MATERIALS
• Arches 300gsm watercolour paper, stretched onto a thick sheet of plate glass. 1cm wide masking tape.
• Schmincke artist quality pigment watercolours: Sap Green, Indian Yellow, Aureolin, Ruby, Scarlet, Translucent Orange, Phthalo Blue, Phthalo Green, Brilliant Purple and Cobalt. Winsor & Newton Perylene Green, Perylene Maroon and Quinacridone Red.
• Maimeri Blu Dragon’s Blood.
• Kolinski Sable Brushes, Sizes 10, 8 and 4; and Number 2 Rigger.
• Watercolour pencils from FaberCastell ‘Albrecht Durer’; Derwent, Cretacolor ‘Aquarellith’; Staedtler *Karat’ and Caran Dache ‘Supra Color II Soft’ ranges.
• Greaseproof paper.
• 2H graphite for drawing image; 6H for transferring to stretched paper.
STEP ONE
Having stretched your watercolour paper and allowed it to become bone dry, commence drawing the image onto cartridge paper, working out the mistakes here before transferring that image with tracing paper to your watercolour paper in a single line drawing using a hard grade graphite pencil (4H or harder).
Make a border around that drawing with lightly drawn pencil, and mask that border slightly wider (approximately 1cm) using masking tape.
“Prime” the paper with clean water, and using pale washes of Aureolin and Indian Yellow, establish the underpainting. Warm areas will be Indian Yellow; cooler, Aureolin. Allow to dry. Repeat if more depth is required. Allow to dry.
STEP TWO
Prime only the area in the background next, and wash in a maroon for the truck wall, carefully negotiating the lambs’ heads. Use a lighter value for the picket and floor. Allow to dry.
Wash shed wall in a greyed blue (Phthalo Blue/Scarlet). Allow to dry.
Strengthen the truck wall colour using a mix of Phthalo Blue, Phthalo Green, Ruby, Orange and Indian Yellow; prime the paper first, then drop in this mix. Use a paler version on the picket.
Apply more washes to the wall siding, old junk and dead trees.
Move down to the floor of the truck and glaze with weak brownish grey; a stronger more ‘blueish’ colour for the wood grain; and drag a rigger brush sideways for instant texture in the grain direction.
Return to the truck wall, prime the paper again, and apply a stronger wash of maroon. While still barely damp, lift out reflections of lambs’ heads and the top edges of the truck wall and picket. Allow to dry.
STEP THREE
Mix a dark brown from Phthalo Blue, Scarlet, Translucent Orange, Indian Yellow, and Sap. Prime the paper and paint the dark areas around the lambs’ bottoms and the cast shadow to the left. Allow to dry. Prime again and repeat the cast shadows areas, plus the thin edge of shadow under the picket. Allow to dry.
Apply a weak wash of Phthalo Blue to the whole shed wall, priming the paper first. All Phthalo pigments ‘grab’ the paper and are staining, so removal is impossible. This priming method gives you time to place the pigment where you want without the hard primeline; and is easier to control.
While still wet, drop in a ‘dark’ made from your brown recipe, biasing towards bluegreen around the junk and larger dead tree on the right. This will settle in and leave no hard edges.
Return to truck floor. Use a dry brush technique and add more grain to the floor boards. Add a weak wash to the picket, using a mix of Translucent Orange and Quinacridone Red. Allow to dry.
STEP FOUR
Prime the paper around the lambs’ heads on the truck wall. Wash in a very weak Phthalo Green over all areas of maroon, using a delicate touchdown method allowing the pigment to disperse without dragging the bristles. The surface tension in the moist paper will act like a sponge pulling the pigment onto it. Lift off the reflected areas when the shine has gone off the paper.
Add texture to the truck floor, using a dry brush method and varying the colours (blue, orange, etc).
Strengthen the truck wall colour, using a mix of Perylene Green and Dragon’s Blood, priming firsttouchdown method again. Lift out areas of reflections with a damp brush. Allow to dry.
Add Cobalt to the Dragon’s Blood mix (this will neutralise it) biasing towards grey, and wash in the truck floor again – priming first – with a slightly weaker strength over the picket. Allow to dry.
STEP FIVE
Commence by priming areas of the lambs not touched by sunlight with clean water. Dab in a delicate wash of grey, mixed from Scarlet, Phthalo and Aureolin. Repeat as necessary to achieve required depth. Allow to dry.
With the same grey, and a dry brush method, drag quickly over the rumps to give the nubbly texture of fleece. Strengthen the cast shadow on the left. Add a weak wash of yellowish grey to the lambs, again avoiding the sunny sections.
Detail the faces of the lambs, holes in the picket, scratches in the floor boards. Redefine the truck wall contours.
Prime the lambs’ heads, using a small brush. Add Phthalo Blue for the dye mark. Use Orange and Pink for baling twine on the legs. Lift off the sunlit edge of the truck wall, the top edge of the picket and the bleached areas of floor boards.
Mix a very weak solution of Ruby and Phthalo Blue and prime the fleece area, touching in gently to further soften the yellow tone. Add as much as necessary to make it grey.
Add a tad of Orange mixed with Ruby for the noses and inner ears, biasing towards Orange near tails and rumps (pinker on the noses). Allow to dry.
STEP SIX
Now for the fun part! Using watercolour pencils, add texture to the picket and floor boards; blur out the shed wall; ‘fuzz’ the outline of the lambs, and kick the colour up a bit on the baling twine.
Using an extremely delicate pressure, go over the entire truck wall with layers of Green, Burnt Carmine and Indigo, darkening it until satisfactory. The palest of mauve was used for the reflections behind the lambs’ heads.
Finish off the faces with a grey mix for the eyes, mouths and neck folds. If the blue on the heads seems a bit light, repeat the Phthalo Blue again. Done.
MASTER HINTS AND TIPS
• Draw the image on regular cartridge paper. Work out all the ‘bugs’ before you transfer that drawing to your watercolour paper. This saves the paper from being bruised’ and ensures a lot less abrasion from erasing unwanted lines.
• Establish a border for the picture; then using the thin masking tape, surround that border approximately 1cm wider than that. This will give a clean, crisp edge to your work and make matting and framing so much easier.
• Sunlight is ‘corrosive’, it bleaches out details and colour in high bright light. Definition is lost and shadows melt into the subject matter.
• Satellite’ puddles of pigment are easy to work with on a larger palette. Don’t try mixing every bit of colour into one large puddle (this wastes pigment); instead pick up pigment with enough water to make smaller puddles of pure colour in a rough circle on your palette and draw into the centre the mix that you’re trying to achieve … an easy way to bend the bias of a shade to more blue or more red (for example).
• Drag the rigger sideways to create the ‘stutter’ effect of grainy textures of wood, fleece etc. The tooth in the paper works beautifully when using the brush in this manner.
• The best pencil sharpener I’ve ever used has been a Carl-Angel 5 rotary sharpener. It came with a desk clamp and gives the most amazingly long tapered lead to my pencils. All my graphite pencils are sharpened with a craft knife – again with a very long point so I can see where I’m putting my lines. Resharpen the point of all pencils with fine automotive grade wet and dry sandpaper, using a ‘rolling and dragging backwards’ motion to shape the lead. Constantly!
• Change the tonal value of any colour by using its complement, for example blue/orange, yellow/violet, red/green. This gives a vibrancy to all subjects like nothing else can.
