This little postcard-sized watercolour I’ve painted, ‘Tree Bathing’ will be on exhibtion and sale for this year’s PAE art for a cause in The Hague, Netherlands. To find out more click here.
I’ve deliberatley used strong tree shadows to give a sense of bright light pouring through the pine trees.
I’ve also recently been working on some watercolour commissions. This one, featuring balloons over the Bristol Suspension Bridge, also has strong reflections and shadows in the river water to give depth to the river gorge.
This little watercolour of reed beds and an Egret, (for sale in my Etsy shop here) doesn’t rely on strong shadows or reflections but does use a graduated colour on the reeds, from light to dark, to suggest denseness and depth at the water line and the water is the same blue tone as the sky.
So my top tips for working with watercolours to create shadows and reflections are:
Work our your main light source direction for your image and keep all your shadows going in the same direction away from it.
If you have a secondary light source from a different direction, do the same for that but make your shadows are lighter and check whether they are cooler or warmer in tone than those from the main light source.
Think about graduating your colour blocks to emphasise the depth or solidity of an object.
Keep skies and water in the same tonal ranges in your painting, water reflects the sky!
