Hints for starting a Watercolour 'Warmup Sketch'
A few hints about how our warmup Watercolour Sketches come together.
We begin a lesson with what is on the table and sketch a group of essentially three items, sometimes with a few little added extras for balance. Here we had a delicious French pastry and a muffin so an easy choice.
Start with your black pen, begin with the eclipse of your cup, sides of cup, handle, and saucer. Observe that they all have a similar eclipse - but it doesn't matter if they go off course.
Add the other items - remember it's like a jigsaw puzzle. Once your first piece is in, add the ones around it.
Add chinagraph wax pencil round tops and sides of most shapes. Not underneath. This allows your whites to resist paint when applied.
Put your 8 watercolours as washes into the palette. We apply paint from the pallets - not the pans. No pre mixing either. You'll get mud. Yuck.
Hold your book up so the colours pool down.
Wash of ultramarine down the centre of cup, inside the eclipse and top and bottom of handle.
Wash of Purple Lake over that.
Yellow ochre wash over coffee, cake and pastry , then Cad Red, followed by Ultramarine. Let all the colours run down so it's darker near the base of your items. No fiddling or blotting - let the paint do it's thing!
Perm Rose over the raspberries, and a few flicks on the flower decoration, sap for the tiny green leaves.
Fine wash of Ultramarine for your 'sitting down line' and a few touches of Cerulean around the back of the sketch - and there it is. Should take 30mins. Add a little Posca white if you wish.