Fun with Watercolors Market Square

A trip to Williamsburg, VA this Christmas, gave me an opportunity to paint on location at the Market Square.  With my travel palette, water, brushes, Dot Spray Bottles I set up a location near the center of the Market Place and found a place to do a watercolor sketch of the location.  The weather was clear and crisp and a good view was there to paint.  The Dot Spray Bottles were used to show how to make texture in the tree leaves by spraying clear water and paint in the bottle when the shine of the watercolor went away.  This is the timing to add water or paint to produce a blossom on the painting which as the unique characteristic of rough texture of the leaves on a tree. I was able to video tape the sketch and capture some of the techniques and brush strokes up close.

I am sharing this video on my Facebook Group - Fun With Watercolors.  I have added a sketch and photo reference in my website to be downloaded and used to paint-along with me.  I encourage the Group to download and share their paintings to provide a dialog of art knowledge and learning experience.

Link to Face Book Group Fun with Watercolors:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/583719755532155/

Link to the video Fun with Watercolors – Market Square:

https://youtu.be/rslEa0z6sjE

Link to the downloadable sketch Market Square Sketch:

www.everettswatercolors.com/FunwithWatercolors.html

A review of Mixing Colors

Mixing Color Basics

The primary hues are red, yellow and blue.  Mix two primaries to get the secondary hues – orange, violet and green.

Organize your palette by the color wheel will help to quickly mix secondaries.

                                   

Complementary hues are hues on opposite sides of the color wheel.  Painted side by side, complementary hues make the strongest color contrast.  Mix them together to make grays.

The three properties of color are value, hue and intensity.  Value is the lightness or darkness. Hue usually means color. Intensity is the brightness or grayness.

Every brush stroke contains all of these properties, but they can be adjusted independently.  As you mix, choose the value first, then chose the hue, and adjust the intensity last.

Temperature changes are used to show the effect of light.  The warm colors are red, orange and yellow.  The cool colors are green, violet and blue.  Yellow is the warmest and blue is the coolest.

When comparing two hues, the color closet to yellow on the color wheel is warmer.  The one closest to blue is cooler.

Everett’s Watercolors

www.everettswatercolors.com

Dot Spray Bottle "Palette in a Bottle"

                                                                 Dot Spray bottle

The new Dot Spray bottle. Used by artists, craftsmen, children, and adults.  A great way to change your art and come up with an interesting way to paint and have fun!

Using watercolor paints in the bottle will extend your colors to a "Palette in a Bottle."TM

 Link to Everett's Art Supplies to purchase.

Palette in a Bottle

Fun with Watercolors Starry Night

Fun with Watercolors 3 pumpkins

Holbein Watercolor Paints and why I use them

Comment from another Artist Instructor on using the same watercolor paints I recommend. Using Fresh Watercolor Pigment In the last 5 watercolor demonstrations that I have done, it has dawned on me that I need to mention to my students about using fresh pigment. When I say fresh pigment I mean having pigment in your palette that is workable and not as hard as a rock. I find many students trying to grab fresh pigment from their palette when all they have on their palette is hard pigment that will only give them enough pigment to make a tinted wash. You may wonder why one needs fresh pigment, well the answer is to be able to control the watercolor pigment in a wet wash. If you have your paper wet and you use a small amount of pigment, that is considered a tint of color. Now if you want to float your pigment and control a soft edge on a wet surface you need to be able to pick up enough fresh pigment to control that soft edge to only bleed out a very controlled distance. You can only do this with the use of a lot of pigment. Too much water and it becomes uncontrollable. The Holbein paint I use has a big advantage over other paints when it comes to drying pigment in your palette. Holbein watercolors do not dry out to a hard clump when left in the palette to dry. Instead, the Holbein watercolors become instantly rejuvenated with just a touch of water and when dry they feel very rubbery to the touch. The reason Holbein instantly rejuvenate is that they don't mix OxGall into their paint. Most of the other paint manufacturers put in OxGall for transparency. I believe if you float your pigment in a wash every color even an opaque will look transparent. So when controlling your edges in a wet watercolor wash, make sure you use fresh pigment or use Holbein watercolor paints because they always stay fresh and become instantly rejuvenated with just a touch of water. Use your watercolor thick in a wet wash! David Becker