Introduction to Watercolors for Field Sketching

By Christine Elder

This handout is a rough outline to accompany the video on watercolors that you can watch on your nature sketching course page: http://christineelder.com/nature-sketching-course. You may want to print it out and add notes as you watch the video. If you have watercolors, you may want to set them up and follow along!

We will cover the basics of using the medium of watercolor, especially as its use pertains to casual field sketching, plus the basic materials and techniques to use in the field as well as exercises to practice at home in order to familiarize yourself with your paints. Let’s get going!

Introduction

• Value the process of discovering watercolors over the product; the joy of being outside, trusting that you are indeed learning more about your subject and your art materials and techniques than may be obvious from what’s shown on the paper, the hidden rewards which will slowly reveal themselves. You aren’t aiming for a botanical illustration or being the next Audubon so release any unrealistic expectations for yourself. • Characteristics of watercolors o Akin to cats – can be frustrating, have their own mind, can’t control them, but delightful all the same! o Transparent, so they can’t be modified extensively like one can do with opaque acrylics and oils, but they’re quick, non-toxic, easy to bring into the field, and will work well layering with other media.

Watercolor supplies:

• Portable watercolor palette, watercolor paper or field sketchbook, Pentel aquash watercolor brush, old oil brush, mechanical pencil, permanent pen, sponge, white gel pen and white colored pencil for highlights, waxy pencil or birthday candle for resist, rag, natural objects and photographs to practice with.

Your watercolor palette

• Use highest quality paint you can afford, such as those by Winsor and Newton, Daniel Smith, Schmeinke, or Sennelier. • Color choices – use a limited palette at first, perhaps just six cool and warm primaries. • Colors not as important as getting to know their characteristics and behaviors with other colors. • Expand your vocabulary of color - a flower is not just orange, it’s gamboge, sky isn’t blue, it’s cobalt, hummingbird isn’t green, it’s viridian, violet and rose. • Play a lot with mixing so you know your colors intimately, like friends. Or like how a chef is intimately familiar with their spices and ingredients so they aren’t dependent upon a recipe. • Make a page of swatches and carry it around to compare to subjects in the field. • Attach it to the front of your field sketch book as a reference. • Learn the names of your pigments and learn to describe what you see using these names. • Make flashcards of the colors in your palette, with the names on the back and memorize them. • Practice mixing colors to match those found on photos or objects in nature – different greens from leaves, browns from tree trunks, yellows from flowers. Squinting eyes helps to see values better. • Use a view finder placed next to your subject to isolate its color and more easily match it on your paper. • Most common mistakes when learning watercolors o Mixing too pale, watercolors tend to dry several shades lighter than they appear in the palette. o Using too much water, don’t leave it sitting in a puddle else your paper will buckle and paint will ‘bloom’. o Over working, getting too fussy. Best to be bold and confident and only do one or two swipes of paint. Painting exercises

• Flat wash; entire area is one value. • Graded wash; often used for skies and lakes to emulate distance. • Wet on wet; a livelier way to mix colors than on the palette – say to show variation in autumn leaf color. • Glazing (wet over dry); using a layer of same or different color over a dry color – looks more brilliant than premixed because you can simultaneously see both colors like two pieces of overlapped stained glass. Useful for modifying the hues and values in your painting to more closely approximate your subject’s true colors. • Dry brushing – good for textures of fur, feathers, leaves, grass. Use old oil brush with stiff bristles. • Practice making secondaries, greys and browns from the paints in your palette. • Keeping your color schemes simple will reduce frustration, speed up your field paintings and ensure that the colors harmonize well. Two field techniques to practice: o Use just one color. Make a value scale by tinting full strength paint with water and paint a subject in just 3 values. o Use just two colors, such as a pair of complements as a simple means to model three dimensional form; such as a red apple shaded with green, an orange fruit shaded with blue, a banana shaded with purple.

Depicting whites in a painting

• A common frustration when using transparent watercolors is that it’s hard to depict white, and even if you have a white watercolor in your palette, it is usually quite weak, but there are a few tricks you can use. • Also keep in mind that the white of your subject isn’t always the same white as your paper. For example, seashells, white feathers, the highlight in a bird’s eye. Look closely to determine what kind of ‘white’ your subject is: a cool white, warm white, leaning towards yellow, red or blue? If it is other than pure white, do a light wash of that color first before painting anything else. Here are the options for depicting white in a watercolor painting: • Preplan and leave areas on your paper unpainted where your subject will be white. • Lift out color with a tissue, sponge, Q-tip. • Cover areas on your paper to be white with a masking agent like a wax pencil or birthday candle, which will repel any paint you add afterwards and preserve your whites. • Scratch out your whites with a stick, razor or other sharp implement. • Sometimes you can lift out the whites from a dried water color with an eraser depending upon the paint, especially using the eraser pencils, which are pointed and can apply firm pressure. • If you’ve forgotten to preserve the white, or the area is very small or finely detailed you can use: o White gel pen – good for small highlights like in an animal’s eye or fine lines like the spines of a cactus. o White charcoal pencil, or other thicker leaded colored pencil – can’t make pure white but can serve as a highlight and to slightly lighten the existing color. o White watercolor or gouache paint Mixed Media

Watercolors ‘play well’ with many other media including graphite pencil, pens, colored pencils, water soluble colored pencils and gouache.

Hints for working in the field (this section is not on the video)

• Have appropriate field clothes and a bag for your supplies. I have specific suggestions in my guide, Introduction to Field Sketching. • Practice at home in the backyard with your supplies, before you venture into the field. • Stay light and loose, not fussy, not too wet, just quick and casual. • If painting in the field is impractical, make color notes and/or take photos to work on back at your campsite, lodge or comfort of a picnic table. • Realize that your techniques and level of detail will be dictated by the conditions in the field, you won’t be able to paint a hummingbird you’re watching in a bush to the same detail as a flower bouquet at a picnic table. You can always add more details once you return home.

Books on Watercolor Painting

Painting Nature in Watercolor with Cathy Johnson: 37 Step-by-Step Demonstrations Using Watercolor Pencil and Paint, by Cathy Johnson

The Big Book of Painting Nature in Watercolor , by John Shaw and Ferdinand Petrie

Final thoughts

Remember that although watercolors can be frustrating to many people, keep in mind the benefits of the process over the product, for the time spent painting your subjects will cement their beauty in your mind’s eye forever!