watercolor challenge day 16 wip

[Lee White]

I really admire you for doing the watercolor challenge of a painting a day. If I may, I'd like to offer some suggestions on how to really get the most out of it.

The thing most people miss with watercolor is actually planning the value structures and using the right amount of pigment to hit those value structures. If you take this image and switch it to greyscale, you will see that the overall values aren't varied enough to really get a lot out of the paint. It's very flat in value. So the problem isn't actually the painting necessarily, it's the value plan (and another straight ahead drawing of the cow doesn't help).

What I recommend: Don't do any of your own work for the 30 day challenge. Keep it to studying other watercolorists. But before you do a painting, do an analysis of the value breakdown first. Then do a greyscale painting of that image, and then possibly do a color study.

Once you can hit values and edges in a copy, you will be light years ahead of where you would be if you tried to just do your own paintings.

Remember, true progression isn't just working everyday. It's about working in a very strategic way trying to target specific areas of weakness.

Hope that helps some!

Cheers,
Lee

[MOO]

@Lee-White Thanks Lee. I will do that.

( I just don't know how to get the effect I want without a straight on view of the cow! I know it's wrong...but....

I will be glad to put the cow aside for now and do other work using the grayscale and then color. I will try to be patient.

[Lee White]

sounds good. You will be glad you put in the work here.

Below I've pasted some images. The two artists are Joseph Zbukvic and Lisbeth Zwerger. Both are masters of the medium and huge influences on me. Look at how they use light and dark and also their color balance. Just breathtaking. If you changed these to greyscale they will still work perfectly.

[MOO]

@Lee-White Oh, thank you! Beautiful. I will use some of these for the challenge! I did one today. I didn't look at it in gryscale but painted it in gray scale. Is that what I should do? Or am I supposed to change it and then copy it? I'm thinking that the first way is right.

[Lee White]

@Marsha-Kay-Ottum-Owen either way is good. I'd try it with the color original. Then change it to greyscale and see how close you got.

[MOO]

This post is deleted!

[MOO]

@Lee-White

[Lee White]

there ya go! nice!

[Lee White]

now try it in color

[MOO]

@Lee-White That's the plan Wish me luck!

[MOO]

These are the greyscale of mine and the original for Day 17. I posted the colored ones on another post but decided to add these in to compare too. I couldn't get them to "stick" on the other post

@Lee-White

[MOO]

The nose and the right side of the hair look a bit light in comparison to the original, I think. Very challenging to copy this style!