Creating soft backgrounds in watercolour
Watercolours - so beautiful and frustrating in equal measure or is it just me?
I will always love watercolour for its ability to look like no effort went into the creation but have pitched more paintings across my studio than I care to remember as they can be SO frustrating. What about you? Do you find the same?
The theme I am tackling this month is studies of fruit and flowers so it’s inevitable that we need to talk about backgrounds too. I like my backgrounds to have soft edges, what I call a ‘vignette’, which I pronounce ‘vin-yet’ but I understand how difficult they can be. Getting the amount of water, colour and choice of paper combined can be tricky so I thought it might be useful to demonstrate my thought process and see if helps.
I hope that what I share with you today is useful, do let me know what else you would like to see me discuss and keep scrolling for news about new tutorials, there’s a poll over on my social media channels asking what you would like answered in 2025, you can find it HERE in my Facebook group (you may want to join) so do feel free to get involved and have your say, I look forward to reading the suggestions.
After the broadcast has gone live you will be able to watch it back below, leave me a question in the comments either here or on YouTube and I will look forward to you all joining in, in the future, Ali
Products used in this video:
Millford pad
Collapsible Water Pot
Ali’s watercolour collection
Watercolour tin
Empty Pans
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