Watercolor Artist – October 2019

38 Watercolor artist | OCTOBER 2019

2. CREATE A VALUE SKETCH

Capture the

“Big Idea” in

a Value Sketch

I made this value

sketch for a morning

demonstration at

Mirror Pond in Bend,

Oregon. Value can

make or break a

composition.

Painting a thumbnail

sketch using one

color—capturing the

“big idea” of the

composition—helps

establish the most

obvious contrasts of

lights and darks, and

keeps you from

getting confused by

smaller, subtler

variations within the

values. Try to keep all

the darks connected.

Include More Subtleties in the Color Version

Your color version need not be an exact copy of the monochromatic value sketch (at left, above). Once you’ve found the

values, you can paint what you want to see and include more subtleties (at right, above). Think of the land and its refl ection

as a combined shape as you paint wet-into-wet. After it dries, fi nd a subtle separation between the land and its refl ection.

Rock Formations

carmine or alizarin crimson,

cerulean blue or cobalt

blue, and raw sienna or

yellow ochre

Tree Refl ections

ultramarine blue or

viridian with raw sienna

and/or raw umber

Basic Tree Color

raw sienna, viridian,

new gamboge and

cobalt blue

Light Greens

cerulean blue,

cadmium yellow pale

or cadmium lemon

Sky Colors

cerulean blue, warming

toward the horizon with

alizarin crimson and

cadmium orange