Watercolour
A considered approach
Part 1 Preparation is key to watercolour painting from photographs. Over the next two issues, Richard G Greendemonstrates how to tackle a subject, from thumbnails and tonal sketches to your final brushstroke
Learning objectives
■ How to make the most of photographs as reference material
■ How to make notan thumbnails
■ Make three-tone sketches and five-tone monochrome sketches
There are times when the impetus to paint wanes and ideas dry up, and the longer this downtime occurs the harder it seems to restart the creative engine. It is therefore essential to sketch and take photos regularly so that you have a bank of possibilities for those dry spells.
You can however easily overlook possible painting material when reviewing your photo library, so in this article I will share a process for exploring photos that at first glance may appear to have no painting possibilities, while in next month’s issue, we will develop the process to complete a finished piece of work.
This month I will be discussing the use of notan thumbnails, three-tone sketches and five-tone monochrome sketches. If you’re like me, the urge to apply colour to surface can be overwhelming but without prior thought, this approach can lead to disappointing results. It seems that when I work in the following method, the results are always more satisfactory.
Notan sketches
If you’re not aware of the process for notan, it’s simply to take an image and break it into two basic shapes of black and white, the main aim being to see the relationship of the largest shapes to find a pleasing composition. This is an important part of our painting process. If the composition doesn’t compel us from the beginning then invariably the finished painting fails. There are several convenient software programs and apps that can facilitate the cropping of an image digitally, but this convenience can be far from helpful in the painting process.