E-Demo 1
This was a quick sketch, drawn a few of years ago on a wonderful sunny day at Castlerock on the north coast of N. Ireland. The aspect that attracted me to the subject was the strong backlight coupled with the shadow shapes on the sand. I planned to emphasise the dark shapes of shadow and grass and simplify the background buildings, hoping to convey the slight haziness of the day.

The first stage was to paint a wash over the entire paper to provide local colour. At this stage fairly weak tones are used with the cool blue sky and houses contrasting with the warm sand. As the wash dried, the tone was strengthened on the roofs of the buildings.

Stage 2 was to strengthen the roofs and windows just enough to define their structure without clashing with the proposed foreground. In watercolour, more than any other medium, it is vital to paint the picture in your mind before committing to paper. With pure watercolour, you only get one chance to get it right.

After introducing a medium tone bank of grass to hide the bottoms of the buildings, the strong dark foreground shapes are applied with rich thick paint. The strength of these foreground tones will effectively appear to soften the background and push it back, so aiding the feeling of recession. A second wash is laid over part of the sand, partly to emphasize the perspective but also simply to make it more interesting

Finally, the shadows are placed, along with little suggestions of detail. Because watercolour is a transparent medium, I use a “shadow wash” to cool and darken those areas covered with shadow so that some indication of the original colour is still present.