Friday, May 2, 2014

Watercolor Painting of Baritones

Lorraine Watry Watercolor of Baritones
Baritone Painting LWatry©
 I started my new band painting yesterday. This one is of my son and the baritone section for marching band. Because he is so tall I got a shot of him above the other baritones and thought it would be a wonderful painting. I really liked the blurry green trees in the background and the reflections of sky and orange from their shirts in the instruments. I plan on playing up these colors, so they will really grab attention.

Lorraine Watry Watercolor of Baritones
Baritone painting LWatry©
I started the painting by masking around the edges of the instruments and my sons face in preparation to paint the background. Then I remembered that I wanted to start with his face and had to remove a little masking. The reason I started with his face was to see if I could getting it looking the way I wanted before moving on. If the face wasn't turning out right, then I could start the painting again and I wouldn't have invested a lot of time into it, yet. I worked his face in layers. The first washes were done with a warm red and yellow to give the skin a warm glow. Then I started layering on washes of permanent rose and a yellow or alizeran and burnt sienna. These are cooler reds and I could start modeling the skin. I also used some ultramarine blue and alizeran for shadows. I always layer skin in thin washes until I have it where I want it. But, don't hesitate to go dark with shadows. I may still had some to his face once I have more paint on the rest of the scene to judge my values by.

Lorraine Watry Watercolor of Baritones
Baritone painting LWatry©
The next step was to paint some masking back around the edge of his face so that I could do a wet-n-wet wash on the background trees. I wanted them to be blurry color. After the masking was dry I painted water several times over the whole background green large area. Before I did this, I had what ever colors I thought I might use out on my palette ready to go. I tried to vary the colors in the trees without getting too crazy and I left some areas that look like the sky was peeking through. I let this dry over night and realized that part of the background needed a little darker value. So, I turned my painting upside down and very gently washed water over the part of the background that I wanted to adjust and added some deeper color.
Lorraine Watry Watercolor of Baritones
Baritone painting LWatry©