Beginning Homework 3/9/19 Light, Middle, Dark

Most images or scenes can be translated into watercolor with no more than three layers. The transparency of the medium suggests that we start with the lights and progress through middle value to dark. The following images are all new. No one has painted them before. They have been selected for the ease with which they can be seen as a series of layers.
I like to start by identifying the major shapes and outlining them with pencil or very pale paint.

Sky, hill, ground, trees. Keep it simple, and notice that any white you see in this picture is in your imagination. The darks here are very linear. You could easily make too many hard-edged, dark lines. Remember what Eliot O'Hara said about how many are enough, "Fewer than half as many as you think".

                             

The key to simplifying this scene is to paint the cluster of sheds, vehicles blocks and fences as one single shape. Save a few whites within the overall shape and paint the rest middle value. Then put in a few dark rectangles and Bob's your uncle.

A patchwork quilt of rectangles. Graffiti or no graffiti?

Let's not all paint the snow scene.

Have fun

Gage classes will be working from a model this coming week. If you have any large sketch paper, please bring it along. We'll use it for the short poses.