Advancing with Watercolor: "The Gloaming" Creating a luminous Sky with Graded Washes

When the sun is setting, leave whatever you are doing and watch it.

Mehmet Murat Ildan

Description

This is the first episode of an 8 part series on painting the sky. For landscape painters it is a integral part of each painting and can be done in many ways

This painting is of Good Harbor Beach in Gloucester, MA -  an iconic house that sits upon the rocks with an unobstructed view to the sea. Actually to me it is more of a painting of twilight and the quality of the painting lies in the subtle relationships of the transitioning sky water and rocks.

I rely on graded washes to create the subtle transparencies which in essence means I rely on watercolor itself to do much of the work. This represents on piece of knowledge that the experienced watercolorist possesses and makes use of

A watercolor will paint itself if you let it

Drill

I like to start a session by doing a drill or a study to get my body and mind in sync and to start to "feel" the watercolor. 

the drill we practice today is a graded wash and through it we can get used to the wet into wet technique and also practice some of the features we will use in the painting

Tonal Study

I almost always proceeds each project with a tonal study - a watercolor in a single color - to better understand the light and dark relationships and composition

Demonstration

In the demonstration I build on the drill - developing the motif with a concentration on the atmosphere and the mood of twilight. The demonstration develops from a drawing to the finally dots and dashes upon the waves

Skills

In this project we develop our sense of design through placement of the motif, countering this with patterns waves and the placement of the moon. The color/ tonal structure is also designed - carried away slightly from the photograph to produce a mood.

technically we focus on wet into wet technique using graded washes.

Challenges

The challenges arise are mostly related to pigment/water creation in the washes and also timing in the washes. We also solve some design challenges by adjusting contrast and by placing some extra elements - rocks and lights into our composition