Welcome to Line and Wash Essentials: Planning and Composing Your Painting. In this class, we will be going through the essentials of what underpins a beautiful painting. Without knowing how to design and plan your painting, you’re flying blind. I’ll walk you through all the techniques you have at your disposal, and when to know which ones to use.
Understanding the steps and processes required to piece together a painting is crucial. Believe it or not, painting begins even before you put your brush to paper! We will do a variety of exercises that will build your confidence in knowing what colours to use and at what time to use specific techniques. I’ll go through my 7-step process that will ensure you end up with a painting you’re proud of.
The process in summary:
- Choose a suitable scene or reference photo
- Identify the light and dark areas – Squint!
- Select the compositional and design elements you want to include/exclude. This also means thinking about perspective. You may need to alter the light source and shadows. Or change the colours. This is a tricky step and I’ll talk about this more while we complete our projects together. I learned through trial and error and through some theory – the rule of thirds, odd-numbered subjects.
- Sketch in pen or pencil
- Paint the light
- Paint the shadows
- Paint the darkest areas and highlights
Other topics covered in this class include:
- Water consistency/Colour mixing
- Understanding values and colour
- Brush control
- Techniques: the 2 essential techniques to know in order to layer effectively
- One Point Perspective crash course
- Composition
- Building confidence
- Handling mistakes, Self-limiting thoughts
- Building resilience, persistence
- 7-step Unique watercolour painting process
- Putting everything together to complete a painting
