Today’s warmup exercise:

The next lesson in the Tate Watercolour Manual, Lessons from the Great Masters by Tony Smibert and Joyce Townsend, from which I am learning, is about rendering a scene from a photograph that has been desaturated. Desaturation is a function available in many digital photo editors. It drains the photograph of color. The only quality left is the variation in brightness, also known as tonal value.

I revised the construction of my warmup chart. I use clear tape, upon which I can write notes; each cell of the chart contains an accumulation of the steps in the lesson.

Below, I began with a light wash to construct the distant out-buildings of a farm scene. I re-painted this in the second cell (proceeding clockwise) and added middle tones to the areas closer to the viewer. I continued in this manner for the third cell.  The fourth and final cell contained the darkest of the washes.

Tonal Progress Chart

I found that I had a hard time making my brushstrokes visible. Most of them faded into the wash. This probably meant I was using too much water. I did conquer this to some degree in the final cell, where I really scrunched up the brush and forced it into the paper. The book told me to do this. I often advised my granddaughter against this practice and would cringe when she pushed the bristles against the grain.  It seems there are some things that she can teach me.

I hope to use tone studies to help me see tonalities in plein air painting sessions.