Last week I was at a 5 day workshop with Marc Hanson, and he showed a book of his wonderful opaque watercolors and I immediately thought I would spend some time with this approach. I have used them in the past as an abstract painting medium but never in representational work. Marc uses the medium as a substitute for his oils when he either can’t get out to paint or oils are just not appropriate for the situation. I am working on getting comfortable with oils but not making as good of progress as I want so I am going to give the opaque watercolors a try for a while. For the next few months I am going to do a painting a day in my wonderful watercolor books that are filled with lovely handmade paper, thank you Colleen. Here is my first effort.
The paper is really rough so covering it with paint is impossible. I decided to let the paper show through giving the indication of light bouncing around. I found being able to paint the light sky around the dark trees to be lots of fun and getting the light on the backs of the cows is not possible with transparent watercolor.
6 Comments on “Opaque Watercolor “Spring, New Hope””
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Hello Steve. I find very interesting about your new challenge with opaque watercolors that you start for each day over the next days. I’ll watch out your following posts because I`m very interested in that topic. Thank you for sharing and for widening our horizons. Respectfully Mercedes
I really enjoy working with the opaque – wonderful nuances of light and color can be discovered and blending on the paper produces a pastel effect. Do not care for the type of paper you are experimenting with…I just got too frustrated with all the holes. Hope it works better for you.
YOu are right about the holes in the colors but I am going to get it down because I love the paper. Keep on trying that is my motto.
Looks good , so are you mixing white gouache with watercolor to make it opaque ?
I am using both Titanium white and white gouache to make the colors opaque, but at this moment I am using straight gouache for the colors.
A painting a day! yay! I love it when you do this and I can’t wait!
The paper is gorgeous; Colleen MADE it? Wow. I love how the texture is pushing your work into a different look. I genuinely like the result.