Advancing with Watercolor: "Rooftops over the City" Patterns
FLUENCY AND THE VISUAL LANGUAGE
Part of any excursion to Italy usually means climbing into some of the most picturesque hill towns. The villages and small towns literally seem to grow out of the hillside. Of course they were not built for aesthetic reasons but as a way of defending the city against attackers. The views are either looking up or looking down and sometimes from great heights. They always inspire us to make an attempt to capture the beautiful architecture and dramatic skies. I want to share the idea of patterns and combine this with some graded washes to show you my approach to this difficult subject.
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 YOU WILL 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, Cobalt turquoise, cobalt blue, ultramarine blue, sepia and white
WHAT WILL WE DO THIS WEEK
DRILL
In our efforts today we will look at a drill that is focused on perceiving and painting patterns. I have selected a field of stones . There re many similarities to the view of looking our over a hill town and seeing a sea of rooftops. Painting them will give us a path to capturing the feeling of looking out over the sprawling village
This weeks Demo
We are looking across Palm to the towers of the duomo that rise above the tiled rooftops - Quite an inspiring scene. From the rooftop horde we could take a few photos with the thought to make a painting later. After completing the drill I feel I can see a way to paint the complexity informant of us. The key is to establish the pattern of rooftops.
Before creating the patterns I will create a drawing and the a couple of gradients similar to the drill we just did.