this week i painted something a bit different an old pickup
truck in watercolor and in this video i'll share some of my painting process with you
i'm here in our tv room today because we're getting some new stairs put in we've got a joiner
here who's using some power tools and this is the furthest room away from where he's
working so i hope we don't hear him i've got my paintings here on the coffee table in front of me
i've not painted anything like this before so it was an interesting exercise
i painted using both wet on wet and wet on dry techniques i did a
detailed study before i painted this one so that i could work out my colors and my techniques
and then i felt confident enough to paint another one where i filmed myself
a few weeks ago when i painted some grapes i had a question about reserving highlights
i was asked why i wet over the highlighted area with water instead of leaving that part dry
i had a grape with a little white highlighted area on it and when i painted the grape i wet the whole
grape with water and then i put the paint on and i tried to keep the paint off the highlighted
section i was asked why i didn't leave the highlighted section dry i'll answer that question
in this video because i did the same thing when i painted this truck i wet the entire panel or
section where the highlighted area was with water first and then i put the paint onto the wet paper
avoiding the highlighted section so when i get to that part i'll explain why i do that the reference
photo was taken by a friend of mine Diane Morin she took the photo in southern alberta in CANADA
so thank you diane diane sent me a few different photos i chose this one because i like the way
the truck is positioned on an angle and i like that the sun is creating those interesting cast
shadows on the door i used a limited pallet of only three winsor and newton colours windsor
violet burnt sienna and french ultramarine and i painted it on ash cold press watercolor paper
i start by mixing a small amount of winsor violet
into burnt sienna i want to use burnt sienna but i don't want to use it at its full intensity
i decided to paint the truck panel by panel or section by section there were highlighted areas
on the truck that i wanted to include and i thought it would be easier for me to focus
on a panel at a time so i started with the lower section of the door and i wet it with some water
and then i used the color that i mixed
i took that about halfway across the panel and then i painted some burnt sienna onto the
right hand side so here i'm getting burnt sienna on its own nothing mixed with it
and i'll paint that on this side most of this painting was painted with a mixture
of burnt sienna and windsor violet i only used the colors at their full intensity
in a few places on the front of the truck
now i'll get a bit of windsor violet
and i'll drop that in there while it's wet just to add interest
i'll leave that to dry and i'll move on to this back wheel large panel i'll call it so some water
on this this one has a sunlit spot on it so i want to try and reserve the paper there you see where
it's the lightest section on the reference photo i'm also going to try and keep this
back section of the truck lighter than the front section so that it looks like it's further away
for this i'll use a mixture of windsor violet and burnt sienna and i'll keep the colour fairly pale
looking at the reference photo that highlight has got soft edges all the way around the
outside of it so that's why i've wet this entire panel here i'll keep the paint off
that highlight and the paint should creep gently up to the edge of the highlight
i'll get some burnt sienna now i'll paint this on this back section
so i'm varying the colors slightly but you can see i'm keeping this fairly pale
now i've gone back to the mixture the two colors
and i'm trying to leave that white paper showing there
hopefully it won't drift all the way in and completely cover it
i might use my brush like a sponge and take a bit more off
here's where i want to show you why i didn't leave the highlighted area dry
that's because the highlighted area on the truck has got soft edges around its perimeter if the
highlight had hard sharp edges around the outside of it i would have taken the water
right to the edge of the highlight and left the highlight itself dry i'll show you what i mean now
i've drawn the wheel arch panel here on a piece of scrap watercolor paper this time
when i wet it i won't wet the highlighted area i'll leave that area dry i'll just wet around it
so when you look at the paper there you can see it's wet all around
the outside edge of the highlight but the highlight itself where i want it to sit is dry
so then i put the paint on while it's wet and the paint will bleed or move with the water that's on
the paper i try to keep the paint away from the edge of the water near the highlight just like i
did on the wheel arch of the main painting this is the bed sienna going on now and what's happening
is the paint is creeping or moving over towards the edge of the water and it's forming a hard line
around the outside edge of my highlighted area so here you can see it's just about dry and you
can see that it's formed hard edges around that area as opposed to my painting where i wet the
entire section with water and allowed the paint to gently creep towards that highlighted area
so when i want soft edges around my highlights i prefer to wet the entire section and that way i
can ensure that those edges will remain soft i've painted in a few more panels working on wet paper
now i'll work on this panel just here and again i wet it with water the same way i wet
all the other panels and now i've got water all over that front section except for the headlight
here i've got burnt sienna i haven't mixed any of the violet with it
now i've got a mixture of the two colors violet
and burnt sienna but it's got a bit more of the violet in it
still using the mixture of the two colors here
just trying to work out where to keep the highlight
and then i painted around the headlight and around that little circle underneath
and here i've got a bit more burnt sienna on my brush so there's no violet mixed with it it's
just burnt sienna and here again you can see how i've got the soft edges around the outside
of the white highlight now i want to start to get a bit of color onto the tires
i want their tyres to fade away at the bottom so i'll put a bit of water there
i'm quite happy for the paint to bleed there down onto the background area i mixed my own
black from french ultramarine and burnt sienna i mentioned earlier that i want to make the back of
the truck a bit lighter in color than the front of the truck at the moment everything is much
the same so i'll get this color on here and then soon i'll start to darken the front of the track
so this black is fairly watery it's not very dark you can see how it's bleeding
at the bottom of the tire there because i wet the paper or wet the background there
i can't really see what's going on on the reference photo so i thought i'd just let it
melt away into the background there i didn't want to fuss and paint in the grass around the truck
and now i'll do the same thing with this wheel at the front or tire at the front i
wet the tire itself and also down onto the area underneath where the tire sits on the ground
and that way it will bleed down into that area so fairly light black on wet paper
now i've dipped my brush in the water so i don't have a great deal of paint on it
it's fairly light at the bottom
after i did the tyres i painted in the grill and i started to
darken the front of the truck so here i'm going to darken this front panel
over the tyre so again i'm wetting the panel with water everything's dry of course
and now i've got a mixture of the two colors burnt sienna and windsor violet with a bit more windsor
violet in it it's much darker and bolder now the color the front of the truck is in shadow so
i need to make it darker but i also want to make it quite dark to bring it forward so i
want it to have quite a bit of difference to the color that i've used on the back of the truck
where i want the color to finish i use my damp brush to soften that edge
now i want to increase the color further back so i continue to wet the panel with water
i didn't wet it at the start because it would have dried before i got to it
you can see i've just wet over the highlight as well
so now i can increase the color on the rest of the panel but it won't be quite as dark as it
is on the front here's where i've got some really rich juicy burnt sienna straight out of the tube
i wanted to increase the color there over the top of the tire
and then back here i've got the mixture of the two colors again just deepening that section there
i dried it off really well and then i found that i needed to darken the front
even further so i re-wet the front section and i'm giving it another layer of paint so this
is its third layer at the front that's a mixture of the two colors burnt sienna and winsor violet
i run my damp brush over the edge again where it meets the lighter color
and then i did the same thing on the hood of the truck it wasn't quite dark
enough so i re-wet it with water and i'm putting another layer of that dark color
i wet this panel with water as well and i've got some of the burnt sienna winter violet mixture
but it's got more burnt sienna in it only a tiny bit of winter violet you can see i'm
leaving that highlight along there as well so i wet the entire panel not just the bottom section
and that's giving me those soft edges where the highlight is
then i needed to darken the tires so i wet them with water and i mixed some more black
the black was mixed from french ultramarine and burnt sienna but it's quite a bit darker now
this tyre at the front can go quite a bit darker but i want to fade the color away
at the bottom of the tire just so that it looks like it melts into the ground
so i'm painting on wet paper here and then i can take my paint out
of my brush and use my damp brush to pull that paint down a bit further
and it fades away into the lighter paint just washing my brush out again
get rid of those lines there
just with the wet brush
towards the end of the painting i knew i needed a shadow underneath
to ground the truck so i wet the front section with some water
i mixed some gray a very cool gray with burnt sienna and french ultramarine
and then i use that to paint in that shadow and that helps to as i said
ground the truck and stop it from looking like it's floating in the air
behind his front tire i wanted that area to be quite dark so i used black in there
and then as i moved down towards the ground i've switched to the gray mixture
so it gets lighter as it goes down
then when it dried i can see it wasn't dark enough
so i re-wet that shadow with water i got some more black and i gave it another layer
this time i won't use the gray i'll just
soften that edge away where the black mixed the gray with my damp brush
and last thing i did i painted some water along the bumper
and here i've got some gray paint that i mixed from burnt sienna and french ultramarine
and there it is finished
it was fun to paint something a bit different and i'm quite happy with the way that it
turned out i'm currently making a full length tutorial of this painting for my patreon site
i plan to post it on there next month so i hope you'll join me there if this video was helpful
to you please give it a like and be sure to subscribe and i'll see you in my next video
i'll answer that question in this video because i did the same thing when i painted this looking
at myself looking at myself hi highlighted area on the truck has got soft edges around its perimeters
perimeters perimeter perimeter perimeter perimeter
perimeter perimeter anything like this before so it was an interesting exercise i painted
yep i thought i'd be able to do it in here
oh no
no he's still going
you