One of the advantages of having time to paint during the day is that I can take progress photos of the painting as I paint (if I remember, as most often I get totally lost in the painting process and forget about everything else).
After arranging the still-life, I lightly sketched the shells & seagull feather with Faber-Castell 9000 pencil (F hardness) on Fabriano Artistico CP watercolour paper. Since I knew that the angle of the sun will change while I paint, I painted the shadows first to remind me where the light was coming from.
Next I added the first layer of Winsor & Newton watercolour to each shell & piece of coral individually, working wet-into-wet to allow the colours to merge and mix.
After the first layer of the watercolour dried, I applied clean water to most of the feather. I kept some areas dry as I wanted them to remain white. I mixed Winsor & Newton French Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna together to get various shades of grey. I started painting from the outside edge of the feather letting the colour bleed down towards the feather’s rachis (shaft).
Next I started adding details, further defining shapes and texture.
I kept on slowly progressing around the painting.
At this stage I decided to finish working on this painting and added my signature with a pencil.
Memories of Summer – step-by-step
Beautiful work!
Laura, thank you
Lovely
Thank you
Wonderful to see how you build up the intensity of the watercolour – many thanks for making the effort to show the process. I bought an F-C F hardness pencil a few weeks ago without actually knowing what it was. It’s interesting to see you using it.
Michael, thank you. I need to buy few more myself. I have a lot of soft pencils (3B-6B), but hardly ever use them as I don’t draw much nowadays.
These are so gorgeous, Zoya!! 😀❤️ Love all the delicate details. Fabulous work!
Charlie, thank you. I’m aiming to learn to combine fine details with wet-into-wet juiciness of watercolour. It is such fun to move towards my own style.
Your work just blows me away – and what a fun post – to see if all come together!
Annie, thank you.
Beautiful painting, really enjoyed see its progression from start to finish. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you. I’ll have to remember to take progress photos more often.