Tip of the month – January 2005

This month’s tip is a demonstration of the work that I painted on World Watercolor Day. CALLA LILIES is the result of this demo.

After copying my sketch onto the watercolor paper, I decided that the composition needed an additional flower towards the bottom of the composition and positioned behind the strong vertical blooms.

I applied maskoid to the upper edges of the foreground flowers. When it was dry, I made a light warm yellow wash over everything but the flowers.

A light wash of sap green was applied to the dry yellow wash. At this point, there is a white shape in the upper left corner. It is intended to be a flower going out the top of paper.

The negative space was further divided to show the beginning of leaf shapes.

The yellow in the negative space is deepened further and the leaf shapes are further defined. Alizarin Crimson and Sap Green are added to the negative space on the top right as a test for a background color. Dioxazine Violet and Phthalo Blue were used to strengthen the dark.

My composition and values were in place. It became a matter of completing each shape. The white in the upper left corner was still there.

It was at this point that I could see that the upper flower was not going to work. I applied the warm yellow, the red, the green the violet and the blue to fill in the white shape.

The greens were created with variegated washes of green and yellow, green and red, green and blue, and green and violet.

The individual flowers were created with the same colors. The white on the flowers is the white of the paper.

This painting was created with five colors – gamboge, sap green, alizarin crimson, dioxazine violet, and phthalo blue.

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