Sunday, 01-Apr-12 22:39:00 CEST

Aquarelle Secret Number One!

I made this small aquarelle at the end of a really difficult theme evening about café interior views of Aquarelmere. After I finished or rather gave up on the manneken pis tavern aquarelle a painter colleague handed me a photo from a glossy magazine, Douglas. It was a magazine about perfume maybe. I only got this page. It was page 48 from “The Foundation Files, Douglas 01/2012”. A large part of the page displayed a portrait of a woman. I suppose she was treated well by a makeup artist because she had a nice and smooth looking skin.

Anyway it was not the foundation that had been used here that I was interested in but the general look of this portrait. I had twenty minutes left to draw and paint.

I had no time left for fancy strategies so it was just about get it done with. Sometimes, actually many times, that is the moments when I achieve really good result.

When I see this painting it feels like a pivotal moment. I cannot put a finger on it exactly what it is but I think that the best description of the feeling is something like “yes, this is what I wanted to achieve”. I know for sure that this painting is inspired by Charles Reid’s aquarelle painting portraits. I have a book of Charles Reid and I have been reading it but I cannot get to do exactly as he is doing but his methods are interesting.

One important secret for making successful aquarelle paintings that I can give you is that you need to achieve plenty of contrast when you paint aquarelle paintings. If you are unsure what I mean then you can make a photo of your own paintings and see how the paintings look on the computer screen. A normal digital compact camera is taught to add contrast if this was missing and when you see the photo of the painting on the screen then normally you get a nice aha about what you should have added yourself. When you learn this then your paintings are already so much better!