Watercolor of a Candle Part 1

In this lesson, I am going to paint a simple candle. The whole setup is monochromatic, and the color is basically a neutral gray in different value. It is a perfect exercise for understanding the value, value contrast, and relationship.

I first start with a pencil drawing. The drawing step is helping me plan the composition of the painting. With the well-planned light drawing, the watercolor painting will go much more smoothly and efficiently. During the drawing process, I will finalize the plan of how I may start and finish the painting, what techniques I may use in the painting process, and what tools I may need to prepare before I start painting. Because of this planning step, I sometimes will do a technique practice to confirm if the techniques and process will work before painting on the final watercolor paper.

In the first round of the painting, I will use a 1-inch flat brush to do the basic wash. In this step, in my mind, there are only two areas: one is white, which I will leave it untouched, and the other area is a mid-shade gray color, which I will wash together. I divide my painting process into small tasks to make each step easy and relaxed.

Immediately I start painting some darker gray color into the shadow areas and the cast shadow area. Because of the wet paint, the new color will be blended and fading into the existing color. Depending on how much water saturation is in the new color, the blending effects will be different. I will control the water saturation in the new paint to be less than the existing mixture on the paper. In this way, the new paint’s moving speed will be slower.