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Such a great group this weekend at the Bloomington Watercolor Society workshop! I love teaching, especially when you have such enthusiastic people. This is the demo I painted. I chose the scene particularly because of its simplicity. NOT that this group is incapable of tackling something more difficult but because I wanted to show that you don’t have to go to Italy or some other exotic place to find subjects to make beautiful paintings in watercolor. Watercolor can be lovely in and of itself. A typical urban scene, this can be found on many street corners in most small towns and cities. [...]

Here is a color study from my sketchbook. The main color used for the rock is DS’s Red Fuchsite Genuine. You can’t tell it from the image, but Red Fuchsite looks to have mica in it. Up close, it has tiny bits of sparkle...perfect for a sunlit subject such as this. [...]

So after observing my painting in various locations, the background bothered me.  I felt it distracted from the subject, taking the eye away from the main interest.  My decision was to gradually lesson the distraction by glazing over the background in layers of deep color.  I used colors that were the complements of the colors in the subject--Quin. Gold, Dioxizine Violet and Alizarin Crimson.  The "straw" is still evident and gives subtle background texture but overall the background is very dark, pushing the subject forward which is what I was looking for.   This painting is created on heavy 300lb Arches watercolor paper [...]

This has been the subject of my step-by-step instructional demo on this blog.  It has taken about 2 months to complete but I feel it is finally finished.  On the last few steps, I deepened color, lifted out straw, toned back straw, added more straw, enhanced color on the face, added texture to small areas on the clothing, added a few darker values, and then came to the conclusion that it is finished.  There may be a few tweaks here and there, but not much else.  This is the stage where I move it to another room to view it in [...]