Category Archives: Tones in watercolor

DAVID BELLAMY ADDING SUPER-TEXTURE TO YOUR WATERCOLOURS

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Next month, my new book, Watercolour and Beyond is published by Search Press. It’s quite different from my earlier books in that although it begins with traditional techniques it is mainly concerned with introducing new methods to watercolour landscape painting. One example shows how to use masking fluid not just for masking out intricate details, but to employ it in a much more creative manner. Or producing delightful effects by stamping with cosmetic sponges and variegated colours. Super-granulating colours can achieve spectacular passages in your work, and by introducing non-art materials into your landscape compositions your can add a new dimension. There are also ideas for various projects, some of which don’t involve creating wall-hung art, but give you alternatives for your work.

The painting I have chosen as an example from the book shows how a foreground can be embellished with Daniel Smith Watercolour Ground, which is rather like gesso in consistency, but it will happily take your watercolour washes. I have cut out a large part of the composition so that it’s easier for you to see the amazing textural effects you can achieve with this method.

To suggest the rough foreground Daniel Smith Watercolour Ground was laid on with a painting knife a couple of days before beginning the painting, and in the final stages I laid washes of Naples yellow, potters pink and pthalo blue over the watercolour ground, merging them all in while they were still wet. The ground is especially effective in rendering rocks, cliffs, rough walls, mountainsides, river banks and many other landscape features.

One of the main aims in writing Watercolour and Beyond was to encourage experimentation and bring a sense of joy into painting. Whether you paint full-time or just now and then you will find the techniques and ideas crammed into its pages will give you plenty of inspiration and a wonderful feeling of trying something new in your painting. We no longer have a mail-order shop, but of course you can get the book direct from www.searchpress.com or from your local bookshop.

On Saturday 3rd May the Erwood Station Landscape Artist of the Year competition gets under way with the first heat. There will be one heat each month throughout the summer, and if you wish to participate you can get information at 01982 560555. It is a great place to spend the day painting with others, and is a great learning experience. I shall be one of the judges during the first heat, so maybe I’ll see you there.

David Bellamy – Using tonal effects to suggest mood and space

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Injecting mood into a landscape painting not only makes the overall effect much more exciting, but can create a strong sense of space and distance in the work. Although this scene of Faversham Creek in Kent already had a feeling of great space I wanted to exaggerate the atmosphere even more in the finished painting.
I chose a blue-grey tinted paper for this watercolour and deliberately kept the distant wooded hillsides very faint in order to create a striking contrast with the foreground features. The strong tones on and around the buildings help to push the faint hills well into the background. If everything is given the same degree of tonal strength then it will be hard to distinguish various features from each other, even with contrasting colours. Masts, gulls and some white boats were rendered in white gouache, and I have only included the main part of the composition so that the distant hills can be seen better.

I shall be giving another of my annual seminars at the Settlement, Pontypool on Saturday 1st October, and it will be covering how to create mood and drama in a painting, beginning with a watercolour demonstration, and this will be followed by an illustrated talk on the subject, including a great many examples of different landscapes and coastal scenes. You can find details on my website http://www.davidbellamy.co.uk/seminar-pontypool-october-2016/  I shall be demonstrating the exciting Daniel Smith watercolours and Saunders Waterford paper, and there will be plenty of time for you to ask any questions, so I hope to see you there.

Injecting Dramatic Lighting into your Paintings

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In a painting in any medium, treatment of light is a vital consideration. While the landscape photographer has to work with available light, artists can manipulate it to their advantage, changing it, intensifying it, rendering a much softer, atmospheric light or create a dramatic sense of light and dark, and so much more. It pays to study how the top artists have treated the light in their compositions when you visit an important exhibition or collection.

Brancaster Staithe

Brancaster Staithe

This scene on the Norfolk coast shows part of the composition bathed in late afternoon sunlight, as it throws the emphasis on the central building, the two figures and the boats. I achieved hard edges on the buildings set against a dark sky by using masking fluid, rubbing it off once the background washes had dried, and then painting in the details on the buildings and the rest of the scene, completing everything apart from the shadows in the foreground. At that point I often trundle off for a coffee, or if it’s late I’ll finish for the day. This allows the washes to dry completely – in fact I’ll often get on with another painting at that point.

With the whole painting completely dry I wash clean water right across the foreground, taking it up into the lower sky area. Make sure that you take the water some distance beyond where you intend to create the soft edge, as water has a habit of creeping further than you might think. I then apply a mixture of French ultramarine and cadmium red over the shadow area, including the darkened left-hand buildings and the far right-hand hedgerow. This wash blends nicely into the wet paper, creating soft-edged shadows, with the area I wished to highlight being left untouched. If you are a little wary of this technique try it out firstly on old paintings that have not worked well, so that if things really do go wrong it won’t matter.

Tones in landscape painting

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Many newcomers to painting find the terms ‘tone’ and ‘value’ confusing: what is their significance and how do they relate to colour? The two terms actually mean the same thing in painting, that is, the degree of darkness or lightness of a colour. With indigo, for example, you can obtain a very dark tone by not adding too much water, but when you reduce its intensity with water you will achieve a lighter tone, and thus it is possible to create a wide range of tones. In comparison, however, a lemon yellow will have a much smaller range of tones because it is a far lighter colour.

In this extremely simple watercolour you can see how tones have been used effectively to highlight the cottage by describing its outline with a mass of dark green tone behind it. The roof is a mid-tone which sits well between the white wall and dark background. The pathway remains light in tone, though slightly darker under the trees where it is caught in shadow, and it is defined by making the adjacent ground darker. This darker ground ranges from quite dark in the foreground to being almost imperceptible in places. The light-toned field between cottage and foreground trees helps to show up the dark tree-trunks and fenceposts.

I don’t cover tones in great depth in all my books, but my Learn to paint Watercolour Landscapes has a useful section on the subject, and signed copies can be obtained from our shop.