Today, Jean Pederson gives a brief demonstration of how she layers various pigments of transparent watercolors to produce a realistic, three-dimensional image on paper.
Her subject matter—an eye—is tricky under the best of circumstances, but as you’ll see, she starts with a fairly detailed drawing to ensure accuracy as she paints.
In addition, please notice the dry brush technique that Jean uses at the beginning to “lift” paint off of the paper. Simply by painting a single transparent value over all the features of the eye, and then removing the highlighted areas with a dry brush, she instantly creates depth. Take a look:
NOTE: You can get Jean Pederson’s full watercolor tutorial at Creative Catalyst.
Finally, my "big project" is finished! It’s been a crazy day with a lot going on, but foliotwist.com is finally live and online! Since I’ve kept it a complete secret up until launch, here’s a quick (mostly visual) overview of what it does. . .read more
Many times a painting will take longer than one sitting to complete - and for watercolor artists in particular, that can be problematic. After all, if you like painting on a wet surface with transparent watercolors, the last thing you want is dry watercolor paper. In the video below, Jean Pede. . . read more
Most paintings (especially portraits and figurative paintings) benefit from a good preliminary drawing before you ever pick up a brush. The traditional way of doing this is to draw on your canvas using charcoal or graphite, and then paint over it—but today we'd like to show you an altern. . . read more
In today's video clip, it's interesting to see how Jean Pederson adds depth and contrast to her watercolor portrait by simply dropping in some complementary colors. After many more layers of paint, the final result is stunning. Take a look: If you're interested, you can get Jean's full waterco. . . read more
Getting more intense colors sometimes means using paint directly from the tube. Other times, it means planning ahead and actually layering transparent paint so that the light can bounce through and pick up more color on the way back. In the video below, David Kitler demonstrates some of the di. . . read more
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