Read Watercolor Painting: A Comprehensive Approach to Mastering the Medium for Free Online

step to making a painting that is cohesive. A five-value version (white, light gray, middle gray, dark gray, black) can be done quite quickly over a simple drawing of the big shapes. It also provides good practice for seeing in layers.
    This exercise will answer the question: What role does value play in the relationships between the big shapes? To start, choose a color (just one) straight from the tube that can get dark enough to represent black. It’s better not to make a color by mixing, since that introduces another variable. This exercise is designed to focus on value only. Similarly, all paint should be applied to dry paper, to keep wetness from distracting your attention away from value.
    Evaluate the subject.
Light is an important component of this image. Isolating the variable of value should reveal the role it plays in creating the illusion of sun and shadow.
    If you are tempted to get fussy about edge quality, or texture, or any kind of detail, remember, this is not a painting, and it is supposed to be too simple. A door may be important, but the doorknob probably isn’t. I have seen some so-calledvalue studies that are, in fact, very carefully observed monochrome paintings. They are quite beautiful, but as tools designed to reveal the essential elements of the scene, they are not very useful. The best way to find out if something needs to be in the picture is to leave it out.
    After each step of your study, while you’re waiting for the paper to dry, assess how complete the illusion of light and space and substance feels.
    The best way to find out if something needs to be in the picture is to leave it out.
    Locate themajor shapes in the image.
Draw the big shapes, keeping the number down to ten or fewer. The profile of each shape is all you need to draw. The idea is to locate the shapes, not to describe them.
    Reserve the white areas while applying the lightest lights.
Starting with the lightest gray, paint the entire page, except for any shapes that need to stay white. Is there a feeling of light in the study? What about space? Substance?
    Add the middle grays.
If you can’t decide whether a shape should be light or middle, round it off one way or the other. The finished study will reveal whether you made the right choice. If you give in to the temptation to embellish a bit (as I did with the spots of shadow in the dirt piles), keep it very simple. Again, assess the state of the illusion: Light? Space? Substance?
    Add the dark grays.
When the second layer is dry, apply the dark gray over everything except the middle gray, light, and white shapes. Now that the background figure has a dark gray layer, and the section of wall behind him does not, notice how effectively the two separate, compared to the previous stage.
    Paint in the darkest darks.
The role of the darkest darks in creating an illusion of light, space, and substance is clear, even in a radically oversimplified image.

    E VALUATING A S IMPLIFIED S TUDY
    When the value study is finished, it can be compared to the source image or the scene to see where adjustments need to be made. Having come way over into the realm of too little information, we now have a basis for judging how much more needs to be included. Ask yourself: Where do I need more subtlety or specificity? Don’t skip this step. A study, as the name implies, is a learning tool. Yourpainting process will be more efficient and your paintings more cohesive if you extract all the lessons you can from your preliminary work.
    In the photo on this page , the two mounds of dirt are so similar in color and value it seemed sensible to treat them as a single shape. But the study reveals that it would be better to separate them, making it clearer that the one on the right is in front. The study also reveals that the mound on the left does not separate sufficiently from the wall in the background. It looks okay where there is a shadow behind it, but where the wall is sunlit only the pencil line