Demonstration: Color-Study For a Watercolor Home Portrait

Because you are a serious artist, before starting a final portrait painting, you do a value-study drawing and a color-study. Here is an example of how Yong do a color-study. This compressed 4-minute video presentation, shows the steps of my color experiment and my approach to pursue the harmony of the colors. This demonstration was completed in one session.

Why do a Color-Study?

Before Yong started working on his final home portrait painting, he did a color study on a smaller piece of watercolor paper. This helped him experiment and plan the colors for the final painting. In this demonstration, he used a 15 x 11 inch piece of watercolor paper.

First Yong would do a simple drawing then start painting. The color-study (color experiment) is extremely helpful when you need to combine many reference materials from different locations for a home portrait.

Color-study is a trial and play exercise. Yong likes to push the colors to the limit. In this process, Yong didn't go into too many details of the objects but pay full attention to the overall color composition and capture the essence of a home. Color-study is just like a practice session before a big game!

Colors have temperatures and values (cold and hot, dark and light). Like an orchestra with many instruments, Yong plays with colors; dark and light, shapes and depth. He pursue harmony and the appropriate mood for the painting. It is both a fun and joyous creative experience.

The color-study process usually eliminates a lot of guesswork when you start the final painting.