HOW TO PAINT IN WATERCOLOUR
A Corgi and Robin Art Card in Stages
‘They were ready for the festive season’
This is an art card, an ACEO — that is, it is 2.5 x 3.5 inches in size. See:
I buy the art card blanks already cut to ACEO size but they can, of course, be cut from larger sheets of watercolour paper instead.
I pencil in a dog (L). I want him in a pose that suggests he’s looking at something. Using a drawing pen I go over the pencil once I have the shape I want (M). As you can see, I keep scribbling — in pencil — until I see the shape I want. I never do one tidy line and that’s it.
Then I rub out the pencil (R).
Then I use watercolour pencils by mixing the paint on the pencil and applying it like one would expect of watercolour paint (L) to put some colour in the sky and the faraway hills and some far off trees. See:
Using the pencils like pencils I start to draw in the foreground tree (M); I go over it with a different green (R) to give it ‘body’. Using the pencils directly onto the paper gives a different texture to paint applied with water.
The tree needed to be decorated. A bauble for a Christmas tree is just a circle — to make it look convincing the thing is to make one side of it lighter for a highlight, and the other side needs to be darker, or shadowed. Then there needs to be a bit of shadow under the bauble on the tree. (L)
Also, the middle distance trees needed to be painted in (M).
Using pencils I colour in the dog (R), making him darker at the back than at the front. Everything, in normal situations, is going to be lighter on one side than the other.
Having coloured doggo in with the pencil I then applied water and mixed the colour on the paper.
Then he needed his pal, the robin — see How to Draw a Robin under this link — and the picture was complete — two pals admiring their tree ready for the festive season.
Just adding a robin makes a huge difference to the overall picture. It makes it more festive because the brain connects robins with the festive season. It also makes the picture look like more of a story because of the relationship between the dog and the bird. These things are all taken in when you look at something — they’re not necessarily consciously thought out.
Just a note to say the first pictures look yellowy and the final one does not because all of the pictures in this article were photographed except for the final one which was scanned.
All photos and paintings are by Susan Alison 2021
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