Watercolor by Joseph Chiang » – Watercolor lessons

Composition in Painting

Joseph Chiang — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 05:12:05 +0000

Composition in Painting
Watercolor, like other form of paintings, is a sort of visual communication. And like an essay, there is “composition” to any painting or drawing. A good composition would make it more engaging for the audience by “telling them” where the focus is. And also like an essay, you don’t want something repetitive in a painting, which would be boring and “redundant”.

Example:
This is a painting from one of my student at the workshop. The bird itself is actually very nicely done, but one major problem is 3 of them are nearly identical in size and gesture.

By planing the arrangement of the birds before painting and bring some variety of sizes and colors into it, the painting becomes much more interesting. So here is the one I did on photoshop:

Sunset Sea#3

admin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 05:13:03 +0000

This painting is a bit overdone and muddy. It is because the initial wash was too light and I ended up adding too many layers…something to avoid in watercolor…

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Watercolor Demo – Lightened Distant building

Joseph — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:02:29 +0000

Tips:

Sky in the evening is not so shinny as the eyes tend to believe.

To make a lightened building shine, apply just a thin layer of wash, and make its surroundings dull.

Work out the overall tone of the entire painting before going into small details; it helps build the atmosphere.

Watercolor Demonstration – Distant Foliage

Joseph — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 06:02:25 +0000

Tips:

The table is slightly tilted to allow the downward blending of color, creating foliage like texture…

Wet Paper.

Good paper and paints make a big difference; I use 300 lb Arches paper and Sennelier watercolor; same Arches with different weight also produce different result.

Mixed colors recedes more than primary color.

Reduce hard edges; wet on wet helps achieving this.

Watecolor Calligraphy – Branches

Joseph — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 18:49:42 +0000

When I was in Taiwan last August I found this product originally designed for Chinese Calligraher as a practicing pad. You can use water as paint and it will leave mark on this pad. And the mark will disappear after a while. It is good for saving paper. I thought since my painting rely a lot on “calligraphy” and line quality, it’s going to help me a lot.
I find recording your own painting process is a good way of self-critique. When painting spontaneously like I do, a lot of marks I make on paper are the result of split second decision, and I don’t make good decision all the time. Sometimes I might not realize I made a bad decision until I viewed my own video…