As I explained in last week's post, I painted this watercolor back in August and September, hanging it in the nursery long before our baby arrived to use it. It features a quote that I found inspiring, and which I hoped would inspire my future child (and me, when I was in the room for some late-night feedings and diaper changes): "It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be." - J.K. Rowling
After planning out the composition on the computer and tracing it onto watercolor paper, I then erased some of what I'd traced. Once watercolor paper is wet, you can no longer erase any stray pencil lines because the water "sets" the graphite. So I lightened up the pattern traced onto the background a bit, knowing that I would be painting the pattern yellow. (I knew some pencil lines would still always be visible, but that didn't bother me. They're only visible if you get really close to the painting and look for them.) The lettering I kept rather dark, since I knew I'd be painting the letters dark anyway, and my paint would cover the pencil lines there.
Once it was ready, I then soaked and stretched the paper. For smaller watercolors, I typically just tape or staple the paper down without pre-soaking it, since I can count on it not getting TOO wrinkled once it gets saturated with water, since it's a small piece of paper. But for larger paintings like this one, which was a full sheet of watercolor paper (22"x30" in size), I knew I needed to soak it first. Below is a picture of it soaking in the bathtub for about ten minutes:
I then stapled it with a staple gun to gatorboard, and brought it down two flights of stairs to my basement studio. There, I put a lot of yellow watercolor pigment down quickly, before it dried too much. I tried to make it a really saturated yellow, because with that much water, I knew it would dry a lot lighter. The middle two pictures below were when it was still wet; the last picture of this set is how light that yellow background was once it was dry.
After that first layer was complete and dry, I started in on the slow process of painting the pattern. I used two colors of yellow (cadmium yellow and lemon yellow), as well as a brownish-orange pigment to give the background a bit of depth. I blended these three colors together with wet-on-wet technique as I went through the background row by row.
Here is the painting with the background pattern complete:
Now all that was left was to paint in the letters to finish it off! I'll show the photos of that step next week, as well as how the final result turned out.
After planning out the composition on the computer and tracing it onto watercolor paper, I then erased some of what I'd traced. Once watercolor paper is wet, you can no longer erase any stray pencil lines because the water "sets" the graphite. So I lightened up the pattern traced onto the background a bit, knowing that I would be painting the pattern yellow. (I knew some pencil lines would still always be visible, but that didn't bother me. They're only visible if you get really close to the painting and look for them.) The lettering I kept rather dark, since I knew I'd be painting the letters dark anyway, and my paint would cover the pencil lines there.
Once it was ready, I then soaked and stretched the paper. For smaller watercolors, I typically just tape or staple the paper down without pre-soaking it, since I can count on it not getting TOO wrinkled once it gets saturated with water, since it's a small piece of paper. But for larger paintings like this one, which was a full sheet of watercolor paper (22"x30" in size), I knew I needed to soak it first. Below is a picture of it soaking in the bathtub for about ten minutes:
I then stapled it with a staple gun to gatorboard, and brought it down two flights of stairs to my basement studio. There, I put a lot of yellow watercolor pigment down quickly, before it dried too much. I tried to make it a really saturated yellow, because with that much water, I knew it would dry a lot lighter. The middle two pictures below were when it was still wet; the last picture of this set is how light that yellow background was once it was dry.
After that first layer was complete and dry, I started in on the slow process of painting the pattern. I used two colors of yellow (cadmium yellow and lemon yellow), as well as a brownish-orange pigment to give the background a bit of depth. I blended these three colors together with wet-on-wet technique as I went through the background row by row.
Here is the painting with the background pattern complete:
Now all that was left was to paint in the letters to finish it off! I'll show the photos of that step next week, as well as how the final result turned out.
No comments:
Post a Comment