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Painting Street Scenes – The Loose Watercolour Method
So many artists paint figures in a totally different style and detail to the rest of the painting! It is as if they want the person to stand out like a alien. Yes it is fun to do vignettes or concentrate on salient points and I will discus that here. With a complicate painting my advice is to treat it as a jigsaw! Place the right shapes in the right places in the right comparative colours and tones? If you do this equally all over the work then it will just appear as if by magic. You don’t have to worry what an individual thing is. Also, most importantly, it will be coherent!
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The paintings in the set above are all watercolours with the exception of the lower left which is a pastel over black Indian ink darks and the pastel foundation painted in with a brush and water. It is more in focus ion the foreground as our eyes tend to do naturally. The technique of the others is delightfully simple and loose! You need three brushes of each except a half inch oval mop. Three round sables or artificial, three flats, three swords in soft nylon. 1/8”, ¼” and ½” unless you are doing bigger work and then require larger bushes. Draw carefully at first and plan, even though you are going to work very loosely with this framework! Choose your salient and important features and figures. Strange as it may seem, paint them first. Don’t be too tight and use the swords. Try to use simple single strokes where possible. let it all dry. By all means use masking fluid for some light details such as chair frames etc. Paper should be a heavy 200 lb Waterford rough! No need to stretch this weight.
The use the oval mop and start a wet in wet background around your other objects. Gradually tighten this as you progress and it dries choosing where you wish to concentrate. The trick now is to “indicate” to give an impression not get tight or bogged down! Start to use square ended flats to do windows, doors etc. Finish the ground, roads, paths, water with your mop or larger flats very loosely wet in wet. Let it dry and finally work your last tones on with quick dry brush work over the rough paper, freely and loosely, often in more vertical strokes if you want a wet day!
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The above centre scene in York, England was in oils, each side and lower left were painted by the above watercolour method, as the lower centre painted as a live demonstration in Lagos fish market for a local art group. The lower right is a pastel over a red acrylic ground.
Below left are both oil paintings and right the advised watercolour method.
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The final four watercolours are all done with this method. You have to plan ahead and be bold and brave!
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See peterwoodarts.com for further examples
