Watercolor Basics

PAINTING ROCKS AND WATER
BEGINNERS LESSON #4

OKAY. Today we’re going to work on rocks and water. Get your supplies together in advance so you don’t have to stop in the middle to get something you need. For these exercises, you’ll need the following:

• Two water containers with fresh water (I prefer ones where I
can squish my brush into the bottom to make sure it’s really clean.
I also use clear ones so I can easily see which is my dirty water and
which is my clean)
• Five or six colors of paint -- cyan blue, ultramarine blue, a pur-
ple, a pink (I like quinacridone rose), brown stil de grain (a rich
brown tone - this one is a Maimeriblu color), and new gamboge.
I squeeze a whole tube out in a well of my palette and let it dry
overnight. Then I wet it with a spray bottle and work with it to
get it gushy. *** It’s MUCH better if they’re all transparent.
• Brushes:
• A wash brush like a Hake if you have one; otherwise, use
the largest flat you have
• A small round brush (like a number 4) & a rigger
• A large (1” or more) flat bristle brush -- you can use an old
oil painting brush with the bristles cut to about 1/2”, or a
Zoltan Szabo bristle brush from Cheap Joe’s Art Supply
(www.cheapjoes.com), or a Sterling Edwards bristle brush
from Jerry’s Art-o-Rama (www.jerrysartarama.com)
• Quarter or half sheets of Arches 140 pound cold-pressed paper
• An old credit card or hotel key card
• A pocket knife
• Artists or masking tape
• A board to tape your paper onto
• A roll of toilet paper covered with a long stretch of paper towels
folded in half length wise and wrapped around toilet paper roll
for a blotter

Ready? Today we’re going to paint lakes, running water (like rapids), and waterfalls, along with anything you want to put rocks in. We’ll start by using one of my paintings as an example to work from.

LAKE SCENE WITH REFLECTIONS, TREE AND ROCKS

First, let’s start with a picture of a painting I did that shows these techniques. I think it will help you to have me walk you through the order I did this painting:

1. Painted the water with a wash brush. While still wet, pulled in some reflections with my bristle brush and some ripples with round brush.

2. Painted the sky. While the sky was still wet, painted the background foliage and trees. Scratched in some branches.

3. Painted the rocks in the foreground. Added some foreground ripples in the water.

4. Painted the tree, adding the leaves last. Added the tree’s reflections in the water and some shadows under the rocks.

STEP ONE: Paint the water with a wash brush. While still wet, pull in some reflections a with a bristle brush and paint ripples with a small round brush (#4).

Wet your cyan blue, ultramarine blue, and brown stil de grain in your palette and work with it and a brush to get the paint flowing pretty well. Also, make a pool of cyan blue with a little ultramarine blue in the middle of your palette. You’ll want your blue colors pretty watery -- about the consistency of half and half. The water needs to be painted pretty fast in order to work well. For this painting, I painted the water in about 5 minutes total.

Begin by painting a wash with your wash or large flat watercolor brush (see Lesson #2) over the water portion. Use a light touch and the watery mix of cyan blue with a little ultramarine blue. After it’s dried some, but while it still has some shine, take your bristle brush and brush it on one side into brown stil de grain and on the other into cyan blue. Pull these colors down from the top of the water wash.

Go back into the brown and then this time touch the other side of your brush into ultramarine blue and pull the colors down again. On the right hand side of the water, do the same thing but with much more watery paint so the colors are lighter.

NOTE: If you try to use a regular brush, you’ll likely get blossoms. The bristle brush pushes into the paper some and helps prevent backruns.

Take your number 4 round brush and go into clear water. Tap your brush around the ferrule (where the bristles join the metal part of the brush) lightly onto your blotter to remove extra water. Paint with clear water into the reflections to make ripples. While water still has its shine, also paint a little into some watery blue color and paint some colored ripples using your whole arm from left to right (if you’re right handed) and a very light touch.

STEP TWO: Paint the sky. While the sky is still wet, paint the background foliage and trees. Scratch in some branches.

After the water is dry, leaving a small space above the water line, paint a light sky over the entire top of the page. Use a very watery wash of cyan blue/ ultramarine blue and your wash or large flat watercolor brush.

While your sky is still wet, paint some light background trees on the right hand side using your bristle brush and a light mixture of brown stil de grain. Using a heavier concentration of cyan blue and brown stil de grain, paint the trees on the left with your bristle brush.

While your foliage still is a little wet (has shine on it but isn’t dripping), you can scrape in some branches with your pocket knife. You’ll want to make sure that you’re using good paper, like Arches, and don’t press too hard -- you don’t want to cut the paper, just scrape off the paint. Hold the knife in your hand like a screwdriver and scrape away from you -- it’ll be easier to control. If the paint is too wet, it will flow back into where you scraped and it will be darker there. If it’s too dry, it won’t scrape out. The timing of this takes practice, but when it works, it’s really fun and makes some beautiful branches.

STEP THREE: Paint the rocks in the foreground. Add some foreground ripples in the water.

Now, we’re ready to have some fun with the rocks. Take your flat brush and put one side into the cyan blue and the other into brown stil de grain. Paint into a rock area on the paper. Let the colors mix together on the paper for a nice effect.

After the paint has dried some, but while it still has its shine, take a credit card and hold it with the large edge against the paper. Press down hard at an angle. Be careful not to tear the paper. Push some color with your credit card at odd angles, making interesting rock shapes. Don’t do the same thing over and over - use some variety.

Using your flat brush, paint some other rocks in a different area or two for variety. Using your round brush, add some colored riples. Paint some shadows under the rocks with some brown stil de grain and a touch of cyan blue.

STEP FOUR: Paint the tree, adding the leaves last. Add the tree’s reflections in the water and some shadows under the rocks.

Using your number four round brush, go into the brown and maybe touch a little blue, too. Begin painting the trunk of the tree coming OUT behind a rock using your arm, not just your hand. Go from the bottom to the top. As you get higher, switch to your rigger. Make little branches, getting them thinner and thinner as you go. You want to make INTERESTING shapes. Don’t do the same thing over and over again. Trees have a LOT of variety. Switch the angle some abruptly to make the crooks in the branches. You don’t want a swishy, round, curvy branch. You want it to really look like a tree branch. (It may help you to go outside and look at trees. It’s especially helpful to look at trees in the winter when they’re bare, or look at some dead trees to see the “bones” - the structure of the tree. You’re trying to make it look interesting and realistic.)

Add some leaves. First, paint them in CLEAR water. Then float in some reds and/or yellows to fill the water shape. That will make them look more delicate. Let the colors blend together on the paper.

After you’ve painted your tree, go into some very watery brown watercolor with your rigger and paint a light reflection in the water. Don’t copy your tree exactly. You don’t want the reflection to compete with your tree, just give the illusion of a reflection.

Add some dark color under the rocks to make them look like they’re being reflected from the underside. Add a few more ripples in the water to complement your composition.

You’re done! :-)

RUNNING WATER

For the waterfall painting, I first painted the colored rocks and then used a credit card to make the rock shapes. I added the background trees and then the foreground trees. I added the waterfall last.

For the waterfall, use your large round brush. The KEY is to use a VERY light touch and watery watercolor. Leave some white -- especially around the edges -- so it will look like the water is flowing. You can tilt your paper a little to let the paint flow downward on its own.

If you look closely at the waterfall -- there’s really not much paint there. It’s more the SUGGESTION of a waterfall than anything else. What people tend to do that ruins it is that they use too heavy of a hand.

RAPIDS AND ROCKS

OKAY, for this painting, first, I painted the sky area and the background trees. I darkened up some of the trees that were more in the foreground and then scratched out some branches.

For the water, I used a VERY large brush (size 32!) and slapped some cyan blue on. I tilted my paper and let it flow. You can see that I left a LOT of white. I used a damp brush to soften some of the shapes while they were wet. I used a blow dryer to push the water around a little more and to dry the painting.

After the painting was completely dry, I painted the rock area using purples, browns, and some ultramarine blue. Then I used the faithful credit card technique to scratch in some rock shapes. On the upper right hand side of the rocks, you can see some bubbles I scrubbed out with my scrubber brush to make it look more frothy (I wished I’d left some white above the rock area -- if I did this painting again, that’s one thing I’d change).

Voila! Instant painting! (This painting took me a total of about 30 minutes to paint from start to finish.)

OCEAN

The same principle holds true for painting an ocean. You want to tape off your horizon line because it is VERY straight. When you’re painting, let your brush dance a little on the paper -- you want to leave some little places with white to look like waves breaking. It’s important not to paint too slowly -- you really want the water to look fresh and not overdone.

I hope you’ve enjoyed your credit card rocks and water. I’ll write to you soon.

Happy painting! :-)
Linda Foltz


Copyrighted © 2008 by Linda Foltz

Beginning Watercolors #4.pdf

Previous Lessons:

Beginning Watercolors #1.pdf

Beginning Watercolors #2.pdf

Beginning Watercolors #3.pdf

Enjoy! :-)