Scott
Burdick
Watercolor Painting
Demonstration
I did this painting around 1990 for a show at the Palette and
Chisel in Chicago.
I'd just started doing watercolors as a break from oil painting and since
I'd never taken a formal class in watercolor I simply approached it the same
way I did with oil painting. I still generally start with my center of interest
and work my outward from there. Just as in oils, you can see I start with the
large
shapes first and then move to smaller and smaller details on top of those first,
bold strokes.
I'm just letting the background evolve as a complement to the
figure.
Rather than making the whole background dark in this case, I'm going to
let it form an abstract design to accent the form.
Once I have the figure finished, I put a final wash over the background
so it isn't so starkly white. Though this is a very old painting and not all
that
challenging from a technical standpoint, I've always liked it because of
the
mood and emotion in the girl's pose. Sometimes simple paintings like this
can have more power than something you spend weeks on.
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