How to rescue a muddy watercolor painting

February 27th, 2006

How do I rescure a muddy watercolor painting like the following one?

While many people would say once a watercolor is skrewed, there is no rescue…but I just want to try it and see how much I can improve this over worked mud.

1) First of all, I need to enjoy what I am doing, because otherwise I would hate the mud so much that I want to get it out of my sight, let alone reworking it.

2)Muddy painting is muddy because the mud is all over the watercolor, not so much because the mud is a bad color; it looks bad only because there is no contrast of light and dark, and therefore loosing the point of interest or focus on the painting. So the first step of rescuing is to use some stiff wet brush and lighten some of the highlight area gently; be careful, don’t put the highlight all over, cause it will be like midtone all over again.
3)Don’t put too much detail on it; because if it is muddy, usually it means there is already too much detail on it.
4)Alone some of the “lifted” highlights, add some saturated color wash.
5) Darken the darkest dark! Go really really dark and add some detail in the dark area would help.
6) Keep in mind, mud is your best friend, becasue muddy color makes bright color more vivid. Jjust watch out and don’t misplace it.

7)Increase the detail in some of the darker area would help too.

The result: