First steps / Focus: playing with colors
To reassure yourself and to free yourself from the possible difficulties of a preliminary drawing, have fun with the colors in your brand-new palette! I often use letters to test a color; you can easily make small signs or cards with first names.
Here, you will work with a wash on dry paper but applied with a beveled brush, perfect for lines. You will play with a violet made by mixing cobalt blue and magenta, with Schmincke orange, or by letting cerulean blue and Mars black bleed together...
Observe how opaque, transparent, or granular colors mix with each other.
A lemon
Prepare a yellow wash to work with the medium wash brush. By layering on wet paper, everything blends together. Conversely, layering colors on dry paper produces glazes.
Nuance the yellow of the lemon by applying touches of orange (yellow and orange) and yellow-green (yellow and cobalt blue) juxtaposed or layered while wet.
At the end, represent a cast shadow on the ground with an ultramarine blue wash and a little magenta. By juxtaposing small wet touches on dry paper, stains are created surrounded by a line: these are called hard edges (sertis). The one created around the lemon can easily be softened. When everything is dry, wash it gently with the wash brush loaded just with water. Pump up the excess.
An onion
Observe the onion well (buy one to paint from life, it's even better!). Prepare a wash (a mixture of perylene maroon with a little magenta) in the palette, and use a medium wash brush.
Let it dry to set the layer you have just applied. Layer the washes with, each time, a slightly different ratio between highly diluted magenta and perylene maroon.
For the darkest parts, add a little diluted Winsor blue (it is powerful!), diluted ultramarine blue wash for the shadow. Soften this shadow with the wash brush once it has dried if it is too strong.
A snowman
Draw this snowman with a light mechanical pencil. Moisten the snowman alone and adjust the skirt with a medium-sized wash brush. Wring it out so it no longer drips.
Load your wash brush with a light ultramarine blue wash that you will apply to the shadows. Dry with the heat gun.
Apply in a slightly damp wash a Schmincke orange for the carrot, a yellow on the titmouse. A mixture of Winsor blue and cobalt blue on the moistened hat, and a very diluted Winsor blue for the shadow of the scarf. Prepare a brown with Winsor blue, orange, and a little Winsor green for the branches. You will probably find a colored gray along the way that you will like to paint the stripes on the scarf. Apply them using your small beveled brush not heavily loaded with water.
You can now draw the mountain in the background and color it with a light Winsor blue wash like the one for the shadows. Place a Winsor blue and a little burnt sienna on the wings and head of the titmouse.
If the blue of the hat bleeds a little into the mountain, it's not that bad... Even if it has dried, it can still remain fresh enough to bleed.
As this snowman was not painted from life, there may be some inaccuracies regarding the shadows. This diagram will help you understand how to correct imaginary shadows...
Eggplants in Pick-up Sticks (Mikado)
As often, I painted without a preliminary drawing, which prevents me from erasing and damaging the paper. Start with the calyxes: if the green (composed of Sennelier yellow and Winsor blue leaning towards a very diluted red) is too loud, break it with a touch of Schmincke orange. Let it dry.
Deposit the violet wash (magenta mixed with Winsor blue) on the horizontal eggplant with a medium wash brush. Pull it upwards with a damp brush to create a gradient. Add a magenta cream to the wet area, on the left and in the center. Let it dry.
On the sides of the right eggplant, deposit a purplish wash leaning towards brown by adding orange to the previous violet. In the center, press down your brush containing only water to create a halo. In the wet area, deposit a dense orange wash broken with violet. Let it dry.
For the other two small eggplants, prepare a violet as before. Deposit it on the eggplant with the green calyx (the one on the right). Then do the other small one on the left by depositing a little diluted magenta in the wet area. Let it dry.
For the darker calyxes, use the violets in rubbing strokes.
Add a little orange to the violet to paint the brown cap of the small eggplant. For the background: prepare an ochre-green wash with the green base used initially and a little orange. You will get a range close to ochre, a khaki.
When everything is completely dry, prepare a light violet (dilute the colors more) to represent the shadows on the ground.