On February 20, 2010, 5 artists met at my Valle of Yellow Creek Art Studio, located in the foothills of the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, to learn more about the technique of painting wet into wet with watercolors.
At first glance wet into wet paintings appear to be an easy way to paint. One should just wet the paper and drop paint into it, watch it spread and have a beautiful painting.
Hold on, hold on! As with most everything it is not as simple as it appears. Ask yourself these questions before you begin your painting:
Have you decided which paints to use?
Do they complement each other?
When they come together on the wet paper, what color will they make?
My students were amazed at how much paint it takes to make a bright sky. When they put the paint down, it seemed they had added too much, but as it spread and dried there was hardly any paint color left.
The way I prepared for this class was to paint a chart of the colors I thought would make this painting beautiful. I charted pinks and reds, yellows and greens. Before hand I had also determined if all the paint was transparent. This was determined by drawing a line down the middle of a piece of watercolor paper and painting each paint color over it. Wanting to be sure how the paints would look when glazed, I then painted another chart. When we were ready for class, I knew which colors to recommend and why.
All of this and my students haven’t arrived for the workshop yet!
After discussing the charts and how I determined which colors would work best and why, we settled down to start the wet into wet process.
So, another round of questions came up -
How much water do I need to put on the paper?
Should my brush be dripping wet?
How much paint do I need on my brush?
These are questions I will answer in the next blog post. Be sure to check back for these important answers.
Until then, remember to “Honor Your Creative Spirit!”
Ellene
Ellene Breedlove Davis
Web site - http://ellenebreedlovedavis.com
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