Today’s watercolor experiment:

My warmup exercise today is not directly related to today’s experiment. I love the unpredictability of watercolor washes with more than two colors, so couldn’t resist doing another one today.

I began with cerulean blue and washed a small (2″) strip at the top of the paper; cerulean blue seems to require a LOT of pigment to show significantly on the paper. I then painted with lemon yellow directly below the cerulean and carmine red below that.

After it was dry, I applied some concentrated Prussian blue at the top to darken the tone. I really liked the interaction of the Prussian blue, the cerulean and the carmine red.  I washed again with lemon yellow.

After all layers dried, I had my variegated wash. I applied what I learned in Lesson 3 to apply graded mountain silhouettes in the foreground of the composition.

Here is the result:

Variegated Wash with Foreground Silhouettes
9″X12″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block

I like the the way the neutral tint (the color I used for the mountains) allowed some of the red to bleed through. It appears as if the red is reflected from the red in the sky.