top.  If the water is still wet, the bushes will form a soft edge, giving the illusion that they are in the distance.  Let your painting dry !!

There is really nothing in this painting that you need to draw before starting other than to make a line across the horizon to indicate where you want the tree line to be.  Some students like to roughly draw the trees in, although I think that the spontaneity is good too.  You can choose whatever colors you want to paint this picture.  I choose ultramarine blue to go into the birch trees, and quinacridone burnt orange for the distant bushes simply because they are colors that compliment each other.

Before lifting the mask, using either indigo blue, or a really dark green mixture, paint some very simple (no detail) evergreen trees in behind the bushes that you have masked.  Also lay a wash on the ground area, leaving the area where we will put the stream or water. The pond area was wetted down with clear water and then painted by starting at the edge with indigo, allowing the pigment to float into the clear water area.  Let dry and then add the orange and yellow reflections. 

Let this dry completely and then lift the masking fluid.

The area that was masked for bushes in the background, I simply painted a yellowish green color.

The birch trees are painted using cobaltblue, ultramarine blue, and permanent rose.

Using the end of your paintbrush to dip into your masking fluid, mask in the birch trees.  Don’t make all of the the same size and you want a few branches also.  This varation makes for a more interesting composition.   Mask a few bushes also along the treeline.  We are going to do other things along this treeline, so don’t overdo the masking fluid here.

A note on masking fluid:

My preference is to use the drawing gum that is available from cheapjoes.com for this because it is colored making it easy to see where you’ve applied it.  The shelf life on any masking fluid is one year.  To use it beyond this time is taking a chance that it may lift the paper when you rub it off.

Here is a closer-up photo of the same type of birch trees we are going to paint, only using different colors.  In this photo I’ve painted the tree detail (on the left hand side of the birch trees) using quinacridone gold, burnt orange, and permanent rose.  Shadows were painted on the right hand side of the trees using cobalt blue.

Mix a fairly wet puddle of pigment on your tray.  The tree detail (rings) are painted by dipping a credit card (or hotel room card) into the wet puddle and starting at the left hand edge of your tree, drag it across the trunk in a slightly curved motion.  The tree on  the left, in this example was not curved but the tree on the right was.  This was done to show the difference it makes.  Dragging the card in a curved manner suggests that the tree is round, making it more real.

When the rings are dry, you can paint the shadow side of the tree, in this case with cobalt blue.  Using a darker color, I also randomly paint “eyes” or “knots”

Sometimes I feel that I need to paint an edge along some of the areas on the left hand side of the tree.  If you’re going to do this, just make sure you don’t edge all of the tree.

Some final touches to the painting included

· adding birds to the background

· Deepening the colors used in the foreground and the puddle area

· Adding cast shadows, using ultramarine violet, to the ground.  Cast shadows are caused from the sun hitting the birch trees

· Sign your painting.

 

Hope you enjoyed !!    Happy Painting ……

                                               Joy