18 Watercolor artist | JUNE 2020
BurningQuestion
Iain Stewart
OnethingI usewithoutfailineverypainting
ismysmartphone’scamera.Nomatterthe
situation,if I needtosimplifywhatI’m
lookingat,asmallphotodoesthetrick.
I alsocanusethecameratoseethe
paintingatamuchsmallerscale,and
I caneasilymanipulatetheimagetosee
thesceneingrayscale.Thisisincredibly
usefulwhenjudgingmytonalwork.It’salso
helpfultobeabletozoominonverysmall
areasofapaintingtoseeif they’reworking.
Thegrayscalefunctionisalsoagreat
teachingtool.MostoftheproblemsI see
instudents’workarevaluerelated:The
sky is blue and the trees are green, but the
shift in color doesn’t give the image any
depth. I quickly take a photo, change it into
grayscale and can show them on the spot
what I mean. If your value steps aren’t
strong enough to register in black and
white, you need to go stronger.
Another trick is to take a photo while the
paint is still wet and another when dry. If you
don’t feel a little quiver when putting down
the correct tone, then you’re probably going
too light. The correct tone should look wrong
when wet. If you go too strong from the
start, then you’ll have to push the rest of your
painting darker than needed to compensate.Jean Grastorf
For most of my watercolor life, I transferred my
drawings to the “good paper,” using the pro-
cess of wax-free graphite. Then, while teaching
a class, my students introduced me to the light
box. So much better and cleaner! A real bonus,
too, is the ability to explore the layering of multi-
ple images. As I lay one sheet of tracing paper
on top of another, images can be discovered,
combined and simplified. The resulting drawing
is then ready to be transferred to my watercolor
paper via the light box. Note that heavier
papers still call for the graphite method.What’s an item in
your studio or toolkit
that you simply can’t
do without?
Sothwold Imagined, Nocturne (watercolor on paper, 10x14) by Iain Stewart