Finished for Friday

Watercolor painting has become a good thing. I always loved oil paints, but there’s the long drying time, the wonderful odors that are toxic, and the pretty high cost of the paints and canvas. Using watercolors in the past, I wasn’t such a fan.

The quality of materials just didn’t hit it, I guess. Remember those little discs of hard, dry watercolor paints in a tin box? They just never worked right for me.

The ease of using these professional quality watercolor paints makes up for what I missed about oil painting. They clean up easy, dry quick, and I am using wonderful paints and great papers as the surface. I had no idea watercolor paints could be so creamy and vibrant.

In oil painting I painted from dark to light, adding light colors to the shadows, but in watercolor I learned to go backwards, leaving the whites and moving in layers to darks. It wasn’t an easy lesson to learn. I’m applying the watercolor almost like the way I used the oils. I mix a bit on the palette, apply to the area I want then add straight color and mix on the surface. Works for me.

Beginning the next work

Depending on how you mix mediums into the oils, the painting could take long, or dry a little faster. So far I haven’t used any mediums to retard drying the watercolors so it’s not an issue unless I need an area to dry faster. I’m not a fan of painting wet on wet.

For this latest work I cropped another area of a photo that had a composition I liked. You can see my fond pebbles helping to block out areas by holding down paper around my subjects. This time I sketched in pencil, took a lunch break, and returned to start adding color. It happened to be such a day that I could do this.