Watercolor Sketching

I believe the negative space should be equally as interesting as the positive space (the subject).

Color terms may be helpful when talking about color. The first is local color. This is the basic color of a subject – we might say a banana’s local color is yellow. A second type of color is optical color. This type of color refers to when the artist tries to capture the true complexity of the light reflecting off the surface of an object. The banana may be yellow but on close observation we may see areas that are still green and yellow green. Closer inspection will show there are brown and black markings and some of the yellow seems to have bit more orange in it, and there are shadows on the surface caused by the light source. The color of the surface the banana is sitting on is being reflected on the surface of the fruit creating more color variation. This is the optical color of the subject.

You need to ask yourself, “Are those negative spaces interesting?”

common mistake with beginning students is to place their subject, be it a flower or a person, more or less floating in the middle of the space. I call this object-oriented space. The student is focusing on the subject at the expense of composition.

Space is not an optional element. It is always a part of your sketch

When I begin a sketch I look at my subject and determine what shape would best suit my subject – a rectangle with the proportion of the paper, a square, a longer rectangle, a circle, an arched shape, and so on. When I have decided, I take a 2B pencil and freehand the shape on the 9” X 12” leaving a border of white paper.

tree may be lovely but you need not try to paint every leaf on it. Decide which shapes are the most interesting and which will help you create interesting negative shapes in your composition. You may wish to work with the intricacies of the natural shapes you are viewing or you may wish to abstract and simplify. It is a matter of style.

Another aspect is the shape of the subject matter you are dealing with. The shape can be natural, to man-made, to abstract.

But, in most cases a few accents of dark value bring balance and interest to the composition

Most people are inclined to want to begin with a pencil sketch. I personally find the pencil sketch confining and I like to begin directly with watercolor, developing my shapes with the brush. This may seem a bit frightening at first, but with practice it is a feeling of liberation to apply the color directly to the paper.