Painting 33

Ref 917.- Watercolor; Creating shadows with glow

Shadows can créate another dimensión, adding more vibrant color and carácter, they connect shapes and make the composition more unified, we reviewed the complementary colors and notice how the shadows become more alive making luminous colors in a previous exercise, now I´m going to make and exercise to make transparent and glowing shadows base on some of the color theories

This is the final result of this process;

 

 

1st step; How to achieve luminiscense, with initial washes; with winsor red, winsor yellow and/or winsor blue which, are quite transparent and also are primary colors, so I dissolve completely the blue color for this particular painting to avoid muddy looks, the key to success is to have enough paint to be poured, after stretch the´paper and mask , I did a multicolor wash, one with blue and through out the bottom with a mix of blue and red, I´m just damping the áreas in which I´m pouring the paint, trying to keep White spaces where I will needed later on and trying to avoid as much as posible the masking, with a paper napking you can make clear zones of more natural look and let it dry completely

 

 

2nd step,I did make an additional wash of yellow withat the bottom of the painting a dap of orange from where the light source to make more colorful shadows, needs to take care to avoid dissolve and or muddy the wash below, spraying with clean wáter and tilting accordingly helps a lot

When all the colors settles and dries to my satisfaction, I let the paint dry flat

 

Then I start to brush with the red hue the differnt shapes which I redefine with a dark Brown, at this stage texture is recommended, but like I said this exercise was in order to make a luminous shadow as my main purpose

 

In other words watercolor quite transparents are quite important to reach this objective and washes more recomendable are those which start with primary colors