Watercolor Painting of Baritones Part 3

I started a painting of my son playing the marching baritone with his high school band in May of this year, 2014. I finished the painting in July of this year. I realized, while looking through some of my blog posts, that I never showed the final steps of the painting. Part One and Part Two are available if you click on the following links: Watercolor Painting of Baritones Part 1 and Watercolor Painting of Baritones Part 2. 

Baritone Painting LWatry© 2014

In the first two images you can see that I have started working on the instruments to give them a shiny, metallic feeling. The way to do this is to paint the things that are reflected in the surface. So, I look for all the changes of color and value and I also include the places that look shiny white to help with the illusion. Since this is a marching band, they were warming up outside and so there is sky and trees and other things reflected in the metal surfaces.

I continued to work on each of the instruments. There were a lot of abstract pieces in them as well as distorted reflections. The painting is mostly a cool value painting with lots of blues and greens, so I wanted to highlight the oranges and skin tones that I found reflected in the horns and on the figures skin. I tried a variety of grays and ended up mixing small containers of my favorites. I found a new mix that I really liked - Italian burnt sienna and French ultramarine blue make a great gray.  

Even though I was working on the horns a lot at this stage, I kept going back to the skin tones in my sons face and those visible on the other musician's arm and neck. Because I now had a lot more values from dark to light in the painting, I could more accurately judge the skin tones to see if they needed adjustments.

"Fanfare" watercolor by LWatry©2014

Here is the final painting. I love the way the layering of the horns and gloved hands looks. I wanted the foreground horns to be less in focus, so I softened the edges with a damp brush after I finished them. I decided to title the painting "Fanfare" and I think it makes a great memory of my sons time in the Liberty High School marching band!

Watercolor Painting of Baritones Part 2

Fanfare LWatry ©2014

Fanfare LWatry ©2014

I haven't had a whole lot of time to work on my baritone watercolor, which I have decided to title "Fanfare". However, I did get a chance to add hair to my sons head and I started the metal of the marching baritone that he is playing.

I also started adding some of the blue to the horns where the sky is reflecting on the tops and bells of some of the horns.

In the close up you may be able to see the variety of grays and color that are in the metal including some great orange reflections that are from the marchers orange-ish shirts. The painting is mostly a cool color scheme and so the warmer oranges in the skin and reflections will be a nice contrast.

Now that I have some of the surrounding values in, the face looks a little pale. I will probably add a few more thin glazes of color to his face before the painting is completed. It is always amazing to see how the early values change as other values are placed next to them.

I will keep posting updates as the painting progresses, so please check back.

Watercolor Painting 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.

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.

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.

Baritone painting LWatry©

Painting Metal in Watercolor - French Horns

3 Figures in French Horn Painting LWatry ©2013

I started my new band painting on November 1, 2012. I worked on it throughout November and December between holiday preparations and other events. I am now approximately two-thirds of the way done. I thought I would post the process and explain some of the steps.




This is a painting of french horns. I wanted to paint them because I loved the repetition of the instruments and the girls hands, and the shiny instruments! I took a long time on the drawing and used a grid to sketch the piece from a photo that I took. Next I transferred it to a full sheet of watercolor paper (140lb. cold press Arches). I then used masking to mask all of the highlights on the horns, so that I could get that sparkle on the shiny metal when I removed the masking at the end.

I started with the figures in the painting by washing in a light skin tone over their hands, arms, and faces. I wanted to make sure before I got to far into the painting that I was getting the figures to look the way I wanted. If they weren't working out, I could start again without having invested too much time into the piece. Also, their skin tones were one of the lightest colors in the painting and I usually start with my light colors. I have slowly added layers to the figures and I may still add another layer of color after I get more of the values into the painting. I would rather add the skin color a little at a time rather than make it too dark all at once.

French Horns LWatry ©2013

In the next image you can see that I have started to work on the horns and a little bit of the darks. I needed to put some of the dark in so that I could start judging my other values by them. You can see the chart I made in this picture to test out black mixes. I have an early post that talks about black mixes. You can see this post by clicking here. You can also see my photograph that I am painting from. I adjusted some of the horns and added some more blue reflection that is not in the original photo.

French Horns Closeup LWatry ©2013

French Horns with Nook LWatry ©2013

There is a lot going on in this painting in the horns and the reflections so it is nice to have some resting places for the viewers eye like the faces, arms and dark areas. However, I don't want my dark areas to be flat black. I want some color variations to give interest to the piece. You can see where I have removed some of the mask from the highlights on the closeup image at the left. I was getting a little anxious to see how they would look. It also helped me judge if I was getting the color around those highlights dark enough. Here the figures faces are still sort of light. I have since added another layer to the skin.

In the next image you can see that I have now started adding even more dark to the background. It doesn't show up in the picture, but the dark goes from a cool black at the upper left corner to a warm burgundy/black in the lower left corner. I have also begun to work on the dark reflections in the horns themselves. I am using a mix of Ultramarine Blue and Pyrrol Orange for the dark in the horn. I used a mix of Prussian Blue and Alizeran Crimson for the background dark. I also started using my Nook to help me see my photo better. I uploaded my photo onto the nook and I can enlarge it to look at sections of the horns to better understand the colors and what I am painting. Also, I get a truer sense of the colors on the nook than from the print of my photo.

French Horns LWatry ©2013

The final image is showing where I am currently. The photo is a little light, so it is not totally representative of the true colors. I have a lot more darks to put in on the black dresses of the figures and I have a lot of the center of the horns to complete. I will continue to try and post this paintings progression.