Friday, July 16, 2010

Trevi Fountain - Step 6



Ahh, the fun part - the water! Yes, water is difficult to paint. Yes, it is moving and can look a million different ways depending on the light, the type of water, what's underneath the water etc., etc. But, if you really just look at it as shapes and values like anything else you're trying to paint or draw, then it's just not that hard. (now faces and hands, that's another story entirely!)


One thing to be aware of when painting water is your edges. Generally, you want them to be soft, especially in the underlying layers. As you can see here, everything is wet-into-wet, and you want your brushstrokes to be coming STRAIGHT towards you (notice the pool at the top of the fountain). Anything that reflects on the surface of the water will come STRAIGHT towards the viewer and be a mirror image of the object being reflected. I can't tell you how many paintings I've seen ruined by reflections that didn't line up.


The falling water is definitely going to be the toughest part of this painting. In my initial drawing, I tried to highlight the parts of the water that would be white, but I'm going to have to save them without leaving hard edges (since I want the water to look like it's moving). For right now, I've just painted the white parts of the water that are in shadow. It's always funny to me how that area looks dark right now, but will actually be one of the lighter areas once I'm done.


As a side note, I love the turquoise (Cerulean and Winsor Green, I think) color of the water because it provides such a nice contrast with the warm colors of the figures (and it's one of my favorite colors), but I'll have to be sure to carry that color up into the background later and vice versa to provide balance.