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Lesson Six - Painting From Within - With Watercolors

Remember that you might want to leave white paper areas when you are painting. Red is heavy and pulls down and blue is light and floats up and yellow moves around. Green is neutral and purple is made of red and blue so it stretches high and low and feels neutral too.

It's good to keep the yellow in the middle of your painting so your audience's eye does not wander off the edge. Avoid the corners with anything strong. On your dry stretched paper let some clean water drop off your brush here and there. Don't think.

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	Feel and pick your favorite color and load your brush with it. Lightly drop it into your wet areas and watch it run and spread. Paint some into your dry areas (only if you want to) Enjoy the paint color. Just allow the paint to flow like a dance with you. Clean your brush.
	Choose a new color and do the same as before, also drop some of it into the first color. Watch what it does. Does the first color push aside the second color or visa versa? Does it make gray or black? This depends on the colors you choose, of course.
	Now choose a third color and repeat above steps. And then a fourth. Drop some clean water onto the painting and watch what happens. Now drop another color and let it run together.
	You can use your pallet knife to push the paint and water around. You can pull the color here and there and by using the edge of your knife you can draw the paint into other areas of your painting.	Always think and paint in shapes
	Find the little crosses. You can paint into the opposite triangles they make. This creates tension. Lay a piece of paper over your painting to blot it and using the wrong end of a brush "draw" on the blank paper in a loose free way.
	Pull off the blank paper and lay it aside. Now look at your painting. See those lines the brush end caused. You can use them to enhance your design. Remember every time you cross lines you have a juxtaposition that can create tension and feeling of space.
	Pick up some watercolor paint with your pallet knife and paint with it. Use the edge for some sharp lines. Have fun.

Choose a color on your clean brush. Hold it near your painting and flick it, causing tiny dots of color to appear on your painting. This creates space in your painting. This adds interest because your audience's eye wants to know what those tiny spots are and that creates tension. Tension is good because it holds your audience's attention.

Every time two objects or lines almost touch tension is created. Our eye always wants order and symmetry but in order to create the tension we need in our painting we have to not have objects touch or lines that almost meet. As you carefully splash and drop paint onto your surface let yourself begin to follow the color. Is there an interesting entrance on the left side....maybe an area of color that lets your eye begin to meander into the painting. Follow along your color areas, where does your eye go next.

Your painting began from within but now you want to use a few wonderful rules to create excitement and interest. Letting your painting audience enter from the left and exit out the right is a simple rule you can break as you become smarter with this paint.

Check the consistency of your paint. Take a small hole (2" square or so) in a piece of paper, or small matt and hold it over different areas. If you find an area that is not interesting then stop right there and start thinking. How do I make this more interesting.

Perhaps by taking a bristle brush and some water you might lift the color off of an area to make a light area. It might now begin to glow from within. And let your eye follow these light areas, where do they go and what is interesting along the way. If you were painting a pot of flowers or a barn you want to examine every area this way and make sure it is all wonderful.

How's your continuity? Do the colors flow from one area to another or are they just dots everywhere. Remember the shapes you want to always create.

Do your darks flow in an interesting way? And your lights? Try this. Use tracing paper over your painting and lightly draw where the darks go, and the lights, and the different color. Now look at your tracing paper, is it interesting looking? If you look at a J. Pollock you will discover the continuity and consistency of color and design. Try the tracing paper idea over a reproduction of a Pollock or other painting in an art book.

If you will discipline yourself to paint this type of painting often then if you are really interested in painting barns, people, or flowers you will discover that you have learned many many attributes about your paints and about you and these will add great interest to your paintings. Remember that less is always more.

For more information, visit Poochie Myers in Ask for Prosperity.