Part 2 David Webb takes you through the process of painting a still life using just four colours

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

■ Practise mixing colour on your surface

■ Work with a limited palette

■ How to arrange and paint a simple still life in watercolour

In part one of my article last month, I spoke about choosing items, composing your picture and lighting. I also created a page of studies of my ideas (opposite). This month I have chosen a couple of these designs to use for demonstration purposes, which I’ve outlined in red (right).

For the painting Garlic (far right) you can see that I kept to the square format of the original sketch, but I opted for a slightly higher viewpoint. I used my square viewfinder to help with the drawing. Like the sketch, I used a small lamp to illuminate the subject from the right, causing the shadows to be cast on the left. I used a limited palette of ultramarine, light red, raw sienna and Indian yellow.

I like to experiment with different papers and, for this one, I used a very rough textured paper to work on, Jackson’s 200lb Eco, which is a 100 per cent cotton paper from India. It’s handmade and has a very soft surface, which will not stand up to any rough handling. I used a 5B pencil, which does not create a groove if used lightly.