Final Stage: Darks

The final pass in this watercolor sketch was to hit the pendant light with a dark wash to separate it from the background.  I made a very dark wash and applied it to the bottom and left side of the light  to reinforce the direction of light and shade.
When it was still wet I dipped my brush directly in ultramarine blue and hit the left side of the base of the light...adding a very deep tone.

The contrast in value is what will create spatial depth in a fairly flat drawing.

Second Stage: Midtones

Yesterday I talked about the first stage which was to apply light washes and leave some white highlights. What I kept white were areas that received the most light or were giving off light, like that of the lamp's light source.
In this scan of the sketch, I have applied the midtone values.  The glass within the tracery was actually dark and the metal frame work around each glass pane appeared white.  To capture this, I prepared a wash that had a consistency of coffee rather than tea.  I applied this darker wash with a smaller brush so I could just paint in the areas of the glass and leave areas between each pane the background color  to suggest the framework around the glass.  In reality each pane had a slightly different appearance so some panes received an additional pass to darken the value. I then added the same wash to the bottom of the lamp and to the left side that was in shade. I then dipped my brush in water and to the wash to apply a lighter wash to the shaded side of the columns. Finally I prepared a light  red tone to the upper portion of the arch to imply the wall and ceiling color.

First Stage: Light washes

The first stage of this watercolor was applying very wet light washes.  I do it with a big brush that holds a lot of water.  I keep the pigment very light...like the value of light tea.  you can also apply a little more color in the wet areas while it is still wet to get interesting wet on wet effects. But what is also very important is to save those areas of white.  That will add sparkle to the watercolor later.
It is hard to truly regain white areas once it is painted.

Suzzallo Library January Sketch Outing

Last week we went to Suzzallo Library on the UW campus and sketched for our January sketch outing.  It is a beautiful Collegiate Gothic Library built in 1926 by architects Charles Bebb and Carl F. Gould.  The reading room is 250' long, 52' wide and a breathtaking 65' tall. 

I chose to sketch a detail from the library... the lights with the soaring walls behind it.  I finished sketching it but didn't have time to watercolor it on site.  This was an opportunity to show the stages of the inkline watercolor process.

Here is my first stage.  The inkline sketch.  ( I had already laid the first light washes over it, using photoshop I took out the color...this is close to what I originally started with.)  Second stage tomorrow.

Inkline Stage

Sketching at Volunteer Park Conservatory

Today I took a walk up the hill to Volunteer Park on a sunny crisp winter morning.  I went into the Conservatory at Volunteer Park to sketch the orchids on display.  Beautiful specimens.  It was hard to get the back and side lighting happening.  This may have been too small a sketch to accomplish that successfully.

Paperwhites Part 2

Here is the completed watercolor of the paperwhites.  I started by doing the bowl the paperwhites were sitting in but that really took away from the focus of the flowers so I ended up painting everything to pop out the white of the flowers. Ultimately I should have worked light to dark building up the watercolor altogether. Yarka Semi Moist Pan Paints.

Paper whites in Progress

I painted some Paper whites as a way of testing out the Yarka Paints I have.  This is an inprogress painting although I should have approached it in a totally different way.  Instead of painting the object I should have first painted the background light washes then get to the details.  The Yarka paints blend well and as you will see in the next drawing of this create nice mixes of colors.

Essential Bakery in Wallingford, Seattle, WA

Another Sketch using Yarka Semi Moist Paints.  This is really inexpensive but has wonderful mixing quality.  Paints are available at DickBlicks.com
http://www.dickblick.com/products/yarka-semi-moist-watercolor-pan-sets/

Sketches from 2012

I just finished putting watercolor over some sketches I did in 2012.  Didn't have a chance to add color on the ink line drawings earlier but found time recently.  I was using a new set of watercolors "Yarka"  a Set of 8 colors for only $6.00.  They mix well to interesting secondary and tertiary colors....but I was told from Frank B. that they are staining colors.  Nice to experiment with them.

Here is one sketch that I had done on a sketchcrawl day in November while waiting to join the group at the Seattle Art Museum.  I was parked in my car on Western This is the view from the car.