Explore watercolour

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

■ Refine your watercolour technique

■ Hone your observation skills

■ Learn the properties of painting contre-jour

I will be looking at contre-jour in this, my fourth article in the series, because it throws up several issues which, if properly dealt with, will go some way towards refining and sophisticating your process. Although literally translated as ‘against day’, contre-jour is more familiar to artists when sunlight or some alternative light source is behind your subject. Painting in this way is popular, because of the type of simplified information it often presents.

The thumbnail exercise in the illustrations of the house and figures (above right) was completed to explain to a class the role of white paper in a watercolour painting, but it serves to illustrate some features of contre-jour at the same time. Under certain conditions:

Light falls strikingly on horizontal or inclined surfaces,