My name is Sharon Freeman.
I have studied and painted in watercolor since 1992, I majored in fine art and educaiton at Central Washington University in Washington State. After teaching elementary art and other subjects for nearly 25 years, I now teach adult watercolor workshops periodically. I also have a small business selling my original watercolors and reproductions.
Watercolor is a means for me to celebrate nature.
Trees, flowers, and water are a few elements that
capture my imagination. I look for unique patterns within small areas of nature and try to emphasize them. My paintings generally begin with several photographs taken in morning or afternoon sunshine. I am most successful when I have sunshine to help me define shapes, shadow and translucent color.
For me, watercolor is all about light and translucent color, accented with rich, deep shadows. My intent is to achieve a glow with transparent watercolors by using complementary colors, glazing (layering one color over another), and sharp value contrasts.
In the painting shown here, I began with the yellow centers of the daisies. I used aureolin yellow mixed with a bit of quinacridone rose. I layered over the yellow centers until I achieved a rich yellow color. As I painted the centers, I dampened areas of the background and dropped the color (yellow into various areas to balance and repeat color) I made sure the background yellows had soft edges. After that I began painting the petals. I did not use masking to save the whites. I painted around them.
The shadows on the daisy petals vary from yellow gray to blue gray. (yellow gray near the center and blue gray on the outside edge) I mixed the grays by using a triad of cobalt blue, rose madder, and aureolin yellow. I chose those three colors because they are very transparent and mix well together. They also lift more easily than some other pigments.
After 17 years of mixing grays, I am quite efficient at achieving just the right gray, but it does take practice. The time spent is well worth the effort as you can achieve beautiful glowing grays that change hue as you paint through a shadow-shape. After the shadow-shape has dried, you can change the color again by glazing over it is a slightly varied color mixture. (example: mix a light lavender-gray and paint over a gray shape achieving a glow)
My next blog will explain how I achieved the depth and sharp contrast in the background. Also how I "painted around" the petal shapes while maintaining soft background shapes.
Autor, Sharon Freeman
Pacific Northwest Watercolor
