[TUTORIAL] Stacking Watercolour Gradient Landscape

in #steem-cartoon • 7 years ago

Ello, lovely ladies and gentlemen! Today, I'm sharing something I've been doing lately. This was inspired by LittleCoffeeFox's Vlog where I saw her doing this kind of gradient layering with watercolour. So I decided to try it out myself and wanted to share the technique with others here on SteemIt.

So in this tutorial/demo thing, I'll be showing the application of using this stacking gradient technique in creating a graphic scene of a forest. All you need is some watercolours, your favourite point and flat brush, a good paper and a bit of patience.

So let's get started!

Step 1: Tape It and Wash It!

This step is optional but I prefer to do this whenever I work in a smaller sketchbook. In this case, I'm working in my 200 gsm Monologue sketchbook. It's a little thinner than your average watercolour paper but it does the trick. The first thing I do is lay down some washi tape on the edges. The purpose is to create that clean cut white border.

The reason I used washi tape instead of masking tape is because washi tape is already pretty weak in its stickiness so I don't have to weaken it like masking tape. I tend to also find that weakened masking tape is not sticky enough to prevent the watercolour from seeping to the boarder.

Once I've set up my border, I lay down a very light wash of lemon yellow and a bit of rose madder at the bottom half of the page. These would be the lightest colour and be the very front of the gradient pattern.

Step 2: One Layer At A Time

And this is when you decide what kind of shape you wanna do for your gradient. In my case, I'm doing tapered ovals and I painted them with my round brush. I use that same mix of lemon yellow and rose madder but with a bit more rose madder to create that vivid orange.

As you go up on stacking your shapes, you go darker with your choice of colours. My first three layers of shapes is a mix of lemon yellow and rose madder and slowly adding more rose madder until I have a pure rose madder colour and have to transition to the next colour.

Once you've set down your shapes, grab your flat brush loaded with water and blur up that harsh colour upward. This serves two purposes: 1)Added a soft gradient to your shapes and 2)Creating the sunset sky background at the same time.

Now you could just stick with this kind of colour palette using the rainbow as your guide but I'll be adding a bit more contrast by...

Step 3: It's Only a Theory...A Colour Theory!

Image Source

Understanding colour theory can really help in creating beautiful coloured drawings. One of the main problems I had when I started out in painting was being too overwhelmed with such a huge array of colours so the best thing to do is to limit the number of colours in a piece. This also helps in unifying the whole thing, making it pleasing to the eye.

For this drawing, I'm using this analogous colour palette and it's a common choice of colours when it comes to sunset shots.

So it's a simple rinse and repeat of stacking each colour of top of another until being satisfied. This is also a good chance to intensify the sunset to really make it pop. However, keep in mind that unless you have something like a heat gun or a hairdryer to speed up the drying process, each layer of watercolour is going to take a while to dry.

Step 4: Some Last Touches

Almost finished by adding some silhouettes of trees in the back and lining the branches of the trees with the same blue used in the gradient. Using something non-black helps in softening a drawing and making it not as stark as black.

And with a sky like that, adding some white stars gives additional visual info. A white gel pen is always handy in these kinds of things.

All there's left is to peel back that tape and...

Ta-da~! All done! I hope you guys have fun creating this.

See You Next Post!

#thesteemengine #artzone #art #teammalaysia
7 years ago in #steem-cartoon by
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     7 years ago (edited)

    Hi @hanbun, first of all, that is amazing art and I see that you're very talented. You did well no matter what the medium is- be it digital or watercolor- you used colors so professionally and vibrant I feel like capturing (or artnapping) them to frame those in my house :) Hope to see more awesome artworks from you <3 Tip of post formatting though. Try not to use centralized the body of your post because psychologically, it's not really conducive and appealing for your readers. Meaning it's more difficult for your readers to stay tuned to your post. Also the eyes movements work either two ways- the Z or F reading (where eye movements follow through like the Z or F strokes). Unless you're writing a poem, save the centralized body format for only poems and haiku. Otherwise, keep your body to the left :)

    This amazing post was nominated to, and upvoted by @curie. Support what we do by voting Curie as a witness

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     7 years ago 

    Thank you so much, @deborism. I'm humbled by all the kind words you have for my art and your expressed interest in artnapping them xD Alright, I'll try keeping my posts formatted to the left from now on. I had no idea on the psychological aspect of reading so I think I need to do more reading on it. Thank you again for taking the time for giving me such valuable tips and the work @curie has been doing in the Steemian Community :)

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       7 years ago 

      Hello! I find your post valuable for the art community! Thanks for the great post! ARTzone is now following you! ALWAYs follow @artzone and the artzone tag, and support our artists!

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         7 years ago 

        Thank you, @artzone. I've been a lurker for a while so I'm glad to finally post something in #artzone ^w^

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           7 years ago 

          You’ve been upvoted by TeamMalaysia Community :-

          To support the growth of TeamMalaysia Follow our upvotes by using steemauto.com and follow trail of @myach

          Vote TeamMalaysia witness bitrocker2020 using this link vote for witness

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             7 years ago 

            I get so happy when I find people like you, spreading truly unique art. Thank you for sharing this! :-D i'll be following you from now on!

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               7 years ago 

              Aw, thank you, @yasminep. I'm glad you think so of my art and that you liked my content enough to follow uwu