Letting go of realism style watercolor painting is way more difficult to master than I imagined. This past week I found a practice that seems to be helping me paint in a loose style. First I should say that I found a stash of paper in my studio. It was tucked on a back shelf probably because it was of a lesser quality than I normally use. The use of this old paper seemed to help me let down my guard so to speak. As an artist on a budget, paper seems to always break my budget because quality paper is so important to a successful painting. This lesser quality paper seemed the perfect paper to practice on and so I spent a few hours trying to paint loose.
Trying to paint a few random pink wildflowers seemed doable. It is Springtime in Florida so the many wildflowers in our area provided the inspiration for this exercise. I began the first painting on a small section of a 9 x 12 piece of paper, only painting in an area that was 7 x 9 inches. A smaller section of the paper was used so that I could practice more on one sheet. I did not tape the paper down so I could move the paper, water and paint around as necessary.
Using the brighter greens in my palette, sap green, green gold, and olive green for contrast. Yellow ocher and lemon yellow for the centers of the flowers. Sepia and Raw Umber to add shadows to the centers of the flowers. Rose Madder and Potters Rose for the flowers. In the example below, a sky was added in, Cerulean Blue and Cobalt Blue were used to create those clouds. Using a variety of brushes to create the flowers, mop style to drop larger amounts of paint to a script liner for the smaller touches.
The first step in this practice is to wet your palette, this step prepares the paint and makes it easier to lift the color with your brush. I use a spray bottle filled with water for this process.
To begin the painting exercise you need to wet your paper. In the first example, I used my spray bottle to apply the water and followed up with a brush to spread the paper around. The second example I applied the water with a brush. Either way is fine, it will be your preference, you may experiment and pick the method your prefer.
In this exercise negative painting was also used. The green paint for the foliage was applied first, leaving spaces for the pink flowers to be added in later. I added the blues in for the sky next. Added the pinks in for the flowers. The paper was still wet, I painted quickly to make sure that neither my brush or paper was dry. I am finding that this is very important on a loose style painting. Another benefit to painting quickly is that you do not try to paint too much detail. After these steps I let the painting dry. Once dry I came back to add stem detail and the centers for the flower. This is the result of this exercise.
In my next exercise, the same steps were used from the first exercise. The main difference in this painting was that I used the spray bottle of water while I was painting to make sure that the paper stayed wet. I also felt more comfortable with my paints, I knew what to expect.
The great thing about practicing is that you learn more about the tools you use as an artist. I also think that you learn who you are as an artist that helps you develop your own artistic style Keep painting everyone.
Please share your journey to painting loose with watercolor.
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