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| "Zippy Zebra" |
The following is the description of what we did in the seventh week of the winter term, 2022 for my "Watercolor from Start to Finish" class (my online Zoom class with the Art League School in Alexandria, VA).
At
the beginning of the class, I shared my sample paintings for the spring
workshop ("Painting Sunsets in Watercolor") and for the summer workshop
("Painting Beach Figures in Watercolor). Please join me on April 2 and 3 for the sunset workshop, which is filling up fast!
The
spring registration has begun. Please come back in the next term to
continue your watercolor journey with me. You guys, so many of whom are
beginners, are doing an amazing job! Here is the link for the "Watercolor from Start to Finish" class; here is the link for the "Watercolor Portraits" class, in case you want to move up a notch and challenge yourself even further!
Next we painted "Zippy Zebra". First, we wetted the paper thoroughly and dropped cobalt blue, quinacridone gold and burnt sienna.
This variegated wash should go down, not thoroughly mixed (then it's no
longer variegated!), but randomly to suggest green growths outdoors.
Keep the wash mid-tone, not light; use enough paints. If the wash turns
out too pale, you have to wet the entire negative space again and do the
second layer. The fortune never favors the wishy-washy wimps!
Then we gave a very pale gold wash in parts of the back to start "modeling" the form. We talked a great deal about the meaning of "form (a three-dimensional thing) on a two-dimensional surface of the paper. We painted long, narrow form shadow along the neck with the mixture of cobalt blue and a little cadmium red. We also painted small form and cast shadows in various parts with the same mixture.
Understanding
how to make a form look round through the correct rendering of
soft-edged form shadows (shadow, core shadow and reflected light) and
cast shadows (sometimes soft-edged, but usually hard-edged) takes
a great deal of practice and years of experience! So take it easy, if
you having trouble controlling soft/hard edges. This is an advanced
stuff!
Last, but not least, we
painted the stripes in the dark mixture of French ultramarine blue and
burnt sienna (this mixture is called Jane's Gray and it's an optical
black). Make sure the stripes are dark, not mid-tone. Whenever
in doubt, take a picture of your work in progress, turn it into a
black-and-white image by desaturating it with your phone photo editor
app (if you only scan your images, you will have to figure it out
somehow), and compare it with the reference. This is the fool-proof way
of self-critiquing, which is a very important skill to develop.
Be careful not to make the stripes to smooth-edged in the body of the zebra. Be also super careful to render the awesome mohawk hair along the spine to appear soft. The top edge is more burnt sienna than just dark. Apply some strokes along the edge to suggest the hair texture (most textures should occur at the edges and not inside; this kind of texture is a lot more effective!)
Carry on painting the dark stripes in the head, paying extra attention to render eyes and the muzzle,
which has quite a bit of burnt sienna at the central top area. Don't
obliterate the barely-noticeable nostrils and mouth opening that's
catching light. Any portrait, either of a human or an animal, should show the anatomy of the subject.
