Earlier this week I did this watercolor work from one my photographs of a hill station tea garden that I had travelled to last year. I decided to take a video of the process while doing my work for my art students since I am teaching them the watercolor techniques at present. Uploaded it in Youtube for ease of access. You can access it here below.
Creating the composition of ones choice is of prime importance when drawing from an image – the idea being not to replicate everything that one sees. One needs to let go of many things and focus only on a few forms. How much to retain and let go is a judgment call that gets better with time and practice.
I did this work mostly on wet & wet as you can see from the painting. There is a lyrical quality to watercolor works that attracts ones attention. I started by wetting the paper and then doing the background. And then proceeded on to doing the foreground, adding details as I went.
I used Fabriano artistico 100% cotton, cold pressed paper and used senelier watercolors and also some camel artist watercolors for the work.
a pencil sketch prior to the painting
the original ref pic that I had clicked
