Getting the best from dark tones in water colour
For water colour painters, it makes no difference if you’re thinking of tackling a landscape or pet portrait, you’ll be faced with having to show areas of dark shadow. Many leisure painters, when first faced with dark areas in their picture, will quite often use a tube of black or produce muddy looking colours. Regrettably, it can be quite hard to see the different tones within dark areas, it’s much easier to gauge colour tone in the lighter shades. Even so, it’s crucial that the shadows are luminous and clean for any painting to work.
A large array of dark colours that can be had using a range of pigments that can incorporate many different hues. Two of the darkest colours in the artists palette are phthalo blue and phthalo green. Alizarin crimson, burnt sienna and ultramarine are a degree lighter with viridian and alizarin being mid-tones. All of these pigments can be used to create a range of darks that vary in tone.
Even so, it’s essential limit the amount of colours you use or you’ll still end up with a disjointed muddy mess. Using too many layers of colour indiscriminately will mean you’ll loose that felling of freshness in your painting. The fewer colours you use, to get the tone you need, the better. You can only avoid this problem by knowing in advance the colour you want to achieve and always test it for strength before committing it to your painting. When your ready to begin, work quickly and with conviction, otherwise it may look tentative and overworked.
It will also help if you have your dark areas against the lightest ones, this brings a high level of contrast into a picture which adds to it’s drama and graphic appeal. Keep in mind, it’s the dark areas that make the light areas seem bright! Also, try and use the dark areas to create ‘lead-ins’ that direct the eye through the picture.
Tags: art, artist, dark colour, painting, water colour
