Advancing with Watercolor: "Nightlife, NYC" Create glowing Color

THE PROJECT

The city has a different feel at night - especially Times Square - illuminated billboards, traffic lights, Marquees create luminosity ad excitement. In this project we will focus on painting the excitement of a scene in NYC at night. How can we capture this? In this project we will practice building up color in layers, using high contrast, and a variety of edges to capture the glowing qualities of Times Square.

THE DRILL

The drill this week introduces some ways in which to build up color. Layering is an effective technique for creating luminosity in watercolor. The benefit of this exercise is it gives us a way to better come to understand our colors and how they work together. We can give 100% of our attention to the color and its various properties. You do not need the exact colors I am using - getting to know your colors ins an important benefit of this exercise

The image shows Times Square from an aerial view or perhaps the second to third story. This effects the perspective - especially on ground level. In the drawing I try to show this clearly in the buildings and the way the figures mull about. The image is shot at night which creates an opportunity for reflecting local colors - we make use of this in our drill and in our painting. Can we achieve the same intensity?? We can try

THE DRAWING / DESIGN

The drawing and design is loosely based on perspective - it will be useful to understand a few ideas of perspective as we seek to create the drawing for our scene

1 - We will talk about 1 point perspective and how this idea helps to align the buildings and architectural elements

2 - We will place and talk about the horizon line probably the most useful line in setting when you want to use perspective.

3 - we will also touch on how this panoramic view from above effects the way we place and build our figures

THE TECHNIQUE

We follow a different approach/ mindset this week and build up the painting with layers to create the glow that we want we need to create and underpainting with rich warm colors and identify the white that we want to use

1 - build up a bright warm underpainting

2 - let the painting dry thoroughly and the apply the second layer which starts to set off the major buildings and billboards and figures

THE SKILL

Important skills are built in these studies..

1 The drill and the painting combine to introduce the technique of underpainting and creating luminosity through layers of transparent washes

2 - We will also learn some primary principles that give us an understanding of perspective and also and ability to create a “painters perspective”