New Painting-Steps 4-5

Step 4
Finishing the first wash with the same colors and slightly darker values and a few highlights of the warm sky color connects the foreground to the rest of the composition. Because the values in the foreground are similar to the values in the middle ground, I was able to keep the edges soft.

Step 5
I let the first wash dry and then used a hair dryer to dry it throughly. The beauty of transparent watercolor is in the layering. Because I want soft edges, I painted this layer the same as the first–very wet using the glycerin and water mixture, hoping that it will form a layer and not mix with the first layer.

Once this layer dried, I removed some of the pigment by scrubbing with a stiff brush which gave definition to the lake and the buildings and a few trees.

Once again I am using Khadi watercolor paper which is very different than all of the other papers that I use. It has very little internal sizing and a lot of external sizing. Because of that, removing paint is very easy.