Today’s watercolor experiment:

Based on my variegated-wash warmup today, I decided to try one on a larger scale. I also experimented with different pigments.

I used cerulean blue (from Daniel Smith) as the first wash. After opening the new tube of this pigment, I was confronted with a honey-like discharge, with very little pigment. I close the tube back up and squeezed it several times to try mixing the color in the tube. I guess the binder separated from the pigment. I had a lot more pigment in my little dish than I had planned for, but even so, the color was very light when I applied it to the paper.

My second color was lemon yellow, which I painted on the right-hand side of the wet paper. I chose carmine red for the third color of my trio, which I added to the left portion of the composition.

Before the wet paper dried, I used the ‘gray’ color I produced from cobalt blue and cadmium red light, to draw a horizontal streak across the composition about one third of the way up from the bottom. I let the paper dry.

I rewet the paper. I added more of the gray concoction above the gray line and used a paper towel to remove some of the cerulean blue. After this dried I added a wash of carmine at the bottom with a dry brush technique. One can see the lemon yellow layer underneath the carmine red.

Landscape-Ish
9″x12″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block

Although this composition is abstract, it does remind me of a landscape. In fact I attempted to portray clouds in the background, a horizon and possibly a body of water in the foreground.  For a less abstract landscape I must do more planning.