Watercolor: Realistic Painting

HANDLING DARKS AND LIGHTS

One of the advantages of gouache is its unique covering power—but the paint needs to be controlled carefully so that you don’t lose the drawing beneath it. There are a number of effective ways do this.

DRAWING DARK OVER LIGHT

One way to keep a drawing from being lost when painted over with gouache is to first paint the background and then use the tracing paper method (see page 4) to transfer the drawing onto the completed background.

For example, if you are painting a farm scene, you could paint the sky and then redraw the buildings over the sky you’ve painted. You could also paint around the buildings. (To paint around a tree, however, is impractical.) Another approach is to ink over the drawing and paint over it with ...