Mirka Hokkanen

Simplifying Watercolor Painting: Wet-on-Wet Rainbow Technique

It's just beautiful Mirka. You've truly inspired me to keep going. Love your classes. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

Thank you so much Claire-Louise. I'd love to see what you create if you have courage to post it.

Thank you Lucy! My sister seemed very happy with it. It was going to be a group present between friends.

I think so too. One person does not know anything about it, so it'll be a surprise for her. But everyone gets a print of it.

Oh, magical! Good to see an example of a more complex piece. Would you say it has three layers? Foreground, middle ground and background? With the animals belonging to the foreground?I'm still trying to work out how you build your paintings ;)

Hi Marieke! I start with a sketch, of what I am planning in general, and for this one, based on the wishes of my sister, I knew that I needed a lot of blues and purples in the background, and the animals were all a specific color. So I started with rainbow wash for background, and then started painting up from there. I think of it kind of as a stage, or a shadowbox, where there are flat inserts covering up parts of the background. (Does that make sense?) So there's the background trees, then white tree, then dark tree and unicorn in middle, and then red bush and ground, and then the owl, white flowers and rabbit in the front. 

I first try to work in the values, which goes pretty fast, and then spend a lot of time looking, and tweaking and adding little details. For most of the painting process, the thing usually looks pretty awful, and it's not until the very end with final details and adjustments (like I might add a wash of blue over something to mute it a bit) things come together. 
In this piece, I knew I was going to use pencils and gouache for details, so it took off some of the pressure of painting around the animals and flowers to leave them light.

Hi Mirka, yes, a stage or shadowbox does make sense! That is so helpful. Thank you for your detailed reply, it is much appreciated! ...and pencils and gouache make a lot of sense too.

It's a lovely piece, what a wonderful present it will make!

Thanks so much Marieke! This piece is also very much in line with the negative painting class I have, that comes after this one in skill level. They build up on each other. So if you haven't done that one yet, I recommend it. The class project is a simpler version of this piece. Here's a direct link to it: <a href="https://skl.sh/3TP29hx" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">skl.sh/3TP29hx</a> 

If you decide to try it, I'd love to see your painting!

I wanted to highlight a recent advanced project I did using rainbow-watercolor and negative painting techniques. (I teach both techniques in my beginning watercolor classes.)
It was a commission for my sister and needed 4 animals in 4 colors to represent a group of friends. I hope it inspires you to try the techniques out too.

Rainbow Watercolor Forest

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