Category: Step-By-Step

Welcome to Step 4 of Build-A-Bear – watercolorly speaking, of course. Yesterday I shared with you the beginning step of applying the color to the background of The Pic-a-nic on the Grass. Since the background is not quite done, shall we continue along that line of thought?

Just as was done yesterday, the rest of the background needs to be fleshed out in shades of green and yellow. The various colors continue to be laid in wet on wet (shorthand for wet paint onto pre-soaked areas of the paper). I have a darker green for much of the foreground section of grass, and an even darker shade that will be dabbed in around the base of the characters to ground them to the — well, to the ground.

You may have noticed that the trees have also received a bit of paint. Maybe two shades of brown were used on the bark, and a little bit of light green. You really don’t need too many shades of a color because you can control the color’s intensity by how much water is in your brush before you paint. An excess of water makes the color more transparent. The trees further back were painted in lighter to help create that sense of distance. Regarding the cluster of trees on the left side, that one horizontal tree was painted in darker to make it seem like it is more in the shadows.

The large tree on the right I left without brown for now so you can see the green tones put on the bark. The addition of green on the bark helps blend the trees into the scene. There could be multiple lessons on how light affects color, but the shorthand explanation is that colors bounce around in light in real life. It is reflected color. If you stand next to a red car while wearing a light colored shirt, your shirt will look slightly red from the color bouncing off the car in daylight.

Remember how I said in a previous Step that it is wise to paint from the back to the front? You would want to paint in those tree trunks before painting the leaves on the tree because the leaves need to be on top of the wood. It is far easier to paint individual leaves over the wood than it would have been to paint the wood in between all the leaves. No longer working wet on wet, using my trusty #12 Round brush, I began to dab in a few shades of green to build some volume to the leaves.

Obviously no longer dominant in the art, hints of that purple underpainting still peek through the greens keeping things a little light and airy. The darker greens are used in the foreground all to maintain a sense of depth. What helps is being able to see that light green peeking through the dark leaves creating a sense that the area behind those trees is getting some sunlight that is not present in the foreground. Once all the tree leaves are painted in, you can really see the composition coming together.

I am really a character guy. I work as a character designer in the world of animation after all. So, when you look at the image above, mostly what is left are the characters. I like to think of it as saving the best for last – kind of like eating the icing after you’ve enjoyed the cake.

Come back TOMORROW for the final step in this series on how to create a watercolor painting!

Welcome to step 3 of building my traditional watercolor painting of Yogi Bear & Co., The Pic-A-Nic on the Grass. Previous stages in the process that we covered were the drawing/research stage, then the underpainting stage. Today we begin to add color.

If the under painting is the foundation, then today’s application of color is the framework of our construction. The goal is to lay in thin layers of color for atmosphere and to fill in the divots of the paper with color that more detailed painting would not do later on. When you paint, you should always start from the back of the scene to the front. There are several reasons why, most of which have to do with helping you create depth in your work. It helps to build on top of what was done before to create a more lush look by the time the whole painting is completed.

Since this is a parody of a Manet painting, the color palette is somewhat predetermined. Manet figured out the color scheme, so this is just an interpretation of it. I’m not making a direct copy. If I was doing that, then I would be painting in oils and there wouldn’t be a bunch of cartoon bears in the composition. So, when mixing colors, I’m trying to get to the essence of the antique work that has come before.

This is primarily a woodsy scene, requiring lots of green. I mixed about three different shades of green for the trees. Also in the mix are two shades of yellow, and one shade of blue which, oddly enough, is for the sky.

By the way, the painting needs to lie completely flat on a horizontal surface. If you paint with watercolors on a tilted surface, the paint will follow the laws of gravity and streak down your paper. Since we are not creating a rainy day scene, use a flat surface.

I know that I want these colors to blend and mix right on the paper, so to do that, I start applying plain ol’ water with a large brush. I try to apply it mostly to just the white areas because if I get the purple underpainting too wet, that will start to smear. The empty dry patches will be filled in as I apply paint to the wet paper and all will smooth out without smudging the under painting too much.

So, with my large #12 brush, I started dabbing in paint onto the wet paper, and spreading it around to my satisfaction. You do need to keep an eye on it while it dries just so that you can control any pooling of paint where it was too wet. If a pool dries, you will get sharp edges of color in that spot that may be undesirable.

You can see in the image above how the purple underpainting shows through. It still has a purple-ish hue, but also takes on the colors of whatever is applied on top. Lots of young artists starting out immediately think that shadows should be painted in with black, but that is not true to life. Shadows are usually darker shades of the color they are shadowing. In art, it can be fun to make shadows a color like I did with purple. There are no blacks in this painting at all.

You can see in the close-up below how the colors blend in spots, and have edges in others. It will all come together later. You can also see some of my original pencil drawing under the paint. If you leave your pencil lines too dark, this will happen. In this case I knew that would happen, and even in the finished art you can still see some of my pencil lines. This was intentional. In this age of so much art being created digitally, I wanted this to completely have that handmade look.

So, come back tomorrow to see how the background was finished up!

Welcome to the second step in our discussion of creating my Yogi Bear parody of Èdouard Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grass painting. Yesterday we covered drawing the composition and prepping the art for painting. Grab your smock because today it’s about to get a little bit messy.

I like Winsor & Newton watercolor paints. They have tasty colors that  go down smooth. They also make waaaay too many colors. I only buy maybe 15 – 20 colors, then mix them to get what I want. Some artists like using paint right out of the tube, so they buy everything. Good for them. Better for the pockets of Mr. Winsor and Mr. Newton.

Many students want to know what kind of brushes you use. I like soft brushes that hold their liquids well. The brushes I often use MUST come to a sharp point when wet. A good art store will let you test this with some water. You dip the brush into the water, then tap it on the lip of the cup. If the bristles snap to a point, you have found a good brush. If the bristles are forked in any way, avoid that brush. Yours will fork in time with use. You don’t want them to start out that way.

Name brand brushes don’t really matter, though, so long as you like what a particular brush can do for you. I do have this one larger Grumbacher flat brush I have had for at least 20 years that I like for quickly swathing on water and color in large areas like skies. I used it on this painting for some general ambient colors in the green of the trees, and for the large tree bark on the right. Otherwise I used a nice Round #12 brush made by Princeton Art & Brush Co. for 90% of the painting. For some of the smaller detail I used a #2 Round by the same company.

Ok, so when I started this painting, I wanted to do what is called an “underpainting” first. Underpaintings are when you paint down some color in areas where you want it to show through your final layers of paint at the end of the project. Since watercolor is a transparent medium, most of my underpainting will show through in some way.

The underpainting on this Yogi Bear piece needed to help the overall intended feeling of “fun”, so I chose a bright purple color for all of my shading. Then I began to paint a monochromatic image of various shades of purple that was going to help create a little depth for this very flat piece of artwork.

When I first tried this technique a few years ago, my tendency was to paint the purples too lightly, and most of them ended up getting completely covered which was a huge waste of time to have painted them to begin with. So now I paint them in a little more aggressively so that they can serve their purpose when the other colors are applied over them.

One tip about applying watercolor paint onto the very absorbent watercolor paper is to paint down a layer of water first, let it soak in a little, and while it is still wet, apply your paint. That way you can get colors on there with less chance of an edge starting to dry and causing weird lines to show up in the middle of your work.

Watercolor is kind of a living creature until it dries. It looks one way when you first lay down the paint, but as it dries, it starts to change. You can push it, pull it, wet it some more and it continues to change. It is your sculpture to play with until it dries the way you want it to, but know that it does still have a mind of its own.

When your underpainting is all dry, you are ready for the next step of adding the rest of your colors. Come back tomorrow as we begin that step in the process!