Watercolor Painting Demonstraton: A Sunset View of the Blue Ridge Mountains in a Narrated Time-Lapse Video Tutorial

Sunset in the Blue Ridge Mountains, A Watercolor Painting Tutorial

This week I recorded a time-lapse video while I created a landscape watercolor painting step-by-step, from beginning to end. During each step of the tutorial/demonstration, I narrated my process to help you learn how to paint better watercolor paintings. The demo covers creating a watercolor sunset glow in a landscape, painting layers of mountain ranges, painting a figure into a landscape, and using shadows to make your painting stand out. 

I set the mood with some relaxing piano music so you can feel soothed while you learn to paint with watercolors, or simply enjoy watching the painting come to life.

To take things a step further, I also included a note at the end of the time-lapse (and at the end of this post) with the names of all of the paints that I used while painting this demo, including brand names and pigment codes. Why do I include brand names and pigment information? Because watercolor pigments often vary among manufacturers. That's not to say one is better than another, but they are different and will look and behave differently. Sometimes brands will sell the same pigment under different names, as well, so I've learned to always know what pigments are in my watercolor paint tubes, and not just the name of the color!

 

This painting is available for sale in my Etsy Shop.

Colors Used in this Painting

Cobalt Blue – PB 28 – American Journey

Ultramarine Blue – PB 29 – American Journey

Joe's Red – PR 254 – American Journey

Pyrrol Crimson – PR 264 – Daniel Smith

Quinacridone Gold – PO 49 – Daniel Smith

Transparent Red Oxide – PR 101 – Daniel Smith

Sepia – PBk + PBr 7 – American Journey

A Watercolor Time-Lapse Video—My first!

Last week recorded my first-ever watercolor painting demo video and uploaded it onto my YouTube channel as a time-lapse video. It was fun to do and a bit exciting to see the result!

I painted this watercolor demonstration in about 30 minutes and the time-lapse video of the painting process ended up being just under 3 minutes.  The painting is a landscape of the Blue Ridge Mountains with green tree branches in the foreground. I plan to create more watercolor painting videos in the future, so I'm definitely interested in hearing what kind of demos and paintings fans of my art would like to see!

As is always the case when I try something new, I learned a lot from my first watercolor demo video. For instance, the work is far from over when you're finished recording the video. I gained a lot of new video-editing skills as I learned to adjust cropping, lighting, and colors in Photoshop CS6 (luckily it's very much the same as editing photos, once you learn the ins and outs of working with videos in Photoshop), as well as how to create and join other video clips and images together. It was so much fun and I can't wait to do more with my new abilities!

So after you watch the video below, please leave your thoughts in the comments. Let me know how I'm doing so far and what you'd like to see in the future!

Color Reference for Watercolors: How to Create Your Own Guide

It's been a loooong time since I posted anything here on my blog. Ok, almost three years. But a lot of people ask me why I stopped blogging, and tell me that I've helped them, so I'm going to try to get back into the habit. Here is something that I find really useful and I decided to share.

 

The more you know about the watercolors on your palette, the better. If you have all of their properties in your head, you can make much faster and better decisions as to how to use them. And it's fun to play with them anyway, so that's a bonus. Watercolor paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-based solution, and the various pigments have different qualities. The most obvious variation is the color, or hue, but there are other variations, such as transparency, permanence, and value. Knowing how to expect your pigments to behave is a crucial step in learning to create better watercolor paintings.

To create my guide, I started by cutting out a long, thin piece of watercolor paper. Mine is about 3 x 7 inches, but the length of yours will depend on how many different colors you intend to test. If you're not sure, you can just cut more paper than you need, and trim off the excess later. Next, I drew a thick vertical line with a black sharpie about 1/4 of the way over from the left edge of the paper. This line will help you learn about the transparency of your watercolor pigments.

The next step is to mix small puddles of your chosen colors. Each of your puddles (or washes) should be about the same consistency. You don't want any of them to be significantly thicker or thinner than the others. You can mix them one-by-one or all at once, just as long as they are pretty consistent. Dip one of your smaller brushes into the first puddle, and carefully paint a steady line of color across the black line. Make the lines of color long enough to be able to create another vertical line to the right of the black one (you'll find out why in a minute). Continue this process with each of your colors, making sure to thoroughly rinse your brush after each stroke. I chose to go in order of colors because it makes it so much easier for me to compare similar hues. As you go, label your colors with a fine-tipped pen, so you don't forget what any of them are. Once you have painted all of your colorful lines, let them air dry. (You may use a hairdryer to speed things up.)

For the final step, take a stiff-bristled brush, get it good and wet (not dripping), and use it to scrub away some of the paint. Start at the top, and make a vertical "scrubbing" line all the way to the bottom. Try to use the same amount of pressure and scrubbing all the way down the paper, so you don't end up with some colors that were scrubbed more than others. When you get down to the bottom, use a tissue or dry paper towel to blot up the water and lifted paint. Any old brush with stiff hair will work for this step, as long as you don't mind abusing it. I like to use the Fritch Scrubber brushes made by Cheap Joe's Art Stuff (no paid affiliation, but they are an awesome company; their owner, Joe, is a true friend to artists everywhere). They sell a few different sizes and I use them in my own paintings all the time. The scrubbing teaches you about the permanence of your pigments. As you can see in Example A., some of the colors will readily disappear, while others are certain that they are here to stay.

At this point you will have a reference guide that will tell you a lot about your watercolors. However, I decided to go one step further. I made a black and white copy of my chart (Example B). What is the purpose? Well, it helps me see the inherent differences in value that each of the colors have. As you probably know, you can make your colors darker or lighter in value by adding less or more water to the paints, but some colors are simply lighter or darker than others. A good example is yellow, which, by itself, will never be able to be a dark value.

Ever since I made my own guide, I find that I use it all the time. No matter how well I think I know my paints, it's great to have all of the information right there in front of me when making important painting decisions. I've pinned both pieces of paper right on my studio wall for easy reference.

Thanks for reading! If you found this article useful, please comment, follow and/or check out my other posts!

Laura

Behind the scenes- The Four Seasons

This week I decided to paint four 5x7-inch watercolors to depict the four seasons. 

When I do art shows I have a few framed sets of four giclées that I offer, and people always ask me if I have one that has all four seasons in it. I'm very happy to say that I no longer have to tell them, "I'm sorry, but no." 

I decided to do the same landscape in each painting, but to make it appear to have been done from slightly different distances and angles, as if they were done at four different times. Today I'm not going to show you step-by-step painting steps for my watercolors, but I'm going to share with you some of the planning that went into these paintings. 

I started with this little value sketch that I did in Glen Ayre, NC last year. 

From this sketch I created four new value drawings depicting what the four seasons might look like in this location. These were to be used as plans for the four completed paintings, and were done slightly smaller than the completed paintings.

I also made a plan for the colors I would use in each scene.

I decided to make each painting 5x7 inches. I taped town four pieces of paper and drew in the outline of each scene. Two of them are upside down in the photo because I wanted to be able to work on each of them without leaning over the others.

And here are the completed paintings! I used American Journey paints from Cheap Joe's Art Stuff for the most part, as well as transparent oxide red and quinacridone gold from Daniel Smith.

Winter

Spring

Summer

Autumn

I will also make giclée prints of these paintings and offer them as framed sets in a vertical format. I hope you enjoyed seeing a little bit of the planning that went into my "Seasons" paintings! 

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You can also see more artwork on my website at www.LauraPoss.com 

Four Little Birds- A Commissioned Project

Near the end of last year I painted four little winter bird watercolor paintings that were each 8 x 10 inches. I made giclée reproductions of my little bird paintings and began offering them in a few different sizes.
In the smallest sized giclee, which is 3 ½ x 5 inches, I started framing and selling the four little birds together as a vertical set. The four birds look really nice in the small size, and all grouped together.

Clockwise from top left they are a Carolina Chickadee, Carolina Wren, Tufted Titmouse, and Northern Cardinal.

  Then, at an art show last April, I had a customer come in to my booth who wanted the original bird paintings, but he wanted them in the small size and he wanted them framed together like the set of giclées. So he commissioned me to paint four original watercolors, based on my own 8x10-inch paintings, but only 3½ x 5 inches each. Of course, I agreed! And I took photos of the process and will now share them with you..

First I trimmed my watercolor paper to the correct sizes, and then taped them all to my gatorboard. I penciled in the bird shapes and the main branches, then started with loose washes of transparent oxide red (Daniel Smith) and cobalt blue (American Journey) to create the soft background.

 I continued laying in washes of the same colors in the background, and sprinkled some salt into the wet paint here and there to create texture and the appearance of background snowflakes. I chose to do the background in multiple layers to create depth with the overlapping shades. Once I was satisfied with the background washes, I used a fritch scrubber brush to lift out the shapes of the lighter background branches and  foreground snowflakes. I also laid in the first appearance of color on the bodies of the birds and foreground branches.

I continued painting the colors of the birds and foreground branches, using the same technique of layering washes, letting each wash dry in between. (A hairdryer helps to speed this along.)And here you can see the four watercolor paintings completed and signed, but still taped to the gatorboard. Note-at the end I used a white gel pen to add some of the white detail on the cardinal's wing.

Framed and ready to go!

 My husband, John made a lovely frame for the little birds, and double matted them with a black inner mat and a speckled off-white outer mat.
And now these little guys are being shipped to their new home in the state of Maine!


Thank you for reading my blog and I hope you find it helpful!

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Today I was on the Good Morning Show!

Pro Panel skirts: A Sewing Project

Today I'm going to tell you about how I made attractive and useful "skirts" for my Pro Panels.

If you read my blog, you might remember that I bought Pro Panels for my art booth last year. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can read about it here.)

Pro Panels are carpet-covered display walls that can be put up and taken down easily to display various kinds of art. I use mine to hang my framed watercolor artwork at arts & craft shows. The Pro Panels have adjustable legs to hold them up off the ground. When the legs are extended, you can see underneath my panels and into the next artist's booth, or into any storage areas that I may have. I wanted an attractive way to solve this problem, so I decided to make removable skirts that would attach to the bottoms of my panels and hide whatever was on the other side. Pro Panels does sell a type of removable covering on their website, by the way, but their covers are very plain, and I wanted something better-looking.

I purchased some pretty upholstery fabric online, designed a pattern, and set to work. I chose upholstery fabric because it looks more upscale, and the heaviness of it prevents my skirts from blowing around at outdoor shows. They retain their shape nicely wherever I go. I also decided that they would attach to the Pro Panels along the bottom by fastening them to the back of the panels with Velcro. This meant that they would need to be tall enough to overlap the back of the panels. My panels are 38 1/2 inches wide, and I usually set the legs about a foot or so from the ground. After a little bit of trial and error, I also decided that they needed to be a little bit wider than the width of the panels, to ensure good coverage. My completed skirts measure 14 1/2" tall and 40" wide.

So... I cut large rectangles out of my fabric (18 1/2" x 43 1/2"), and hemmed them as shown.

First I hemmed the sides.

Then I hemmed the top and bottom.
I made the hem the largest on the bottom (2") to make it look nice and professional.

For each hem, it is necessary to first measure, then pin, then iron in a crease. Then do the second fold. Pin it and iron it. Then sew a straight stitch all the way from one end to the other. If you are using upholstery fabric, like I am, don't forget to buy upholstery or heavy-duty thread! Once you have hemmed all four sides of your skirt, sew the velcro all the way across the top of the skirt. I sewed mine to the front of the skirts so that I could attach them to the back of the Pro Panels.

Three sides done.. measuring for the bottom hem.




Finished skirts!

Thanks so much for reading my blog and I hope you found my instructions helpful! I would love to read your comments, and would be glad to answer any questions.

My watercolor art site: www.lauraposs.com

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My new skirts in action! :D