George Boyton - Planning your watercolour

This was a real treat for the watercolour artists among us and I hope many of the tips such as composition and using contrasting tones to create a focal point to draw in the viewer's eye were useful to those working with other media.

Drawing

George has been greatly influenced by the Australian painter Joseph Zbuvic and the stages of planning and producing a watercolour painting he uses:

  1. Observation/imagination
  2. Composition
  3. Drawing
  4. Wash
  5. Wet-in-wet
  6.  Dry brush strokes

He explained the compositional choices he was making as he made his drawing - in this case dividing the paper into two main shapes with the smaller shape in the upper part. A diagonal line across this upper shape divided distant land from sky and introduced a dynamic element. The boat house and foreground boats introduced some medium sized shapes. The aim would be to lead the eye to a focal point in the region of the boat house where the early morning light coming from the right would strike the right hand elevation of the structure.

George set out his plan for the wash stage and then proceeded with it. He began with a golden wash creating and leaving a bead near the  division of the two major shapes, taking this wash up into the sky area and then adding a thin wash of lavender (a cooling colour) at the top. While leaving that to merge with the golden wash the bead was picked up again and the golden was taken down so the upper two-thirds of the support was covered and this was then merged with a green/blue wash to which darker marks were added to give the illusion of ripples. The paint needed to be moist but not very wet for this to work well.

Adding ripples a little too soon

These initial washes had to dry before moving on to the wet-in-wet stage.

The following images show progress towards the finished painting.

Light tone, cool colour and no detail suggests distance

More contrast helps to lead the eye to a focal point

Working forward

The finished painting

Palette divides warm and cool

George Boyter's  website is http://georgeboyterartist.com/

and Joseph Zbuvic's is https://www.josephzbukvic.com/