This is a followup to my previous post, about Gail Speckman’s first approach to Wet-Into-Wet Watercolour, painting on fully saturated paper. Today I will try her second approach, which involves prewetting the paper section by section, and then dropping colour into these sections.
When I read this, I felt an immediate sense of recognition. This is what I usually do! Except that I start out not with water, but with very dilute paint. For example, most of my foliage starts out a pale yellow.
However, as I read on, I realized that what she does is actually more complex than my own efforts, but the bottom line is this: painting in sections avoids the mushy, dream-like look of saturated paper wet-in-wet, because crisp edges are very possible: the edges of the wet sections can be very crisp. Preserving whites is, likewise, trivial. So, it is very well-suited for architecture and still-lives.
Here are some other interesting points from the chapter:
- Paintings should feel interconnected. So, the separate areas can be joined together by 1.Pulling out some water/paint from one section to start a neighbouring one, 2. Connecting adjacent sections while wet, or 3. Joining them together later, with a glaze.
- The author plans out section-by-section paintings in great detail, developing the undersketch on tracing paper and then projecting it onto the watercolour paper, and leaving herself hints as to the values to use. (Very explicit hints! E.g., in a four-value painting, she might leave highlights blank, then tint low values yellow, mid-values–rose, and dark values–blue.)
- Once this is dry, she works on the painting section-by-section. Her order is a bit unclear to me: she mentions both starting at the top (with the background) and developing the darkest parts first. And then, when describing a demo painting, she leaves the sky until last because she is worried about a large wet area buckling the paper…
- She tries not to disturb the dark sections once laid down, especially if they use non-staining or granulating colours. Makes sense!
- If a section starts drying before she is done with it, dropping in some water should be enough to keep it wet enough.
- When a section is finished, she might soak up the water on the edges, to avoid backruns.
- She tilts the board a lot. When charging paint into wet sections, she either adds it at an edge and tilts the board to let it flow down, or puts in the middle and rocks the board to help it flow outwards. When linking up sections, tilting helps her control how much they flow into each other.
- After the painting is dry, she adds finishing touches, making sure they are not too starkly crisp. So, she either rewets parts of the paper and adds details wet-in-wet (with dense paint), or paints them on and then softens some edges.
- In general, when painting with dense paint, she recommends using a short-bristle brush, as you will be using only the tips to transfer paint and the paint in the body will be washed out and wasted.
As before, there is A LOT more content than this, especially on composition and on different ways to charge in paint and glaze over existing paint. But I feel inspired NOW. Let’s go!
Recently I stayed in an apartment where I loved the early morning light in the living room. I’ll be trying to paint that. Even if I feel it is a little outside my current abilities. Fortune favours the brave!
Here is how I started out:
After lunch, it was time to try some proper wet-in-wet.
Things that went well: I definitely got some wet-in-wet action going, charging colours and letting them merge. In general, I like the colour interactions here a lot.
Things that went less well: I don’t think I kept the different “parts” separate enough. And I chose my colours poorly: my main blue was PB74, which granulates beautifully, but which has a limited value range and mixes a bit dully compared to, say, PB29, or even PB60.
As usual, I could not help going in for another layer to darken a few things and add detail. I did not soften the detail as suggested, but at least I tried to stop before I ruined things. Did I succeed? You be the judge. Here is my final effort:
I am not sure I followed the book approach closely enough, but I had fun, and I definitely intend to try it again.
Next up: “The Painterly Approach”.