I've shared in previous posts my process for painting in oil, and this week I'm going to share how I paint in watercolor.
Every illustration begins as a sketch, or rather several of them. For this particular piece I had done over thirty thumbnails before settling on a composition. That was followed by 4 more sketches at half the size of a page in my sketchbook. After I had my composition worked out, I gathered photo reference and drew the final sketch at full size using that reference.
Once this sketch is complete, I transfer it to the watercolor paper by tracing my drawing. I'm using an Arches 140 lb Hot Press watercolor block. Here is the first work-in-progress shot. You can see my pencil lines as well as the beginning of my painting process. I began with the tree, and I start by laying in the color of the light source and the color of the shadow as a base (in this case yellow ochre for the light and a mix of viridian, french ultramarine blue and window blue green shade for the shadow).
Next I start to lay in the color of the object on top of what was previously there. I'm building up many layers of transparent color, working from larger shapes to smaller details and slowly going deeper in value. Dennis Nolan, one of my teachers at the University of Hartford, likens watercolor painting to working with marble, slowly chipping away. This is where watercolor truly shines as a transparent medium, when you can see through one layer of color into what's underneath. For example, notice the right side of the tree that is in shadow.
This is a good stage to simultaneously see what my painting looks like at a various stages of building up. Here the tree is fairly far along, but to know how far to push it I had to started blocking in the rest of the painting. The snake at this point is just blocked in with the colors of light and shadow as previously mentioned.
Here is another stage where you can compare the before and after. I've painted the light and shadow colors on the drapery of Medea, and glazed over it with the purple of her cloak. Afterwards there is more pushing and pulling to be done for the values and shifts in tone. I've also started to paint Medea's flesh. The face is nearly finished, and the forearms and hands have just begun. When painting flesh, I lay in green as the color of shadow, a technique from the Renaissance painters. Afterward, I lay various red hues over the green to neutralize both and darken the value. Thin glazes of yellow ochre unify the skin.
Here you can see I've now layer the object color of the snake (a similar blue-green as the atmosphere) over the form. I've also blocked in Jason. If you look now at Medea's arms you can see the difference from the previous stage. Here I've layed over that cool green some indian red, scarlet lake, and yellow ochre. I've also deepened the shadow by layering green and reds one after another.
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Final image, "Jason & Medea Stealing the Golden Fleece" watercolor, 9.5x13.5" © 2015 Nicholas Elias
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Here is a scan of the final illustration. I continued to layer warmer tones in the foreground coming from Medea's spell, and pushed the values darker around the edges of the piece. I went back into the tree and pushed the overall level of detail, saturation, and value a bit further. I did the same for both Jason & Medea. Once the snake's form was sufficiently blocked in, I went on top with a dry brush and painted the scales. The head of the snake took me the better part of a day to paint, but those are my favorite moments of painting - when you enter into a meditative zone and your hand sort of moves on it's own.
I'm moving right along onto another illustration in the series. Up next is Jason yoking the fire breathing bulls! Follow me on Facebook to keep up with what I'm doing throughout the week.
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