Ref 918; Watercolor.- The Control of Water in Watercolour

Most watercolours fail because too much water is used and the results are a wishy- washy mess. So, let´s come to grips with this important subject.

The question you must always ask is Where is the water?  Is it in the brush, the palette or on the paper?
If you have a lot water in your brush and water on the paper, the result is two lots of water combining and flooding everywhere out of control. To have full control of water, you must have a palette with a flat mixing area that does not collect unwanted water. It is also advantageous to have one with open-ended colour wells.

So here are the five most important ways of water control. Dry on Dry Wet on Dry Wet on Wet Dry on Wet  The Half-loaded Brush

Final result for this process

                          "There is a clown outside my window"

This painting it was made basically wet on dry 
If you load you brush with wet paint and paint on dry paper, an area is produced which is soft and flowing in the middle but with hard edges.

(No water on the paper and water in the brush) nevertheless I used a lot of wáter at my brush, the initial drwg it was made with watercolored pencil, so the lines are easily lost after color addition on it, I did some masking for guidance but I tried to avoid it, as much as posible, I tilted the paper for mixing purposes and once the painted is added with brush I can add additional color which follows the semi wet path made it by the wet brush
Like I said this painting has been made controlling the amount of wáter in the brush, so it was easy to complete the features through out the face and in the clown, because the paper needs to be dry or semi-dry to apply color with just the brush mixing and blending just in the paper
The final touch rubbing a soap bar over the paper and then paint, it will form Little painting drops, Where ever the soap lands, it will push the paint away.(ideal for the window in this case)
Remarks
Once the surface is dry, you can glaze, you can add more water and drop in more pigments, in fact, you can overpaint your entire pic if you wish. but the paper MUST be fully dry.
What you cannot safely do is work on DAMP PAPER.What is damp paper?
Damp paper is when the sheen has gone from the surface.

A very wet surface will have lots of water on it, and the paint will run about all over the place when you tilt your board.

Ref 916.- Color pencil & hard pastels sticks - Blending Combination

Following  is my first portrait painting with pastel, as I´m new in this media, I do not have all the pastel color needed to reproduce the different hues, so I combined color pencil and pastel by basically a necessity, however I´ll be purchasing the different colors with the time ( a recommended starter palette for faces)
So this is just an exercise which also I like to share, in order to trying to learn more and more about it

The painting its made above colored paper Strathmore 500

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

 

 

Ref 915.- Watercolor Painting more colorful shadows


         "Each moment, has its own colors"

The way a shadow is painted can make or ruin a painting. Shadows shouldn't be done at the last minute as an after-thought, as something totally separate from the main subject of the painting, but need to be considered as seriously as the other elements.
My last painting ref 914 practically I used black for most of the shadows.- Pure, straight-from-the-tube black is invariably too dark in tone and too consistent or flat in color, that´s why I tried mixing chromatic blacks  which is already an improvement, but using a complementary color will produce a more subtle, natural effect

The True Colors of Shadows
Working from the then-relatively new theory of complementary colors the logical color to use was violet, being the complementary of yellow, the color of sunlight. “Color owes its brightness to force of contrast rather than to its inherent qualities …primary colors look brightest when they are brought into contrast with their complementaries.” The Impressionists created violet by glazing cobalt blue or ultramarine with red, or by using new cobalt and manganese violet pigments that had become available to artists

Some Shadow Painting Tips:

• Squinting at a subject helps make the areas of light and dark clearer.
• Shadows are not simply ‘black’. Use darker tones of the colors in the objects, or dark complementary colors.

Ref 914.- Watercolor .- Another High Contrast approach

This is the final result of this process;

                 "The ideal beauty its like a fugitive which is never found"

High Value Contrast.- draw the eye of the viewer between the lightest light and the darkest dark, the greater the difference the higher the contrast.

In every painting you want to créate as full a range of values as you can, from brillant White to near black, watercolors are generally applied from light to dark, but in the next method I´m stablishing the darkest color and saving the whites since the very first moment to work in transparent layers within the midtone áreas trying to make a more three dimensional feel, most White and black tube watercolors are opaque which can dull the overall look, so its more effective to créate tonal values by increasing and decreasing the amount of wáter added, when the paper is allowed to show through many thin veils of color.- light bounces off the paper surface to the eye creating a glow, this glow helps to increase the contrast, which in turn increases depth 
In my following painting like I already said; I established the dark color first,trying to save Whites from the paper, however to make different tones of glow, I need to regain whites, with added clean wáter and dabbing with a paper towel, when the área is completely dry, I will dark the values around the área to make it appear light.

First of all; I do not want to darken everything and end up, with only three values; White light and dark.- that will make my work look flat
Whenever posible I´m painting vertically to allows the color to mix by gravity, (in order to paint the sky the painting is turned it out 90°) resulting in luminosity and variety of the washes, so I started the shadows first along with some of the connecting background I used both hard and soft edges, keeping the overall design then I spray a fixer to make a kind of Shell for my next color washes
My first wash are basically primaries .- yellow and wait to dry then yellow and orange.- then crimson, wait to dry and finally malva some of this colors touch the dark tones into the underpainting to make additional values

The darkest color (Payne´s grey) its again reiforced where I´m looking for contrast
Notes: the dark color it was established as underpainting for this particular proces, because as a matter of fact you need to mix the dark color with another colors combination (ther are many) to enrich, strength and deep like phtalo blue and red; ultramarine and Brown, phtalo Green and red etc.
Like I said this is another approach
I did fail with the fix shield because some black color dirt the surface again with wáter contact of the 2nd and 3rd layer wash (point to solve)

Ref 912.- Watercolor; The Color White in White

Watercolorists highly value the color White; and take great care to save unpainted áreas of paper, other watercolorists enjoy using opaque White pigments to créate lively effects, so before add some notes, we need to see and think White.- and break the rules, so use anything to create great paintings, the glow of the paper provides a much better White that any paint, if I do use White paint. it is White gouache since that seems to me most opaque.- when I´m saving smaller áreas of White, I do not masking anything but simply paint around the áreas, The point I´m making is that White is not really White, you find hundred of samples of different whites even a hint of color in a wash will cast a White área in a new light.
My following painting was made trying to save the White áreas, but finally I have to complete White in White.- White plays a desicive role in the pictures
part of the reason is as follows; we are dealing with the two dimensional surface of the paper so applying again White over White there is a small change in color .- shadows revelead by sedimentation of pigments which gives some White tones within White colors better than just one just White color within the saved área.- therefore the White flowers were painted again with White watercolor, making more White values of tones and if you want some part of the área very clean or White, wipe out the área with a clean springy brush while the paper still wet

Ref 911.- Derwent Graphitone as Underpainting

Final result of this process;

For this particular project; I did a combination of methods without be sure about final result, because of the paper I chose "Strathmore serie 500 which is a good paper for pastel paints but can not resist wet in wet activities, as a watercolor paper either hot or cold press, I did because I wanted to take advantage of the colored paper  (light grey for this Project).- Pastel is both a drwg and a painting médium so you don´t need a preliminary underdrawing, therefore I chose Derwent soluble pencils to start and stablish a good foundation
Pencil should never be used for a preliminary drawing, the graphite from which pencils are made is greasy and repels the soft pastel color, but in my Project I´m not using pastel related as should be with this paper I´ll be using modeling paste as shield layer to complete final details

1st step.- This is the questionable part, due the thickness and material  of paper
I prepare White color "gouache" and did a wash trying to represent clouds, applied with sponge which mix pretty good with the grey original paper color, Try do not overdue the wet on wet application
to avoid tear the paper,---then dry it before next steps

 

2nd step I start to block in, the figure main lines and shadows with graphitone which then be diluted with a fine brush accordingly (this is the underpainting for this particular Project)

 

 

 

3rd step.- This is the "layer shield time application" which I´m doing with molding paste applied with spatula trying to make the smallest thickness posible, Note.- before this step you need to fix it once the 2nd step has been completed

This picture has been taken at the middle of this application, so you can see the modeling paste over it and I put my signature on purpose so you can see how transparent is this molding paste shield  

 

 

4th step.- You can modulate the amount of modeling paste thickness and cover underpainting accordingly, once is dry ( a couple of hours ) I delineate the final lines either with a fine brush or with additional pencil tones or even with markers to complement the different greys required for this figure and again I added White tones to highlight where I wanted to.

 

 

Final notes.- I need to look for a better  paper for this type of Project

I need to modulate better the tones (with practice)

Again I had a good time working with my projects