Thursday, February 26, 2009

It's not moving! Must be a still life...

WHITE SHINE
The February Challenge in our Watercolor group was fraught with opportunity - or - loaded with potential for personal growth. Lots of lovely choices but nevertheless, you had to paint a still life.

How hard can it be? Smack a pear and some flowers on a table, drape a tablecloth behind and paint away.

Several artists posted photos of still life set ups and I truly loved the clean look of one photo. It was pretty much white and red with a clear little vase. With watercolor, the white is the paper. How Sweet it that? Sign me up!

So I did a little outline drawing of the vase and flowers on my watercolor paper. It's my usual routine. Just outline the shape and confirm placement, then paint.
Not so much.

I started mapping the whites, marking subtle color changes in the vase and then marking the highlights and reflections in the shadows.

Then I took my dip pen and frisket out and spent a great deal of time applying little blobs and lines to preserve the whites.

For a mostly "white" watercolor, there were tons of pencil marks. Painting didn't take too long but then I felt the need to remove the pencil marks. I used my trusty plastic eraser and was successful getting the annoying marks removed. Some of the color changed/lightened so I did a little more painting.

This is where I ended up.

I want to Thank Lori Andrews for sharing the photo that helped me to create WHITE SHINE

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