Tag Archives: value sketch

Daily Watercolor Painting – Ink Resist Art Technique – Dance Passion 1

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Ballroom dance art painting - Ink resist

Ink resist art techinque involves the use of permanent black ink, tempera paint, watercolor paint, gouache paint or acrylic paint.  At this stage after the watercolor goes through the wash and is completely dried, watercolor, gouache and or acrylic can be painted on.  I use watercolor and start to paint around the permanent ink lines left behind by the water bath.  Basic gradated wash is used with more emphesis on the color than the value.  Layes of watercolor is being applied one after the other when the previous layer is dry.

Watercolor Ink Resist painting progress

The above shows the progress on the watercolor ink resist painting using watercolor after removing the ink and tempera from the cold press watercolor paper.

Watercolor painting daily on green plant – A Green World

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Daily Watercolor - A Green World - Final #1

More work has been done on the watercolor painting A Green World over the weekend.  Most of the work is done on the left side of the painting where darker shade has been layered on which add on to the value of the leaves and it’s shadows.  Watercolor painting is very challanging because many times it will surprise you with the result.  It is the control of the amount of paint and the water in the brush that counts.  After I have done adding on the darker shade on the left side and let it dry, I found that it is still not dark enough.  So I will be doing more watercolor layers to add more contrast to the left side.

Watercolor painting of green plant – A Green World

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Watercolor painting on green plant - A Green World

I have covered the whole 15 x 22 inches cold press watercolor paper with paint but it does not mean the painting is finished.  This is just the start of the final stage of the watercolor.  Many areas  need to be painted over with watercolor wash to achieve a darker value while in other areas colors needs to be lifted in order to produce a lighter shade.  Color in certain areas need to be change as well.  Usually the next step will be to leave the painting on a display easel and examine it for a few days so that I will know which areas need to be adjust.  The painting won’t be finished until then and at that time a location for the signature will be determined.  I find it important to determine the location of the signature because it is essential for the final balance of the whole picture.

Daily watercolor painting on green plant – A Green World

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Green plant watercolor painting - A Green World

Having lots of fun continuing the 15 x 22 inches watercolor painting of a green plant.  Although I can see there are areas in the painting that I need to change, I feel that this painting is progressing along quite well.  These changes will be applied later at the end.   One thing I found that the texture of the leaves are a challenge to show on the painting.  Some areas I need to do more with the dry brush and the watercolor medium just would not allow errors in that regard.  Also I must make sure that the underlaying value is correctly placed before I can work on the details.

Daily Watercolor – A Green World

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Dailywatercolor - A Green World

Watercolor of the close up of a green plant on 15 x 22 inches cold press watercolor paper.  Still experimenting for mixing a nice green and with the wet in wet technique trying to work with the transparency quality of the watercolor.  I will try to follow the color and shade in the close up photo I took and work my watercolor follwoing it.  Later on as I look at the painting as a whole, I will try to change areas that I think might be better to convey my feeling toward this particular scene.  I will do that by adding or subtracting the value of a certain area so as to bring out another.  The watercolor is not finsihed until this step has been done.  I like to stand up and display the watercolor and look at it for a few days before I start doing this and usually is done in small sections in a different time.

Daily watercolor painting – A Green World

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Daily watercolor - A Green World

Started painting the watercolor painting A Green World.  It is on a 15 x 22 inches (half sheet) cold press Arches watercolor paper.  It is lots of fun doing the backgroud and green leaves of the plant always keeping the value in mind.  I know that the challange of this painting is to have different shades of green next to each other keeping in mind the separation of value between them so as to have them distinguish between each other in the painting.  Another challange I found is to keep the darker shade interesting by doing it in a variety of color shade but not make them turn into mud.  A layer of wash one after another is used for the dark shadows as well as the lighter ones.

Watercolor Daily – A Green World

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Plant photo for watercolor

A sketch on grid 15 x 22 inches paper was the first step for this watercolor painting.  This is a close up I took during a recent visit in the Singapore Botanical Garden whre rare species and orchids bred are cultivated around the world.  I like the light and shade it presents in the photo and decided to do a watercolor painting of it in hslf sheet of cold press watercolor paper.  Photoshop was used to correct the color and cropped to the final size, a print was first made.  Then a full size sketch was made on paper.  The sketch is then transferred to the half sheet watercolor paper using carbon paper between the sketch and the watercolor paper.  Next, I would like complete  a value study on the sketch I made to indicate the value of the final painting.  I would be done in three values and in pencil just to give me an idea of where the values fall into.

Plant drawing on paper

Landscape Watercolor Painting – Value Sketch

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Watercolor Painting Blog - Value Sketch

I want to talk about linear sketch and value sketch in watercolor painting.  On the image above, the top one is a pencil sketch called a linear sketch or linear plan.  I have done  this on a relative small piece of watercolor paper about 3.25 x 6.5 inches.  The value sketch or value plan is done next after the linear sketch.  It places the value in the painting before the color is being applied.  I have done this using pencil but it can also be done using a brush where one color, usually black or sepia is being applied.  Using the pencil, I can have the whole painting broken down into three different values.  The first one is the lightest value which are areas that are void of any pencil marks on the watercolor paper.  The second value is middle grey which is represtented by hatches of the pencil in one direction.  The third one is dark value and is represented by cross hatch of the pencil on the paper.  All the other values during painting should fall in between these three.  Once I established the values, I know the lightest and the darkest areas in the watercolor painting before I even have paint on the paper.  Another important thing about doing the value sketch is knowing what the value is next to each object.   Value sketch is a good exercise to do before we paint the big painting and I would do it even before the linear sketch plan is being transfer to the final watercolor paper.  Two or more value sketch is important to know and experiement the different tonal values befeore I paint.