Watercolor painting by
Xiao Dan Zhao
Xiao Dan Zhao's watercolor learning experience:
This new assignment is focus on using two contrast groups of colour to create a painting. Followed by the colour theory that I learned from last class, the contract colours are any two colors which are directly opposite to each other in the colour wheel, such as red and green. And because these two opposing colors create the maximum contrast, they can make each other more outstanding. For this assignment, I used red and green to finish my painting.
Personally, I love to collect peaceful country pictures, because when I saw them, I would calm down and feel so relax. So I decided to use this country view in the afterglow picture as my reference for this watercolour assignment.
First of all, I used some red colour to wash the top and the button of the paper to create the afterglow in the sky and its inverted reflection in the river. Meanwhile, I used some yellow colour to make the red colour a little bit light so it can easy to connect to the rest of the white paper.
Next step, I used the green colour to paint the hill and the trees. On this part, I had a chance to practice the skills that I learned from the one colour painting. I used the darker value to paint the top and used the lighter green for the button to create the shape of the hill.
The last step, I added some detail to my painting to make it more interesting. On the riverside, I painted a little country house with some smoke was coming out from its chimney. And I also painted two birds was flying across the river. This detail can tell people that in this late afternoon, maybe the people living in the house was preparing their dinner, and the birds were likely to go home to feed their nestling.
In this painting process, I looked at the photo reference carefully and thought about what I could add to make my painting tell more stories, Although, my painting didn’t look like the photo reference exactly because I lacked of skill, I do have a fun when I was painting it. And when I finished this painting, and looked at it from the further distant (stand further make it looks better), I felt so pleasure.
