Painting light in your watercolor art can create a great composition. Good lighting doesn’t mean how intense it is, but how its direction and effect on the elements of your artwork. On the other hand, we can enhance your painting by creating light and affecting the perception of the viewers. Here are some of my paintings as examples.

The first group is with strong top lighting. All flowers have strong contrast and cast shadows on them. Based on the cast shadows, you can see that the lighting is from the top.

Next group. I adopted strong back lighting for this painting. You can see that the edges of wildflowers are glowing due to the strong lighting.

The last group. I adopted soft back lighting to create the atmosphere in the either sunset or early morning.

In this class, you will be learning the basic knowledge of light in art, including understanding the importance of light, the various directions of light, how light affects colors, and the relationship between light and shadows. Furthermore, you will create 3 small paintings of leaves along with 3 different directions of light. I will show you how to catch light from different directions and how light affects each element to create their forms.

Also, you will learn the simple ways to create sun rays and watercolor bokeh effect background to add depth to your painting.

Here are the steps of this class that you will learn:

The importance of light in Art.
How light affects colors.
The relationship between Light and Shadows.
The Effects from different directions of Light.
Art supplies that we need for this class.
Project 1- Painting with Top Lighting.
Project 2- Painting with Back Lighting.
Project 3- Painting with Side Lighting.
Final Thoughts.

In each project, you will learn about my whole painting process, including how I sketch, how I modify the reference, applying masking fluid, painting watercolor bokeh effect backgrounds, and how to paint leaves with different lightings in a realistic style.

This class is for everyone who wants to either learn how to paint light with watercolor or enhance your watercolor painting by applying light in your artwork.

You can also find all the references, color chart, Sketches, final artwork, and the list of art supplies under “Resources” section.

If you are ready, let’s get started!

Materials:

Pencil #2H + Regular Eraser
Watercolor Paints (The brand: Art Philosophy)
Watercolor Brushes (The brands: Silver Brush, Princeton Neptune, and Schimoni Art)
Cold Press 140lb 100% Cotton Watercolor Paper (The brand: Arches)
Masking Fluid (The brand: Winsor & Newton)
Glue/ Residue Eraser (Amazon)
Tape (The brand: FolkArt)
Ceramic Palette (Amazon)
Water bucket
Old Towels
Liquid Soap

Additional Resources:

Follow me for my latest paintings on Instagram.
Follow me for my latest paintings on Facebook.
Follow me for my paintings and life on YouTube.
Check out my website.
Get 15% Off for Art Philosophy watercolor confection sets: when you use my discount code (yincreativestudio15%) to purchase the paints that I use in this class.
Get 15% Off for Schimoniart Brushes: when you use my discount code (yincreativestudio15) to purchase the brushes that I use in this class.
Winsor & Newton Art Masking Fluid
Arches Cold Press Paper
Princeton Neptune Quill Brush
Silver Brushes- Black Velvet set

Isabel Darwin

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