Final Landscape Watercolor 

Purpose:

• To demonstrate your learning about watercolor properties and techniques;

• To use knowledge of landscape perspective strategies to show depth on a 2D surface;

• To create a final watercolor landscape, using a landscape photograph for reference.

Responses: 

I have learned many things from this unit. One thing I learned is to make sure that you go very very light at first, and then slowly get darker from there, if you do this then you will never have the problem of making something too dark. Another thing that I learned is to pay really close attention to lighting and where the shadows are cast. This made a huge difference and added much more value to my painting. One last thing that I learned as a result of this unit is the importance of different brush techniques, if you incorporate multiple techniques your painting will have much more depth and detail. In my very first practice, I used the same brush strokes on everything. When I moved onto my final I used more variety in brush size and used almost all of the different techniques that we made on our tester. 

I used many different kinds of brushwork/blending techniques to create depth and texture in my painting. Something that worked really well was to paint lightly in the background, and darker in the foreground, this gives it the illusion of what is close and what is far. I dabbed my trees and ground and created dots. When I held my paintbrush upward, this gave a super cool texture to my painting. I also blended stuff more in the background to create a blurry effect, giving it the illusion that it was farther away. 

One unexpected challenge that I faced was the struggle to paint my sky and make sure the colors didn’t mix but still had the ombre effect. To approach this challenge, I made sure each coat was fully dry before starting on the next, and so on. Another challenge I faced was to try to create a path but not make the lines so intense. To approach this, I created small dots all over the ground (leaves), and made them somewhat in the shape of a path. Once I finished this, you could tell there was a path but it was very subtle and just what I wanted. 

Planning: