This small watercolor painting was inspired by a photo taken by my friend Debra of her husband Mike, all bundled up for a walk in a snowstorm. I was drawn by the overall monotone blue-grey coloring, contrasted by his skin tones. I decided to crop the image tightly to a square format, putting my main subject smack in the center - not the best composition by the ‘rules’ of painting, but I thought it appropriate in this instance.
As I often do, I selected just 3 primary colors: QoR brand Payne’s Grey (more blue than grey) with American Journey brand of Rambling Rose and Sour Lemon. Using a limited palette unifies a painting while the three primaries allow me to mix many different colors.
My painting surface is Aquabord™, a white clay coated panel with a slight texture. Aquabord has many unique properties compared to painting on watercolor paper, and I used these to their full advantage here:
- Background area painted with the panel tilted to let the color flow downward, then spattered with drops of alcohol while still wet, then sprinkled with salt - all working to create a random snow-like texture.
- I outlined the shape of my subject, then rewet within the outline and lifted off the background color. This gave me a white surface again to paint in my main subject.
- I penciled in my guidelines and painted in Mike’s hat and face. No problem if the face colors extend over the scarf area; I lifted them off just as described above.
- As I would do if working on paper, I applied color with brushes as well as with a natural sponge, leaving some areas of white unpainted... as you can see in the fabric areas.
- As a finishing touch, I used the “scratching” characteristic of the clay surface, lightly scratching into the background surface with an x-acto blade to add fine lines of branches. I used a Speedball scratching nib, with which I can make a slightly wider line than with the x-acto, to remove paint from horizontal branches to make it appear as if the snow was settling on them. The same nib, held straight up on my panel and given a little spin is what I used to add random white dots for snowflakes.
- I scratched my signature with a pointed etching tool, simply using it as I would use a pen.
- The finished dried painting was sealed with a clear archival spray, eliminating the need to frame this watercolor with a mat and glass - I just popped it into a silvery blue frame!
This was a fun painting and demonstrates how you can use many different techniques when painting with watercolors on Aquabord panels - a favorite combination of mine.
