Trevi Fountain - Step 7

It's time to start sculpting the rocks and figures by adding some dark areas to give them form. It's the shadows that define the rocks and make them seem three-dimensional. Notice how I've tried to make the shadows visually interesting by fluctuating from warm to cool. At this point, I also wanted to put in my darkest area so that I could balance everything else according to that value. This usually helps keep me from being too light in other areas.



I'm still not completely sure how I'm going to tackle the falling water, so I tread lightly. The first step is to paint around the white parts of the water with the lightest version of the underlying color.

Now, this doesn't look much like water yet, so you have to be patient. All I'm doing here is starting to define the shapes underneath the water. You don't want the rocks to be very clear since you are seeing them through a wall of water. It's too difficult to paint soft, wet-into-wet edges here since I'm trying to paint around the white water, so I have to rely on jagged outlines to make the rocks appear to have soft, blurry edges (picture an impressionistic painting).

All in all, I'm pleased with how things are turning out so far, but I realize the most important and difficult parts of the painting are still to come.

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.