Abandoned Farm / Seahorses
Abandoned Farm
The subject was done without a preliminary drawing, but you can of course sketch the silhouette of the old farm (see also Should you make a sketch? here).
On dry paper, with a very wet wash brush, apply a cobalt blue wash without filling the entire space. This way you create very blended cloud effects.
Let it dry, then color the walls with ochre and orange washes. Let it dry again.
Apply the grays of the roofs with a slightly bluish wash (cobalt blue, a little perylene maroon).
Let it dry, then draw with the beveled brush a few sketches of rows of tiles with burnt sienna (or an ultramarine blue broken with burnt sienna).
Place well-scattered fine salt on matte paper to create textural effects. Let it dry.
Have a light hand with the salt, avoid making clumps!
Refine the details and shadows with a bluish gray (mixture of ultramarine and a little burnt sienna).
Apply a yellow and sap green wash to the foreground. On fresh matte, deposit the grains of salt. Let it act.
To finish, paint the trees with a sap green mixed with a perylene maroon (or even Mars black). Finish with a few small sponge imprints.
Seahorses
Make a violet with light cobalt turquoise, magenta, and Chinese white. After sketching the seahorses, moisten the first one and let the violet bleed into this part.
Let a little natural sienna (or ochre) and a touch of Schmincke orange bleed in.
Let it dry before starting the second seahorse.
To obtain the tiny spots on the bellies of the seahorses, use a wash brush containing bluish wash and tap this brush against a pencil to make splatters. Practice controlling the size of the drops and directing these splatters exactly where you want them.
Chinese white thickens some mixtures and increases the creamy aspect of the watercolor (see also Wisteria, here). Very little is needed.
White is present as a mixture in some commercial colors such as Naples yellow or Davy's gray. Chinese white is transparent; titanium white is opaque.
Rewet the background. Prepare two dense washes: one of cerulean blue, the other by adding ultramarine blue and burnt sienna (or Mars black) to darken it. Deposit them into the shiny wet area.
To paint the stones, reuse the colors employed for the bellies of the seahorses.
Finish with a few splatters of ultramarine blue and diluted magenta.