So I decided to make each Weds a "Walk-through Weds" post where I'll post up my steps taken before finishing a final painting :)

For today's walk through, I'm going to show you how I painted "Sunshine"

Let's begin! 

Step One:

Always start with a concept doodle/sketch. I usually like to lay out my colors and rough sketch the idea in my journal before working on canvas, aquabord, or expensive watercolor paper. This phase can take anywhere from 5min-15mins and shouldn't be a finished piece.  As with any of my artwork, I always  work with layers of paint or color so it's important to get the under-painting color planned out here too. I'll elaborate more on layers in artwork in another post.

Step Two:

Paint the very first layer and gradually build up the intensity of your colors. You want to start light with watercolors because it's easier to lift out paint later on than to scrub a painting if it becomes too saturated or dark. Obviously, my step one to two looks vastly different but hopefully I can capture more work in progress images for these posts at a later time. I apologize if it looks like too much is lost between these two...

Step Three:

I continued to layer on more yellow, some red and hints of Gamboge mixed with Azo yellow. I strongly recommend using transparent paints because then your textures and brushstrokes will still be seen after many layers of paint. Honestly, I thought this piece was done by now but looking back at it...it was too yellow. So I began to fiddle with it some more to further enhance the orange paint by applying more red.

Step Four:

The speckled texture I had in the previous painting was great but it didn't seem right for an orange. I added more Napthol Red to the overall painting and darkened the leaf and stem with the same red to neutralize the saturation. It looked too cartoony to me in Step Three so I also added more yellow to the leaf to tone down the brightness. This was the final result but I still often compare how the final result to how it looked back in step three.

Let me know in the comments below if you prefer the "before" or "after" result for this piece. Join me every wednesday for a new walk-through! Thanks for reading :)