PAINTING THE PORCH

One of the reasons I like working with watercolor is the juicy and dramatic effects which can come from floating pigment across wet paper. I found a series of internet tutorials by Linda Baker using a technique of pouring and splashing that really made the process fun. I used a photo I’d taken of our front porch as a reference, worked it into a sketch, decided where the darks and lights would be and transferred the outlines to a piece of watercolor paper.

I used masking fluid to cover the areas I wanted to remain the color of the white paper and then dropped in the primary colors of red, yellow and blue on the rest.

When the paper was completely dry, I again masked out everything I wanted to stay a light shadow and added more color to the remaining painting.

The process is repeated again with more mask on the middle darks and more paint.

This time I used mostly blue to cover the areas not masked out.

Finally I added a dark blue, with a few areas of red and a bit of yellow, to the deepest shadow areas. I let it dry overnight, peeled off the masking and added in the details for the final painting.

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