John Keepax

Watercolor Realism Techniques

Learn the steps and techniques I use to create realistic watercolor paintings.

Choosing, cropping/composing you reference image. Different techniques of transferring you image to the paper. Picking your paints based on your image. The order that I typically paint my subjects.

We will explore wet into wet, wet on dry, glazing/layering, hard and soft edges and various methods of protecting the white of the paper. How to avoid muddy color and achieve vibrant colors.

I will show some of my work and discuss what I wanted to achieve, the techniques that were used and why, as well as the problems that had to be overcome.

Materials:

Two 1/4 sheets of paper: one loose the second sheet on a block, or stretched on a board.

Any professional brand of watercolor paints will be fine. I use a mix of Winsor & Newton, Daniel Smith and Holbein paints. Bring the paints that you usually use, .

I use small, and medium round brushes, both synthetic and natural for the bulk of my paintings. I also use a few different sized squirrel hair mops for any large areas I need to fill.

My larger paintings are on heavy 300 lb paper. I use 140 lb paper for smaller pieces. I prefer 100% cold press cotton paper like Arches or Fabriano.

A mixing palette with several wells. I also use a few small flower palettes if I need more wells.

Paper towel and masking tape.

A drawing reference and a tracing of the drawing will be provided.

Artworks Associates
4160 SW 74th CT, Suite 207, Miami, Fl 33155
Time: 9:30 am – 4:30 pm (1-hr lunch break)