children's book Maria's Loose Tooth illustrations by Yong Chen

my first watercolor painting experience: watercolor painting of a Chinese house by Sulian Liang, a proud student of Yong Chen

Watercolor painting by
Sulian Liang

Sulian Liang's watercolor learning experience:
My first painting is a house with a narrow street on the hill in fall. I use warm color because the trees and ground had been turned to the yellow, red and brown color. It is very colorful.

In my painting, I started in the main subject – house. The color of roof, front wall and side wall are the same color, but different value. Roof is heavy, front is middle and the side wall is light because the light from that side. Then the ground almost is the same color, some places I add more red, some places I add more yellow to make it looks like different and concave. The narrow street looks like deep but light than the ground. The mountain behind the house is green to gray, and the sky is blue. The trees around the house are red, yellow, orange and brown. And I use the “wet-on-wet” painting techniques. The low level is brown and darker than high level. The last step is use “wet-on-dry” techniques to add the shadow to make it looks nature.

After I finished this landscape painting, I learn how to lifting-off the dark color and adding back some fresh colors. For example, there are clouds in the sky not only flat blue. I wet the paper, dry the brush and take out the colors. Even thought I just change a little bit of the sky it looks different and better than the first time.

This is my first watercolor painting. I am glad that I learn how to mix the color, use the painting techniques and lifting-off the color to make the painting better.

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