Tip of the Month - March 2002

In January of this year, I was invited to do a watercolor demonstration for the Central Florida Watercolor Society. I had a large & very appreciative audience. I promised the group present that I would complete the painting & put it on the website. The subject is a Magnolia & it has been painted on a 22" x 30" cold-pressed sheet of Winsor & Newton 260lb. paper.

To start, the white highlights were masked out & then a cool wash of turquoise & cobalt violet was applied to the wet paper. At the same time, a yellow/orange wash was added to the wet negative space.

Allowing the paper to dry, a dark wash of yellow/orange,alizarin crimson,sap green, Winsor blue,& dioxazine violet were applied to a pre-moistened negative space. The mixing is done on the paper. Yellows,greens,& blues were worked wet-in-wet on the foilage.

In step 3, I have started removing the 'resist'. It will tell me how much darker the 'darks' need to be. I have continued with some of the detail. The background dark has had another dark wet-in-wet wash applied to strengthen it.

If you look at the palette, you can see that there is a variety of warm & cool colors used in this painting. Also, notice that there is very little mixing done on the palette.

In step 4, you see the final painting. The background has been further darkened with a wet-in-wet wash. Detail work in the flower & foilage has been continued. 90% of the color mixing has been done on the paper.