COMPOSITION PRACTICE #1, PART 1

    This skill practice, designed to follow the beginning Practice Skills 1, 2 and 3, combines 5 landscape elements: sky, mountains, water, small cliff and tree. Use 12X18 white drawing or watercolor paper. Layer painting, washes, broad stroke, split brush and brush drag will be the techniques explored. As mentioned previously, the purpose is not to promote copying, but to provide simple forms which enable technique practice. Change is always invited. Ready?

    A horizontal ground line is sketched half-way on the vertical paper. Lightly sketch in the other items remembering that dark pencil lines will show through the finished painting. The outlines are very simple and will be developed more fully in paint. Let's get started!

    We begin with the water and paint in a first layer with our friend "broad stroke". Three values of greens are prepared in a small plastic 6-well palette. Short strokes in the lightest values are painted in first, leaving spaces in-between. Try making brush strokes up front larger than those further back, and continue this with each added value. Rinse the brush, dry it, and proceed with the darker value, scattering the strokes partially letting them blend into wet strokes and some of the dry spaces. Rinse and dry brush again and complete this 1st water layer with the darkest value in the same manner. Hooray! We've begun.

    Now, we'll skip around in the composition, allowing the water to set a few minutes while we paint another area, the sky. This a "graded" wash. Mix up your 2 favorite sky colors. Apply the darker one along the top edge, perhaps 3-4 rows deep. Rinse and dry brush, load up with clear water and brush along the bottom edge just finished. Add another row. Rinse and dry brush again, and float in the 2nd color, again touching the bottom edge and continuing with another row or 2. If the first color was dark, add water to lighten and continue alternating these 2 hues again, letting the colors fade right over the top edge of the mountains. And yes, if your values are light to medium intensity, you can paint right over the tree. Sketch lines will still show through. Sky layer is done! (Unless you care to go back a bit later and add more of the same values and controlling their intensity with clear water, pulling the new additions to blend into the old. Go ahead! Experiment!)

    The cliff really adds depth to the image. We begin on the top level, mixing light "dirt" and "ground" colors. The entire area can dampened with a water brush. Floating in a basic beige/green around the front and behind the tree can be a layer start. Touching in a brown/green along edges and some in the front should blend with the first wash. A darker green can be painted in where low greenery might be later created and for shadowing behind the tree. If you have kept the sky mixtures, a dab of blue near the green might be interesting too! Try mixtures of your own--light orange to warm up the brown, a touch of violet to darken the green--but not too much for now. We'll come back to all areas for more color layers and definition.

    Ah! The mountains! Three big hills decreasing in size which will be further distanced by decreasing color intensity from left mountain to right. Choose 2 values for surface colors. Image used purple and brown. These 2 colors can be lightened with water as you paint to change their intensity. Begin with the lightest one furthest to the right. Dampen that area with a water filled brush. Paint in the lighter value along the top edge and left side. Pull the color to the right as you lay it in. Paint this lighter value in the middle hill leaving the tree empty. Rinse the brush and apply the darker color to the top and left and right edges. Center of this area will be lighter. Then move over to the left mountain and paint in the darker color along the top and right edges. Touch the bottom of the wash with the lighter color and pull color towards the bottom. To make the edges just a bit darker, just spot line them with the dark hue along the edges once again.

   Just a few points to note before continuing. Having 1 brush for each hue is helpful. You also might use a smaller sized one for edging and finer detail. Remember to skip areas that are adjacent to each other to avoid colors from one running into the other---unless that is a desired effect to be achieved. If your beginning layer colors are not satisfactory, let the paper dry completely, and overlay others in the same application manner. Or--make 2 painting outlines and work from one to the other, perhaps experimenting differently with each!

    To continue with PART 2 click HERE. Second layers coming up!