Watercolor Silhouettes : Puzzling out a Painting

Here’s a couple of simple silhouettes, captured on a spectacular day of sun in a month of spring rain.

The great thing about painting – you’re always evolving. No matter what your level as an artist – you can (should?) always have an inspirational goal. Some skill or philosophy on the horizon.

This season, I want to double down on the use of silhouettes.

My painting has always been a bit ‘unfinished’ – (intentionally :) – with a lot of negative space, and places that show the drawing. I like it that way. I’m not after an overly polished look.

But as well, it’s an artifact of the way I draw – sketching contours in line, then looking for the shapes of cast shadows.

One way to counter any tendency towards jumpy/patchy/uneven structures – is to look for back-lit situations.

What the Plein-Air painters call Contra Jour – or Against the Day.

Position yourself with the sun behind the subject – and the silhouette is spelled out for you, clearly visible against the sky.

In a more complicated scene, you can have fun welding one silhouette to the next, making an entire street into a fused shape. I tend to march across the painting working left to right with light values, then sweeping back over top with darks.

I want to occasionally touch wet edges, so some shapes leak into their neighbor. Making linkages to avoid any isolated objects floating in space.

If it’s a dry day (or you’re in the full sun), it helps to work briskly – keeping up with the wet paint – but not so fast you can’t control your brushwork.

At the end of the sketch, I’m trying for the feeling of a single silhouette that’s built out of colored blocks – fit tightly together like a puzzle.

Someday soon I’ll have some video for you, so you can see the shape welding step-by-step. But it’s not that hard – remember: Larger-to-Smaller, Lighter-to-Darker and you won’t go far wrong.

~m