Sue Sareen - Domestic Interior in Watercolour

What professionalism from Sue Sareen! She seemed to launch into her excellent demonstration without any sign of stress after a horrendous journey had delayed her arrival. It was well worth waiting for her.

She clearly demonstrated the importance of darker tones to provide contrast to bring light into a watercolour painting. I always think interiors present a challenge because you have to indicate space where you effectively have only fore and middle ground and nothing distant. Her reference photo had the light coming through a window facing the viewer so there was really nothing much of the outside to be seen. She suggested using a photo editing package to manipulate the light in photos as otherwise some of the information is not visible.

She had prepared two outline drawings of the same scene so she was able to first make a tonal painting using just one colour - indigo - and secondly to paint using a range of pigments. She worked very wet, putting on light tones first and at each stage adding deeper tones. One of the advantages of working so wet was that some of the pigment could be easily lifted with a tissue to maintain some lighter areas where needed.

To see more of her work visit her website http://www.sareenarts.com/

Here are some more images from her demonstration