Tag Archives: sea shell

Daily watercolor painting – Sea shell watercolor painting 8 x 10 inches

Sea shell watercolor painting

Sea shell watercolor painting

A small 8 x 10 inches watercolor painting done on cold press watercolor paper.  It is a close up watercolor painting of a sea shell.   Layers of watercolor wash was applied first with the background and then onto the subject itself.  A variety of red and orange watercolor paint was used on the inside of the sea shell.  Watercolor wet into wet in areas of the surface of the shell and the shaded areas to give it a three dimensional look.  Finally paint is being splash on and colors lifted on to produce the various highlights.

Daily Watercolor painting – Sea Shell 15 x 22 inches ink and watercolor painting

Sea Shell ink and watercolor 15 x 22 inches

Sea Shell ink and watercolor 15 x 22 inches

I have finished this watercolor painting with much struggle with the dark shadow areas.  I painted the shadow areas between the sea shells with layers of watercolor in a wet in wet technique and found that it was to dark and contrasty comparing to the brightness of the shells.  I wanted to change that to give a feeling of sand in the background.  For that I tried to flick white gauche paint onto the dark background covering the shells.  After I have done that, the contrast is gone but the painting does not have a three dimensional feeling to it.  The background is now too light and competes with the sea shell.  I then try to paint over the white gauche with watercolor and that resulted in a mess of grayish mud like color.  I had the painting up for a few days trying to find ways to repair the mistake.  Then I apply  permanent black ink that I use for ink transfer technique to the very dark shadow areas and leave some areas a lighter tone.  I found this works well for the painting and this is what I have done to the rest of the shadow areas.

Daily Watercolor painting – Sea Shell watercolor painting – 15 x 22 inches

Sea Shell Watercolor painting

Sea Shell Watercolor painting

I have worked on this 15 x 22 inches watercolor painting doing layers of under painting over a few days.  I have choose to use 140 lb Arches hot press watercolor paper because of it’s smooth texture.  I have always painted on cold press paper which gives me a little paper tooth for putting on my watercolor paint.  This time the overall feeling is so different when applying paint on to a hot press paper surface that I have to rethink what I need to change with my technique to accommodate the new experience.  I found that the paper is more absorptive and color applied on the surface get dried quite fast.  It gives me less time to work on compare with the cold press watercolor paper.  Especially when doing a large area, you have to work really quick or have a large brush and lots of paint.

Dailywatercolor painting – Sea Shell watercolor painting

Sea Shell pencil sketch for watercolor painting

Sea Shell pencil sketch for watercolor painting

Sea Shell watercolor reference photo

Sea Shell watercolor reference photo

I have started to do a watercolor painting on sea shell.  The above is the reference photo I took for the painting.  It is going to be done on a 15 x 22 inches Arches watercolor paper.  I have divided the cropped and printed the photograph on paper.  Then the paper with the photographic image is divided into 4 x 4 grids using a dark marker.  Grids are also used to divide the watercolor paper and the image is then copy to a 15 x 22 watercolor papaer as shown on the first photo using a lead pencil.   I am going to apply the watercolor paint in layers  for this painting and will try to do light values first and will eventually proceed to the darkest vlaue.