Watercolor painting by
Elizabeth Hall
Elizabeth Hall's watercolor learning experience:
I've been discovering that working with color is a new and wonderful experience. Before taking this class I took Drawing 1 and I am also taking Printmaking. Both of these mediums focus on portraying light and shadow through the contrast of black and white. With watercolor there is no black and no white paint. I have enjoyed mixing color to make just "dark". It's interesting to see the color in the shadows. Some shadows have a greenish yellow cast. Some are a dark purple. I like the way this adds interest to the final product. I have struggled with trying to portray light. When there is nothing to put down on the paper I have a hard time achieving a realistic sense of glistening, glowing light touching an object. I have even found it a challenge to show a highlight on the surface of something. I have been looking at other artist's paintings in museums for a clue, and this has been eye opening but these paintings were oil, so their tools work in an entirely different way.
It was interesting to me when in our last class you mentioned that using colors with a range of values would add a sense of depth and contrast to a painting. I have found this to be totally true. I knew this was the case in black and white but I now see that a similar fact applies to working in color. When everything on the page is the same value of pastel, the painting looks flat and not three dimensional. I have also been enjoying the contrast of warm and cool colors. I did a painting of a boy sitting on a rock next to a river. The boy's skin is all warm tones of pink peach and tan and this seems more alive and warm when juxtaposed with the cold rock and the cool blue and green of the river.
It has been an adventure to learn how to mix color. Using just red, blue, yellow, and water to create the full spectrum of the world's colors has been a fun challenge. I have enjoyed trying to create subtle colors like skin tone and shadows or the very faint buttery yellow or pale grey tones in the white of a bird's feathers. I had never really attempted this kind of mixing before. I have enjoyed learning these things and I am exited to see what new techniques I will learn next.
