About this blog


WELCOME! My name is Ann Mortimer and I'm a professional watercolour artist and tutor from Nottingham, UK.

This is a "learn how to" and "problem solving" blog covering WATERCOLOUR TECHNIQUES.

You can look for things that interest you in the blog archive on the side bar when various topics have built up over time!

I'll be covering thing such as colour mixing, negative painting, using masking fluid, laying washes, painting water and all sorts of other things.

Sunday 12 August 2012

Making tonal contrasts work in a painting (continued)

Before we go any further, here's the finished painting so you can see where this is leading to.


Clematis catching the sun.


Here's my palette after mixing up some paints.  I have two pinks, (permanent rose and cobalt violet), two yellows (aureolin and raw sienna) a loosely mingled green mix of Winsor blue, quinacridone gold and aureolin and on the enamel plate you can see my dark mix.  This is Winsor blue, Q. gold and then some Winsor violet and some burnt sienna.  The colours are laid side by side and allowed to mingle a little so you can see their potential for use in the dark crevices between the very bright flowers and leaves.
That's how I'm going to achieve the tonal contrast and I really need these dark colours available from the start.
I then put a loose mix of alizarin crimson, burnt sienna and a touch of W. violet in the empty section of the palette (not visible here.) for the stamens and dark areas in the flowers.  So from the start the tones were an important indicator to inform my colour mixes.


My palette with colours mixed ready

Going to do some painting now but next time I'll show you the next stage which, after masking out the centres, will be laying in the first wash wet in wet.



1 comment:

  1. Ann - wow - you certainly caught the light. Anxious to see this in the next stage. You are so kind to share. Have a great week.

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