"Snowman and Red Barn" (watercolor on paper; 9" x 12")

 

"Snowman and Red Barn"

 

The following is the description of what we did in the second 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).

The main business of the day was painting "Snowman and Red Barn" from a black and white photo. We first drew the design lightly with a graphite pencil on the Arches paper. The horizon is above the half way point; the snowman is off the center; the dark anchor tree is behind the snowman (don't put it too close to the edge); the barn is in the center on the horizon. We added a few more secondary elements, then masked the snow-coated tree branches and distant trees with masking fluid.

Landscapes are generally painted from top to bottom, which means from the background (or sky) to the foreground in western art. We first wetted the sky shape above the horizon and painted a graded wash, making the right side slightly darker. The distant trees went in, slightly darker than the sky.

The barn was painted with cadmium red (the sunny side) and permanent alizarin crimson (the shadow side and the gaping interior). We had painted the shadow shapes first with black to darken it (this is something we never do, but for this particular black-and-white exercise).

Then we painted the small tree behind the snowman, slightly darker than the distant trees. The big anchor tree was painted even darker (mid-dark, don't make this tree too light). When you are painting the branches, paint the strokes below the masked lines. I added some grass-like strokes at the foot of the anchor tree; I painted diagonal strokes to suggest the tracks in the middle ground on the left (don't make them too steep, then the barn will look like it's sitting on a hill).

I also added a very pale wash around the front of the snowman so that it will pop out. Some elliptical brush strokes were done around the torso and body of the snowman. On the shadow side of the snowman, I made a bunch of mid-tone strokes to suggest trampled snow. These calligraphic marks take practice, but add so much texture and interest to a painting.

Finally, we painted the snowman itself in three layers (glazing), starting very light and getting increasingly darker, to create form (illusion of three dimension). Then we painted the hat (black) while taking care to leave the strips of white paper to suggest the snow coating. The round chips of the eyes and smiling mouth were done in two layers (light and dark) in black. The carrot nose was painted in two layers (the red-orange mixture of cadmium red and cadmium yellow pale; alizarin crimson stroke at the bottom to suggest shadow). The scarf was painted in three layers (the yellow green mixture of winsor lemon and winsor blue, then add slightly more winsor blue to make the green greener and darker). That's it!

Remember that we used the wet-on-wet technique only at the beginning with the sky. The rest of the painting was done on dry paper!