First steps / Focus: blending, dense washes, Paste on wet paper
Blending allows you to start with the darks. By pulling the dark part of the rose with a damp brush to dilute it, you will obtain light areas. Here, you will start from the center of the flower outwards to the large outer petals. For these, you will spread (blend) a denser red so as to make the pigment bleed (diffuse) and thus create the light values. Rinse the brush as often as you wish to lighten an area. You can blend a blend! It is even recommended so that it is perfectly melted!
If the exercise seems too difficult for you, draw the rose with a light mechanical pencil before painting.
Cream on damp paper
Until now we have only worked on dry paper. Now, we are going to use the cream texture of the pigment (see here), by wetting the entire paper, or by moistening only certain parts, the ones that will be painted.
Red and black fish
You already know the shape of this fish (see here)! Once it is drawn, equip yourself with your beveled, synthetic brush, which retains less water.
After priming the brush with water (the skirt here is limited to dipping the brush for a few seconds), take some Winsor red pigment and mix it in the mixing basin of the palette. Deposit it on the fish starting from the center. Then, reproduce this operation with lemon yellow: the skirt, the cream that sticks in the palette...
As a cream, the red pigment must not drip; it must stick to the hairs of the brush.
Add small spots here and there with Mars black (always the skirt, the cream...). The fish must always be damp (a little shiny)! If it is half dry, dry it before continuing! Then, rewet without rubbing with a very soft medium wash brush. When the fish is dry, you can finish its eyes in black. If this seems too precise to you, use a black marker or pencil. There are very practical watercolor markers and pencils for this kind of detail.
The cream texture is perfect when the black does not bleed too much into the yellow or red. Careful, if the black does not bleed: your paper is too dry. If the black bleeds too much: your brush is too wet, empty it a little!
Clouds
Prepare a cobalt blue cream in the palette, a medium brush, and a beveled brush.
With the medium wash brush, deposit the cobalt blue by "fleecing" (moutonnant), that is to say, by sketching circular shapes. Then, clean the brush and, with water only, stretch the blue: it becomes lighter. By doing this, just with water, draw a cloud shape with the brush.
Take the beveled brush and deposit the cream into the still-damp cloud shape. You can also use French ultramarine blue.
Note the differences: the pigment bleeds in the water whereas on a dry surface a border would be created. If you tilt the paper, a drop of water forms at the bottom of your cloud. Pump it up with the tip of the brush primed with water and wrung out.
You can deposit Mars black. The paper must be damp. Sometimes it is necessary to pump up the excess water while leaving enough to maintain the humidity!
Have fun varying the nuances and shape of this cloud. Alternate the places where you deposit only water to obtain light nuances and the places where you deposit pigment. See if you are more comfortable with the medium brush or the beveled brush. Refine the filling of the brush with the gesture of the skirt. Halos are welcome if they are not overwhelming!
Focus: dense washes
A dense wash is an intermediate step between a (liquid) wash and a (sticky) cream. In the same amount of water, more or less pigment will be added: the wash will either be diluted or dense. It must remain liquid.
To represent the sky above this line of fir trees, use the wash brush on paper wetted in all directions to deposit dense washes of light cobalt turquoise mixed with green-leaning Winsor blue.
Do not hesitate to repeat this kind of exercise; the results will all be different and instructive.
Bee foraging a sunflower
Even if the paper is completely dry at first, you will soon have to work in the wet! Start by creating an oval area in an orange and yellow wash with the medium-sized wash brush.
With the beveled brush, deposit cream on the wet surface.
Pull out petals in several orange-yellow washes, decreasing their size above the center of the sunflower. Deposit ochre cream to nuance the heart of the flower. The first orange-yellow wash must still be shiny for this operation.
The bee is painted in a wash on dry paper. Let the different shades bleed into one another. Place the legs (in Winsor blue and orange) at the end.
The background is also applied as a wash on dry paper. Use a wash brush filled with cobalt blue and magenta, and diluted with water on the edges.
Hen and chicks
After briefly drawing the hen and her chicks with a light mechanical pencil, mix the red-leaning Winsor blue with perylene maroon, in the form of a cream. Moisten only the hen with the medium marten brush or with the synthetic beveled brush. Careful, do not remove the sheet from the block!
Place small dots of the obtained cream for a feather effect on the shiny paper.
Empty the excess water if necessary by tilting the paper. There should be no "puddles." If, conversely, your paper dries too quickly, let the water soak the bare paper for a longer time.
The fibers of the paper open according to the ambient humidity level. If it is very dry, it will have to be wetted (here, part by part) for longer. Take your time; humidity on the paper prolongs the intervention time.
To pull out light nuances, blend into the wet area with the medium marten brush.
The precision of the strokes is obtained thanks to a small amount of water filling the brush.
- If the pigment bleeds too much, it is perhaps because the cream is too liquid in the palette or your brush was not pressed enough after making the skirt.
- If the pigment does not bleed at all, it is perhaps because the pigment is too pasty (moisten your brush a little more) or the paper has already dried.
Careful, only deposit color on a shiny area of paper! On matte paper, any new intervention causes a cascade of pigmentary reactions like halos. Hence the eternal "never go back" often heard in classes!
Ardalie Lambs
After having drawn the lambs with a light mechanical pencil, moisten them one after the other, as your work progresses. Here you will mainly use granulating colors, for an interesting textural effect.
Prepare orange with burnt sienna and a little yellow. Deposit it with the beveled brush to represent the grass on the right. Make a green with ultramarine blue and a little yellow and deposit it with the medium wash brush in the area on the left. Dry then apply the shadows in diluted ultramarine blue.
You will finish with the sky by "fleecing" a cobalt blue wash on dry paper, with a few blendings for the borders.
Focus: paste on wet paper
Here you will experiment with the properties of red. To start, identify the values (whites, lights, midtones, and darks). Dip the beveled brush in water, mix only the Winsor red in the palette, then add carmine or cadmium red. When the brush no longer absorbs pigment, deposit the paste thus obtained on the very wet paper. To darken a value, make several deposits in the same place as long as the paper shines. Careful, the deposit must always melt into the water; there must not be any patch of undiluted pigment left on the surface of the paper!
Plan for more nuances for the flowers. Here, we used cadmium, opaque and heavy, which bleeds less in water than other reds.