Unit 6. Project Painting a Portrait in Watercolor

Painting the NOSE and SKIN:



Painting the EYES:



Painting the LIPS:

Unit 6. Activity 3- Starting from Scratch

Try to Re-Create This Using the Learned Techniques:

Create a key and label where you used each technique!

Unit 6. Activity2- Applying Watercolor Techniques

WATERCOLOR - TECHNIQUE

                   Try to re-create this basic watercolor painting using the techniques below:

                 

WashesThe most basic watercolor technique is the flat wash. It is produced by first wetting the area of paper to be covered by the wash, then mixing sufficient pigment to easily fill the entire area. The pigment is applied to a sloping surface in slightly overlapping horizontal bands from the top down. Once complete the wash should be left to dry and even itself out - don't be tempted to work back into a drying wash, the results are usually disastrous! A variation on the basic wash is the graded wash. This technique requires the pigment to be diluted slightly with more water for each horizontal stroke. The result is a wash that fades out gradually and evenly		Graded wash through the sky
GlazingGlazing is a similar watercolor technique to a wash, but uses a thin, transparent pigment applied over dry existing washes. Its purpose is to adjust the color and tone of the underlying wash. Non staining, transparent pigments such as Rose Madder (or Permanent Rose), Cobalt Blue and Auroline are ideal for glazing as they can be applied layer after layer to achieve the desired effect. Be sure each layer is thoroughly dry before applying the next.		A cool Gray glaze pushes back the end of the buildings
Wet on WetWet on wet is simply the process of applying pigment to wet paper. The results vary from soft undefined shapes to slightly blurred marks, depending on how wet the paper is. The wet in wet technique can be applied over existing washes provided the are thoroughly dry. Simply wet the paper with a large brush and paint into the dampness. The soft marks made by painting wet in wet are great for subtle background regions of your painting.		Wet in wet push the bushes into the distance.
Dry BrushDry brush is the almost the opposite watercolor technique to wet in wet. Here a brush loaded with pigment (and not too much water) is dragged over completely dry paper. The marks produced by this technique are very crisp and hard edged. They will tend to come forward in your painting and so are best applied around the centre of interest		Dry brush gives crisp, sharp details
BlottingMost watercolor pigment can be dissolved and lifted off after it has dried. Staining colors such as Phthalo or Prussian Blue, Alizarin, Windsor Red, Yellow or Blue are difficult to remove and are best avoided for this technique. The process for lifting off is simple - wet the area to be removed with a brush and clean water then blot the pigment away with a tissue. Using strips of paper to mask areas of pigment will produce interesting hard edged lines and shapes		The foreground shadow was lifted off so as not to draw too much attention
Dropping in ColorThis technique is simply the process of introducing a color to a wet region of the painting and allowing it to blend bleed and feather without interruption. The result is sometimes unpredictable but yields interesting and vibrant color gradations that cant be achieved by mixing the pigment on the palette.		The soft Burnt Sienna suggestion of a bush was dropped in while this area was still very wet

Unit 6. Activity 1- Watercolor Techniques

Techniques:

Washes- Controlled Wash, Graded Wash, Wet-on-Wet Wash

Softening Edges

Dry Brush

Splatter

Alcohol, Salt, Blotting, Stamping, Sand paper, Wax Resist

Unit 6: Intro to Watercolors

From a technical point of view, learning to use watercolor is simple: add water to the paint, put brush on paper, and you're painting. It's the beginning of an exciting and intriguing artistic journey. These 10 watercolor painting tips will help you avoid basic mistakes and get better results right from the start.

Photo © Marion Boddy-Evans

1. Watercolors Dry Lighter

With watercolor paint, a color willalways look more intense (stronger and darker) when it is wet. A color will always be lighter and paler when dry.

It's something you get a feel for through practice and experience. If your paintings look insipid, make the colors more intense by using more paint and less water, or painting another layer of a color over the first.

Photo ©2011 Marion Boddy-Evans

2. Test a Color First

Watercolor paint dries very fast, so test a color on a scrap of paper or on the edge of your painting before using it. That way you'll know whether it's the hue and/or tone you're after. 

3. Dry Watercolor Remains Soluble

Even once watercolor paint has dried, it remains water soluble. You can re-wet the dried paint with water on a brush and it will 'turn' back into paint. This means you can lift the paint off the paper to fix a mistake, lighten a color by removing some of it, or even mix it with new paint. Though you do need to be careful you don't scrub at the paper too much and damage the surface.

4. Watercolor Paint is Transparent

Watercolor paint is transparent. You can see through the layers of color you've painted, making it near impossible to hide mistakes. Don't fight against this, but embrace it and work with it.

5. Light to Dark

Because the white in watercolor comes from the white of the paper, not the paint itself, the usual advice is to paint from light to dark. To start with the lightest colors and tones, and build your way up to the darkest. But don't be afraid to experiment with putting down dark colors early on in a watercolor painting, as it may turn out to be an approach that works for you!

Photo © Marion Boddy-Evans

6. Use a Decent Watercolor Brush

Rather have just one, good brush than a handful of cheap ones that splay out and drop hairs. It'll save you a lot of frustration. A good brush retains its shape so you can get a very fine brushmark from the point; it holds a good quantity of paint so you need to reload it less often. 

Photo © Marion Boddy-Evans

7. Don't Add Too Much Water

Avoid inadvertently adding more water to your paint after you've washed your brush by dabbing the brush onto a dry cloth before putting it in the paint again. If you've loaded a brush with paint and decide you needed less paint, hold clean cloth at ferrule end of the brush hairs to soak up some of the excess. Doing it at this end helps keep the pigment at the tip of the brush.

Photo © Marion Boddy-Evans

8. Watercolor Paper Isn't Identical

The label "watercolor paper" covers a lot of variations. Not only in the thickness of the paper, but also how smooth the surface is and how 'white' it is. 

Photo © Marion Boddy-Evans

9. Stretch Thin Watercolor Paper

The more paint you use and the thinner the sheet of paper, the greater the likelihood is that the sheet will buckle. This can be prevented by stretching the paper first. 

10. Masking Fluid Mistakes

Masking fluid or frisket is very useful for blocking off areas where you don't want the paint to be. But do check first that it'll come off the paper, as it'll soak into very soft paper and then not come off without destroying the surface of the paper.

Unit 5: Project "Invasion of Space" "Up close and Personal"

Find an artistic way to invade space. 

 

Example:

1. Look into a place you are not supposed to be.

2. Make your perspective in the subjects personal space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unit 5: Activity 3 "Drawing My Hands"

Draw a hand in both ebony and charcoal with as much detail as possible.

Think about where the joints on the fingers are:

Divide the hand into shapes instead of jumping into the contour lines:

Define the lines of the hand from the shapes:

Finally, Add Value!

Unit 5: Activity 2 "Value Objects"

Drawing 4 objects using at least 6 values in both ebony pencils and charcoal.

Unit 5: Activity 1 "Creating Value Charts"

Unit 5: Using the Ebony Pencil and Charcoal

Keep Your Pencils Sharp (unless you are blending an area)
Chisel-point or blunt pencils are useful for some techniques, but for most pencil drawing, keep your pencil sharp. Don't worry about 'wasting' graphite in the sharpener - better than wasting your drawing efforts! Brighten the point by rubbing the side of the pencil on scrap paper between sharpenings. If you need a darker line, use a softer pencil, and be aware that a softer pencil goes blunt quickly.




Control the Direction of Marks:
Draw in circles!!!! Don't let your shading just follow the curve of your arm as you move it across the page. Use direction to describe your object. Follow the form, or create an edge using contrasting direction in two planes. A casual-looking but carefully executed effect of shading everything in one direction can also look effective. Direction direct the viewer's eye or create energy. Even randomness is often carefully considered, in order to look 'artfully dishevilled' rather than 'scruffy'. Where are your marks going?

NEVER!!!!

Outline in Value Drawings

When value drawing, you are creating an illusion with areas of tonal value. When you use a hard drawn line to define an edge, you disrupt this illusion. Let edges be defined by two different areas of tonal value meeting. Read more about Value Drawing.

Use blending sticks only on charcoal drawings!!

Unit 4: Project "Painting a Landscape"

Choose an image to create your own landscape painting using both acrylic and oil paint:

Unit 4: Creating a Landscape in Acrylic/Oil Paint

How to Paint a Landscape:

Landscape Painting Tip No 1: Don't Put Everything In
You're not obliged to include everything that you see in the landscape you're painting simply because it is there in real life. (In fact, I’d go as far as to say that if you do this, then you might as well take a photo and have it printed on canvas.) Be selective, include the strong elements that characterise that particular landscape. Use the landscape as a reference, to provide you with the information you need to paint the elements, but don't slavishly follow it.
Landscape Painting Tip No 2: Use Your Imagination
If it makes for a stronger painting composition, don't hesitate to rearrange the elements in the landscape. Or take things from different landscapes and put them together in one painting. (Obviously this doesn't apply if you're painting a famous, readily identifiable scene, but the majority of landscape paintings are not of postcard scenes, but rather to capture the essence of a landscape.)
Landscape Painting Tip No 3: Give the Foreground Preference
Don't paint the whole landscape to the same degree of detail: paint less detail in the background of the landscape than you do in the foreground. It's less important there and gives more 'authority' to what's in the foreground. The difference in detail also helps draw the viewer's eye into the main focus of the landscape painting.

Unit 3: Project "Creating an Oil Painting"

Painting 2 Objects Personal Still Life

Unit 3: Activity 2 "Creating an Object in Oil Paint"

1. Planning Your Painting:
2. Create a rough sketch. Use a hard pencil to create a light sketch of your subject. You can do this directly onto the canvas or onto tracing paper, and transfer it using a carbon copy. When you’re drawing your subject, keep in mind the composition and use of negative space.
   • Composition is the placement of items on the canvas. Choose the best placement so that the eye is drawn around the entirety of the canvas, rather than left to linger on a single spot.
   • Negative space is the space around an object. If you are using an item in real life and are drawing it onto your canvas, draw difficult areas by looking at the space around the figure rather than at the figure itself. Consider what you will fill the negative space with once you start the painting in order to make your subject pop.
   • Make note of overlapping figures, as these add depth to your composition. If your subject doesn’t have any overlapping shapes, consider rearranging until you do. This will add realism to your painting.
3. 2
   Find the light source. To create a realistic painting, you must have obvious patches of light and dark. Look at your subject and determine the angle at which the light is coming from, and where shadows and highlights are located.
   • All light sources cast shadows, but if they are directly above the subject it can be difficult to see them. Try moving your light or your subject so that the shadows and highlights are more obvious.
   • You may not have incredibly dark shadows or incredibly bright highlights. In fact, you likely will have a range of values that are all very near each other. Don’t be concerned if your light source isn’t creating a strong definition of shadows and highlights.
4. 3
   Consider your colors. For new painters, it is often very difficult to match the colors of their subject to the colors they mix with their paint. This is because the brain provides an idealized color value; you see the sky is blue, so you mix blue paint, only to realize that your paint is much brighter and colorful than the actual sky. The trick is to get past the symbols of color our brain uses, and examine the actual colors being used. This will change the brightness of your paints.
   • A painting set at night will be darker and richer than one during the day, which is most likely brighter.
   • Check the color of the light source; on a bright sunny day, your subject will have a golden glow. On a gray day, the light is diffused through the clouds giving your subject a gray tint. You may also have actual colored lights - such as neon signs or tinted light bulbs - that affect the colors of your subject.
5. 4
   Look at the movement of your subject. Are you painting a still life with little to no movement? Or is your figure in a field on a windy day, creating a lot of motion? Paying attention to the movement of your subject is important for planning your brush strokes. Realistic paintings have brush strokes that create movement, or a lack thereof.^[2]
6. Creating Your Painting:
7. 1. 1
      Mix your paints. Oil paint is extremely forgiving in the sense that it takes many days to begin to dry. However, it is nearly impossible to mix the same paint twice so mix your paints in large batches and preserve between painting sessions so that you always have enough of the right color.
      • Use a color wheel to help you find colors to mix. The color wheel shows primary, secondary, and tertiary colors and how to make them.
      • Pure hues are colors that have not been mixed with either white or black. You can mix the primary colors to create the secondary colors.
      • To create a tint, add white to your paint. This will lighten it and make a more pastel color.
      • To make a shade, add black to any paint color.
      • To make a tone, add white to a shade (any color with black added). Tones are the most widely used, as they represent most of the everyday colors we see.
   2. 
      2
      Begin painting. You can choose whatever painting technique you like, whether that be painting entire sections to completion or putting layers of paint over the entire canvas. When oil painting, though, use the thin-to-thick method in which you paint with thin paint before using thick paint.
      • Try painting basic subjects. All figures are made up out of a few basic shapes: the cube, cone, cylinder, and ring. Paint these in the form of real subjects, such as a box or orange, or paint a flat form of each.
      • To thin your paint, use a blending medium (linseed oil or terpentine) mixed with your paint. Don’t use too much to start, but gradually add more until you get the consistency you want.
      • It takes three days for a layer of paint to dry enough to add a second layer to the top, so be patient while you wait for your paint to dry.
   3. 3
      Try different techniques. There are dozens of ways to perfect your painting, but learning them all as a beginner can be overwhelming. instead, focus on picking up some of these techniques one at a time.
      • Try blending your paints. This is the process by which you slowly fade two or more different colors (think of a sunset). To do this, add layers of paint so that they are directly adjacent to each other on the canvas. Then, use flat brush to smooth the paints together, working with the direction of the blend.
      • Try creating a glaze. This is when you use a solution of 1/3 linseed oil,1/3 terpentine, and 1/3 varnish to create a transparent color. You can use this mixed with any paint color to create a see-through hue over dried paint.^[3]
      • Use stippling to create small dots. Use a natural bristle brush (dry often works best), and tap it vertically against your canvas. You can build up these dots to create a more opaque figure.
      • Try using a palette knife to paint. This technique is great for landscapes and creating movement on your canvas. Scoop up a bit of paint on the bottom edge of the knife, and sweep it across the canvas to create thick layers of paint.
   1. 1
      Correct any mistakes. You have about three days (while the oil paint is wet on the canvas) when you can alter any mistakes or remove them completely with a damp rag. Before you decide the painting is complete, take a step back and look at your painting in its totality to see if any changes are needed.
   2. 2
      Save unused paint. If you have a lot of paint left on your palette that was not used, save it for your next painting. Scoop it into small containers or into piles on your palette and cover with saran wrap.
   3. 3
      Clean your paint brushes. Oil paint will ruin your brushes if it is allowed to dry, so clean your brushes immediately after use. Use turpentine and an old rag to wipe away as much of the paint as you can then rinse them under warm water with a little washing up liquid. You can brush the bristles against the palm of your hand to make sure all the paint has been removed. Put the clean brushes, bristle-end up, in a jar or cup to dry. Make sure that the brushes get adequate air circulation until they dry: Put your brushes them in an open area-- on a shelf or desk, for example, not in a closed cabinet or drawer.
   4. 
      4
      Wait. For oil paint to dry completely, it may take up to 3 months, even longer if your painting has many thick layers of paint. Put your painting where it won’t be disturbed or damaged and allow it to air dry for the necessary time.
   5. 5
      Add a coat of varnish. When your painting has dried completely, add a coat of varnish to protect it and preserve the color. When the protective varnish has dried, you’re done! Hang your beautiful creation for all to see!

   
   

   
   

   Painting Grapes:

   
   

   
   

   

   
   

   Grape Oil Paintings: