Watercolour Lesson 1

Part One

The object of this first lesson is to get the student used to mixing, and applying a wash and using a limited palette of just two colours, produce a couple of paintings that show both aerial and linear perspective

Take a piece of Bockingford 140lb paper and tape to your board by the corners. Mix a medium strength wash of Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine Blue, always mix more than you think you will need!. Then using a large brush, wet the paper completely with clean water. Let the paper dry slightly, else when you add the wash it will run all over the place, then starting at the top, using horzontal strokes paint across the paper with a well loaded brush, take another brushful and pick up the bottom of the previous stroke and continue down the paper. About halfway down add a brushful of clean water to the wash mix, continue until the paper is completely covered.

You should now have something that looks something like this

Make up a mix of Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine again, but this time with more blue and less crimson. Slightly above halfway, paint a range of distant hills. As this dries, the shine should just be going off the paper, look at it from an angle, drop in a few touches of a slightly stronger mix of alizarin and blue, to give some shadow shapes and undulations to the hills.

Now with a stronger mix with the bias towards crimson, paint two pieces of land

Now with a stronger mix still we are going to paint a few trees. The important thing to remember when painting trees is to leave some room for the birds to fly through. Paint the trunk to the base of the foliage. Then holding the brush horizontal with the paper and using the side of the brush, paint some clumps of foliage making the shape of the tree by dragging the brush across the paper, this will give you some irregular edges like a real tree. Don't worry if it doesn't look particularly good, it is about learning techniques. Whilst the trees are still wet using a small brush, paint in some branches between the foliage.

When this is dry we can add some shadows to the tree trunks, and also to the ground to give a little interest and also anchor the trees to the ground. If you angle the shadows downward on the left hand side it indicates that the ground slopes quite steeply. Add a few dark touches to the edge of the water, to represent the odd rock and shadows.

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