ASSIGNMENT:

Your class project is to create a moody watercolor landscape with a limited palette. The composition is flexible, make up whatever scene you like so long as the sky is 2/3’s of the painting, has a mountain, a middle ground, and a foreground.

MATERIALS:

100% cotton watercolor paper.

Brushes: a round and a flat

Paint: Purple, Yellow Ocre, Burnt umber, Indigo hue, and Ultramarine Blue.

Paper towel.

Water jar or cup.

Palette for mixing.

You! :)

Cover the entire paper with a clean wash of just water. Then use a little bit of purple and yellow ocre to cover the top 1/3 of the page. While the surface is still wet go in with a blue for the clouds. As long as the surface is still wet you can keep dropping them in, spaced them out and let the water do the work. This should create a fuzzy edge on all the blue clouds to give them a soft look.

Hopefully, you have left a small obtuse triangle dry to make the hard edge of the top of the mountain. If not wait till the blue clouds dry and paint in the mountain. The mountain is a medium-dark, so mix up a thick consistency of paint, like whole milk, to do it. If the surface is dry you can still paint the mountain and soften the edges with a damp clean brush and drag the paint till there is almost none. Continue this process until you are happy with your mountain hiding behind clouds.

For the middle and foreground do a wash of dark. This mixture of your blues and burnt umber should resemble an espresso consistency. Go over it again.

Now you have the clouds, mountains, and foregrounds going from light to dark. Good work!

Callie Bowen

Newbie Artist

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