Limited palette studies with watercolour wash. Warm and cool tones. Modeling and volume. Retaining white space.

Alex Powers Watercolours

When I first saw an Alex Powers watercolour, I think I literally took a step back. Here was an image that seemingly formed itself. I could see that there was a drawing that looked fairly conventional, however there was also this watercolour wash, seemingly arbitrary in it’s application, without much colour, which swamped out the drawn effects. In places, he seemed to purposely destroy the image. I wasn’t ready for that!

Alex Powers taught me some important lessons: firstly, strong, simple values really make an image, secondly, treating the two sides of a portrait differently is invariably a good thing (typically a light side and a dark side) and, perhaps above all, you can take liberties with the watercolour when you have a good underlying drawing!

Building a Value Base in Watercolour

I too like my watercolour portrait studies to be loose and expressive. I’m known as a bit of a colourist, but typically evolve my images in a very limited palette, applying colour on previously established values. It’s difficult to deal with colour and value at the same time and adding colour is never a substitute for a lack in the value department – you can’t solve a value problem with more colour!

In this video, I develop a low-tone study and walk through a typical progression:

Method

I often start with the beginnings of a likeness in dry media and then model the form in a very limited palette. I generally favour using a brown and a blue as a variation of a pure monochrome. The thing I like is that this allows for a variation of warms (browns) and cools (blues) that can almost complete a painting…without adding much colour at all.

Drawing and initial mid-tone wash:

I often begin by drawing in charcoal, although I do use pencil at times as well. For the initial wash, I frequently use only burnt sienna tinged with a little ultramarine blue.

Adding darks with a second wash:

Burnt sienna and ultramarine blue work superbly together: warm browns mixing to cool, intense black and then blues, needed to establish a foundation

Detailing features, adding hair:

The complete low-tone study, now including hair, washed in – again with a burnt sienna and ultramarine blue mix

Don’t be frightened of blues in the shadows and features, you need them! My general rule is: the darker the value, the bluer it must be, with darks all having a deep blueish tinge. Warm tones advance and cools recede, giving the viewer all the right messages.

Notice that I leave quite a bit of white space. That’s because I’m defining my shadow areas with the initial washes and I want to leave myself plenty of bare paper for some chromatic washes later on.

Here’s a second study, started with the same mid-tone wash in burnt Sienna, dulled with a bit of ultramarine blue. I followed this with a darker mix using the same two colours – but more potent and perhaps a touch bluer…..I go really dark and bluish to define my “darkest darks”, typically around the features:

The foundation of the original blocking is still very evident in the final piece, through the screens of some warm tones (Alizarin crimson and Hansa yellow) and cool accents (cobalt blue), applied judiciously:

The finished study, 15″x15″, watercolour and charcoal

I find this approach works well in many cases. Studies can be a good opportunity to go expressive with hair and experiment a bit…..well, it is a study and should be spontaneous!

Exercise:

From the reference of your choice or the Reference Gallery develop a low-tone painting using a brown and a blue. Proceed in a similar manner to the above, using your own style. Make the primary focus the lights, mid-tones and darks (3 zones), reserving white space for the future! The additional opportunity in this study is to make the darks cooler (that is bluer) than the mid tones.
You can continue this study in Lesson 4 or equally commence afresh.