Dramatic light is one of the aspects of working with watercolours that I love the most. So much of watercolour painting is about creating light and shadow, and focusing on painting the light itself is often what brings our subject to life.
But how to we actually "paint the light"?
How do we create a strong feeling of light?
How do we create drama in a painting?
What should we look for in our reference?
And how do we translate this into a working painting?
In this video I talk through my ideas and thought processes in creating a strong feeling of light in a watercolour painting of Gannet.
The dominant underlying principle is looking for simple patterns of light and shadow, and translating these into simple tonal values. Then we look to group similar tonal values together giving us a light tonal group and a shadow group.
Ideally these tonal value groups should be a good distance apart, especially if we want to create a strong feeling of light.
On top of this we also look at creating lovely flowing watercolour washes with lots of lovely colour variation (whilst keeping our tonal values well grouped); as well as the importance of different types of edges in creating a strong feeling of light in watercolour painting.
Soft and fuzzy shadows from working wet into wet, and damp into damp, can create real atmosphere and depth to our shadows. This always contrast so well against the sharper harder lights.
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50 minute, fully narrated version (2x speed)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/49975541
Shorter time-lapse
https://www.patreon.com/posts/49975697
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Previous Watercolour Bites Episodes:
1) Basic Terms - https://youtu.be/4icHxwdzQYQ
2) Colour vs Tone - https://youtu.be/qnVjTLxivQI
3) Tonal Values (Part 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE6itosi2Hw
4) Tonal Values (Part 2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A8s21LOpuA
5) Tonal Values (Part 3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9h1qXH30Vs
6) Single Most Important thing in Watercolour - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1spfpfhqCuY
7) Simple Watercolour Process - https://youtu.be/AbvleXlDoBw
8) Top 10 Tips - https://youtu.be/PZb-3jYxp84
9) Watercolour Brushes - https://youtu.be/-i3EQJ2Sekc
10) Mixing Darks - https://youtu.be/dqfWN5uZwJE
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