Water Colour, toadstools - two stages

So what do you do when you look outside and the garden is full of fun guys?? You go and dig them up and bring them inside for painting, of course!

These proved to be the perfect subject for painting without drawing - effectively drawing with the paintbrush. The process means painting with a quiet beginning, building up in layers of tone to a stronger finished result.
And while it is a full colour study, in fact the muted tones of the toadstools are really very similar, meaning the exercise is more a careful exploration of tones, and not of colour.

Stage 1 - a gentle, free-flowing layer blocking in large swathes of shapes, then beginning to pick out darker tones to start attending to the balance of light and dark.

Final stage - added extra layers of tones everywhere, and more fine detail in some parts, but allowed many places to remain loose.
This was painted during two class sessions. I will put some student work up in the next post.

Upcoming workshop - Water Colour, skies and landscape, Sunday 28th October
Portfolio Course
Portrait Workshop

For info email julie@juliedouglas.co.uk