Beginning Watercolor Project April 13

INSTRUCTIONS FOR JOYE MOON’S PROJECT USING SHAPES

Credit for this project goes to Joye Moon. In her book, Exploring Textures in Watercolor, Joye Moon shows this project and many more in an easy to understand format.

1. Draw shapes on your paper, making them overlap and creating new shapes. Use circles, squares, triangles, etc. Make sure you have some large, some medium, and some small shapes.

2. Wet a larger shape with water. Charge in a primary 

color along the edges, allowing it to bleed into the 

center, leaving the center mostly white and creating 

variations of the shade. Repeat this with the other two

primary colors on two other larger shapes. This created 

a “modeled” shape that gives the illusion of volume,

 instead of looking flat.

The edges that you create on the outer part of the shape

is a "hard edge. It defines a shape. The soft parts on

the inside are "soft edges," sometimes called "lost edges."

3. Try some with putting red in one corner, 

blue in another, and yellow in another. Notice the 

beautiful neutrals this creates.

4. Choose three other shapes. In each of those, wet each shape, one at a time. Put one primary color at one corner and another primary color at another edge. Allow the colors to co-mingle on the wet surface to create greens, violets, and oranges. Be sure that you paint only next to an edge that is dried.

 5. Combine complimentary colors to make a variety of neutrals and grays. Again, wet a shape. Put one color in part of the shape and add its compliment at another, allowing them to mix. (blue/orange; yellow/purple; red/green


6. The rest of the shapes are painted “flat,” without wetting the paper first. Try to find sections where you can add an analogous (or neighboring) color. For example, put a red near an orange or purple.

7. Leave some of the shapes as unpainted spaces to create a more interesting design.

 TERMS and subjects covered

Wet-into-wet              primary colors         painting only on very wet or very dry paper

Charging                     mixing colors          using the largest brush that will do the job

Neutrals                      painting only on very wet or very dry surfaces

Hard edges                  soft edges

Hope you enjoyed this introduction to water color!