Challenge #9: October 10 Challenge

Back again to Washes: Working with Multiple Colors

Martha's progression.

Alex's squares.

And Alex's circles.

This will be another technique based sketchbook challenge.  Almost all of you have picked up the watercolor pans, so you can move onto this with the water colors. If you have not picked it up yet, it is perfectly fine to continue working with the pencils. You will not be able to do some of the technique work, but you will be able to think about color and placement.

In our last activity that segues us into the self-in-community, we created a "wash" and collaged with images and words from around us over the surface.  Some great examples emerged from this. You can also see how the wash these artists created varies--from a bold, smooth coverage, to a tight and textured appearance.

Mikayla's food fiesta.

Lauren's Bryant garbage can raid.

Amanda's decorative paper.

Joe's Rhode Island.

For this challenge, we are going to draw on urban watercolorist, Felix Scheinberger, to help us think about the importance of the wash we place on the page--as back drop to so much and as, often, the color of the image which we are featuring.  

Scheinberger, in his work Urban Watercolor Sketching, states it bluntly: 

"Wet paint behaves strangely."

In this challenge, you will want to get a sense of this strange behavior of wet paint. What it does on the page, how it interacts with other colors, what happens when it dries, or doesn't dry and it moves, and moves where we do not want it to!

We will be working with a variation of his three-color portrait sketch, one he uses to help developing sketchers practice working with multiple colors and to wash them across the page.

Here's what we will do:

• Remember that blind contour self-portrait you did way back at the beginning.  Guess what!  It's back!!  (Using pen or pencil) draw a big ole blind contour self-portrait of yourself.  Make sure it is not too small. Work big so you fill the full page and you have lots of your face to paint!
• Choose three colors (only three colors) from your water color pan. This limit gives you a chance to deepen your understanding of the way the colors you do choose work. Think about which colors would be interesting placed next to each other. Don't worry about whether your face actually is green or not. If you like green, work with it.
• Before you start your first wash, think about where you might want to preserve some white space--space you will not paint  Or where you might leave a strip of whiteness to create a line by not painting it in, maybe along your jaw line or the line of your nose.
• Start with a light wash, using a lot of water. They are called water colors for a reason! Fill in the colors you want for your hair, your eyes, the shadows you want to create. Scheinberger provides an example where he uses a light blue for his hair and beard, a yellowish color for his forehead and a deeper reddish color for his neck and cheeks.  
• Let the colors do what they will with the water on the page--flow into each other, settle in places.  Feel free to pull up some color with a tissue or cloth if you feel it is settling too much or flowing in ways you do not want.
• Let it dry.
• Then, go back in and start building your color--adding more "red" on top of the "red you have. More "blue" on the blue.
• The goal is not so much to MIX colors as to DEEPEN the existing colors so gradations of value emerge--some of your "red" darker, some parts lighter, some parts more opaque and some more transparent.

Have fun!!  We will be taking this technique back to issues of community in the next exercise.

Carry on . . . . . 

Estifania's circles (with lines).

Meghan's sketchbook cover.

Krystin's sketchbook cover.