Advancing with Watercolor: Textures of Tuscany "Village in the Rain"

WEEK 2 - RAINY DAY IN THE VILLAGE OF PONTROMBOLI

Last week was our first week into looking at Edges with watercolor as represented in aTuscan courtyard. We worked primarily with hard edges - this week we will try to evokea rainy day atmosphere in the village of Pontromboli…

We often we are faced with gray or rainy days - these are not as festive as sunny brightscenes but they have a unique mood and atmosphere that we find appealing. Rendering - this with watercolor is fun because we can make use of watercolors natural element - weinto wet. This technique allows us to create that rainy day feel.WET INTO WET. This is perhaps the biggest technical challenge for the watercolor artist because we use themedia in a very animated state. The nature of water and gravity play a big role in shaping our forms and edges. A good amount of control is sacrificed when using the media ion this way - the results can far exceed anything we could have done with dry technique.

The the technique requires us to pay attention to

• the amount of paint on our brush

- and the condition of our paper…

Ask your selves these two questions

How thick is the paint on my brush

How wet is the paper…then make your mark

NOTAN

A notan had its roots in Japanese culture and describes adesign principle of light and dark. I find a few minutes designing with this idea helpful in understanding the complex part of any subject

COMPOSITION

A Very good guide to finding a good composition is when looking at your subject find of fashion an intersection of a horizontal and a vertical and use that as a way of setting tour Centre of interest - we have a lot of options in this image but I think I prefer the banner against the tower option - I can just my Notan to make this clear.WHAT WILL

YOU NEED THIS WEEK

We will use 2 sheets of paper roughly 15 x 11 Saunders rough…

Brushes

A large flat 1” and a 1/2 inch flat, a couple of sabelette rounds large and small..

Tape, spay bottle, paper towel, hair dryer

Colors this week

Yellow ochre, burnt sienna, cobalt blue, cobalt turquoise, cad orange red, Payne gray and