Beginning Homework 3/11/21, One More Time

 Watercolor is all about the edges. Lets make sure you can get the edges you want every time. First of all, how do you know whether you want hard or soft edges ? And if you mean to make soft edges, how soft do you want them to be?

It's very clear the foreground trees were meant to be separated from the background in this sketch. There's a big color difference between the two. Where the two areas meet there is also a big value difference. What else is separating the two big pines from the trees on the mountain? Edges, right? The paper was wet when the blue strokes were applied on the green wash.

It;s not always this clear that you want all the edges in a given area to be hard or soft.

                                                                               Uma Kelkar

At first it may seem that all the edges in Uma Kelkar's painting are hard, but when you look again at the pink wall it is clear that the artist wanted the stains and splotches to be softer than the window and the door.

As you know, I often say the best way to tell if something belongs in the painting is to leave it out. Let's do one more study with NO HARD EDGES!. Then you can use the study to help deciding where you want a hard edge.

Wet your paper on both sides so it will stay wet longer. If you see a hard edge, stop painting.  Dry the paper thoroughly, then you can re-wet it and return to soft edges. Choose one of the photos below, or use one of the  paintings (Uma's or Tom's) for your wet on wet study.We will start adding hard edges in class, after we take a look at all the soft studies.

We will add the hard edges as needed, after the critique.

Read the previous sentence again, please