Here’s another painting that I did about three years ago, from one of the exercises from Adelene Fletcher’s 2003 publication The Watercolour Landscape Painter’s Pocket Palette.
This particular exercise is on page 18, under the Mountains section, and is in three stages. The first stage is laying down the Transparent Yellow wash mixed with a Cobalt Blue wash in the distant field, pale New Gamboge in the middle distance, a pale strip of Cobalt Blue left in for the sky, and Quinacridone Gold in the foreground. Stages two and three then take you through laying down successive colour washes, reducing the intensity of the greens as they recede into the distance. One of things that I liked in particular is that you get the chance to paint wet-in-wet, as well as practice your hand at some negative painting.
This exercise used a palette of 6 colours
- Transparent Yellow
- Cobalt Blue
- New Gamboge
- Quinacridone Gold
- Oxide of Chromium
- Olive Green
Click to view
I found this to be a fairly simple exercise and it only took me about 45 minutes to complete.
What I learned
The only difficulty that I ran into was to match the greens as shown in the photographs, as my pigments seemed to be far more intense than the colours printed on the page. Looking back on it now I realise that should have made my washes weaker to portray a greater sense of depth as hills faded into the distance.
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Next steps
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Watercolour and pencil artist, passionate about drawing and painting the world around me in watercolour, and using social media to share my story. Join in and take part in my journey by using the links below.