Advancing with Watercolor " Italia" - Graded washes - The Sea

FLUENCY AND THE VISUAL LANGUAGE

Over the next few weeks we will be focusing on some of the motorist charming and beautiful subjects that come from Italy. Many of us have traveled there and have in our albums hundreds of photos that we have been thinking to paint. Lets use this class as a means to do that. Of course each week I will be providing images that I have collected and wanted to paint. The weekly projects are listed in the syllabus and include the sea or coast, th piazza of square, the garden - simple descriptions but unique if we think of our experience in Italy. I will also be focusing much of our technical focus an a particular technique that I think is a cornerstone for us - especially as watercolorists. This technique

is gradation. We will start with a simple use of gradation and practice various ways of using gradation as we move through the different projects I believe that by the end of tis series you will be able to observe gradation in all sorts of subjects and you will also have the ability to paint it.

Gradation involves manipulating the color while it is wet - it looks quite easy but in fact is challenging. It is an extension of working wet into wet which requires us to sacrifice some control and allow watercolor to do its thing.

WHAT WILL YOU NEED THIS WEEK

In class we will create a couple of paintings together so you will need a couple of pieces of paper.I am using a scrap piece 10 x 14 for a drill and a larger 12 x 18 piece for the painting.I do recommend goof paper all of the painting we do together

Brushes
A large flat 2” and a 1 inch flat 1”, a couple of sabelette rounds large and small.. Masking Tape, spay bottle, paper towel, hair dryer, and mounting board
Color
Yellow ochre, b Sienna, alia crimson. Cobalt turquoise, cobalt blue, ultramarine blue,

neutral tint and white

WHAT WILL WE DO THIS WEEK A DRILL

We will start with an exercise in creating a graded wash using a scrap piece of paper (a failed painting turned over) and mount this to our board

The exercise is to use a single color to create a graded wash in the upper and lower parts of the painting - the video demonstrates this wash and you can study I and practice it before class if you wish - in the lower was we apply some stronger marks to suggest waves. The slides below detail the process