Today’s watercolor experiment:
The past few lessons in the Tate Watercolor Manual* through which I am working, have been about brushstrokes. I’ve experimented with different kinds of brushes and using them in different ways to make interesting marks. To concentrate on brushstrokes only, I used a single color in my recent experiments.
Today I wanted to see how the addition of color can enhance a monochrome design. I began by making marks with sepia pigment to create a treescape, as I did in my Treeblot-Scape post. I lightened the foreground blots with white gouache to indicate stems of bushes or small plants. I dabbed blue around the profiles of the trees and offset that color with burnt sienna underneath the sepia foreground.
Multicolor Treescape
9″x12″ 140# Cold Pressed Watercolor Block
The composition holds together and is much more interesting than if I left it a sepia monochrome picture.
* Tate Watercolour Manual, Lessons from the Great Masters by Tony Smibert and Joyce Townsend
I’ve always loved blue and brown together. Works really well here. (K)
They do, don’t they? Especially a reddish brown, like the siennas.
;>)
j
Just beautiful. Simple and elegant.
Thank you Claudia!
j