Experience Watercolours "Clam Diggers"

This class is loaded with watercolour techniques that will take your painting to the next level! You will learn sky wash, snow capped peaks, reflections, sandy beach, and impressionistic figures placed in the landscape. 

Supplies: good quality watercolour paper (I like Arches 140lb cold pressed,sold by the sheet) 

masking tape, absorbant rag, board to mount your paper on, 2 pieces of any kind of paper for your value sketch and puddle splash guard, scissors, a piece of paper towel, paints of various colours which should include a yellow a red and a blue, (I used Gamboge, Permanent Rose and Cerelean Blue) and a couple earth tones, (Burnt Sienna, Paynes Gray, either of the Umbers) and Ultamarine Blue. a toothbrush.

If you have never painted in watercolours before, this class may seem a bit intimidating but every technique is plainly explained so I say "Go for it!".

Melinda Wilde www.melindawilde.com

Experience Watercolours "Clam Diggers". Instructions:

 Draw shape of puddle, gulls and transfer figures (if you choose to use them)

• Mask gulls and figure as carefully as you can
• Lay in sky wash, lift out mountains and dry
• Mix distant hill colour and put a strip of clear water below where you want the hills and paint hills above the clear water having the bottom of the colour floating into the clear water so as to create a soft edge that we will call mist
• Do this for as many layers of hills as you like but be sure to dry in between
• Shade the mountain peaks that you lifted off in the first step with a VERY dilute and thirsty brush scumbling on the shadow side only
• Use the same method as you used for the distant hills to put in some dark ever green trees , be sure you have arranged them well so that their reflection will fall into the puddles you drew at first. After laying in this dark shape, you can use a super clean and thirsty brush to lift out mist. Dry
• Glaze in a light sand colour around the puddle UM, BS, softening some of the edges–dry
• Lay cut out splatter guard over puddle and top of painting. Use a tooth brush to splatter sand. Use at least 3 colours UM, BS, NG, Sepia, or Umbers
• Remove splatter guards and pull any blobs with horizontal strokes to suggest the horizontal plane of the beach
• Glaze a bit of sky colour in the puddle (very soft) and while damp paint in the dark reflections of the background evergreen trees directly below where they are in your painting.- dry
• Remove mask and detail figure, keep the colours bright (as he is likely the center of attention) but make your strokes simple and leave some pure white paper on the sunny side of the garments. When dry you may add some Ultramarine stokes to the shadow side of your figures.
• Moisten puddle below figure and drop in colours of figure to suggest reflection
• You may need to thin your birds by adding a bit of UM on the bottom edges of them
• Ta Da!!!
• UM = Ultramarine BS = Burnt Sienna

for a smaller project, I suggest you try the various techniques on their own without making the whole scene. Please see attached media.

Also attached is a template for your puddle ,a value sketch example and figures to transfer in various sizes