Watercolor painting by
Alina Chekhivska
Alina Chekhivska's watercolor learning experience:
Bright life: I'd love to describe my experience about one of my recent works, specifically - the drawing of a cozy restaurant with bright yellow walls and blue wooden decoration. The idea of the painting came from the photo image, which I randomly found in the travel magazine. Despite the colors were more mild and brownish, I fell in love with the composition of a picture, which was zoomed in an interesting way and focused on the regular walls of a building. I made a quick sketch of a restaurant and the flowers in the middle, and started to mix the colors in my palette. And out of a sudden I realized, that I always try to mix the colors to create something more or less neutral. Why wouldn't I just use a pure natural yellow as a main color? I took my chance and applied pure yellow to the walls of a restaurant. The effect was bright and beautiful, so I did the same with blue window-frames and chairs. Afterwards I've put some mid tones and highlights with brown and purple colors. I created a visible texture of a ground by a thin brush; lastly, I've added shadows and reflections which made the picture realistic-looking. The result pleased my eye, was bright and eye-catching, but something was noticeably missing. During my next class professor Chen helped me to improve my painting by washing out some bright areas of the image, which were way too bright and did not looked realistic. I also covered the whole right part of the restaurant with brown paint, which draw ned all attention to a focal point of the drawing - a sunlighted left window.
Finally I enjoyed the outcome of a painting completely!
