Anna Mason's Watercolour World

Create Vibrant, Realistic Paintings Inspired by Nature

Anna Mason

• Publisher: Search Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781782213475
• eBook ISBN: 9781781263938
• Topic: Kunst
• Subtopic: Kunst Allgemein

Learn to find inspiration, plan your approach, and create stunning watercolour paintings inspired by the natural world.
Anna's vibrant, detailed and uplifting watercolours have earned her worldwide recognition. In this, her second book, she goes beyond flowers to explore her inspirations from across the natural world, including fruit, birds and animals. The book gives you a very personal insight into Anna's way of working; with clarity and warmth she will help you find inspiration, choose scale and composition, see things correctly and work with discipline and flow until you produce fabulous work of your own.
Packed with advice and inspiring finished pieces, this gorgeous book guides the reader through Anna's method of working with a variety of beautiful step-by-step projects and exercises. It is suitable for beginners or for more experienced artists looking to refine their style or try some new techniques.
"This book is glorious in every sense, from the beautiful cover to the absolutely stunning paintings throughout the book, this is something to bring joy on the dullest of days. . . . This beautiful book is packed full of helpful advice, how to garden, how to photograph, and how to paint from those photographs, how to understand colour, form and texture." —My Creative Notebook
"This engaging guide to painting a wide variety of natural subjects is packed with information and inspiration. . . . This is an intriguing, enthralling and thoroughly enjoyable book." — The SAA Catalogue

The Projects

These four projects cover a full range of brush techniques. I recommend you attempt them in order as each one is a little more complex than the last. For each one you’ll get a pencil drawing to trace (found on pages 140–143) and a colour photograph to refer to at the beginning of the project. I then walk you through each step of the painting. I show you how it fits within the five key stages of the method (see page 49), describe what you need to do in terms of brush technique and show you an example of the mix you’ll need to make. Each step includes a picture of my painting at this point so that you know what you’re aiming for, and often you’ll also be shown a black-and-white version of the photograph (referred to as a ‘guide image’) with the areas you need to focus on highlighted in pink. Be kind to yourself with these projects. Try not to expect perfection, though I think you may surprise yourself with the results! See my website for video clips relating to these projects.

BLACKBERRY

Enlarging this simple blackberry reveals a world of detail. There are fairly limited hues, which makes it a great subject to start with if you’re new to my method. But in terms of tone, there’s plenty of variation, from the lightest highlights through to the super-dark crevices between segments. Getting these highlights looking right, and in the correct places, is what will give the berry its lovely three-dimensional form.

Paints

• Burnt Sienna

• Payne’s Gray

• Permanent Carmine (can use Permanent Alizarin Crimson to substitute)

• Winsor Lemon

(The colours listed are Winsor & Newton; for alternatives, see my website.)

Pencil drawing

As well as the edges of the segments and the stem, we need to draw in the shapes of darkest colour and also the shapes of highlight. The highlights don’t always have neat straight edges to them; instead, the transition from highlight to surrounding darker area is textured, which we need to reflect in our drawing by creating a jagged rather than smooth line (see page 53). You can trace from the drawing provided on page 140.

Whole painting

Method stage: 1 Lightest tones

Payne’s Gray with a touch of Burnt Sienna: super-watery consistency

If we look closely for the lightest areas, we can see that right at the edges of the segments there’s a very pale reflection. The colour there is a touch darker than our paper colour and is a very pale grey. To match to this, mix Payne’s Gray with a touch of Burnt Sienna and masses of water to create the lightest mix you can manage while still seeing a hint of colour. Apply with a wash all over the berry, except for some of the pink and brown coloured tips to the segments. Leave those for now and paint around them. Everywhere else, this pale colour can sit underneath the darker colours that will need to go on top, without creating any visual mixing problems on the paper.

Use a size 5 brush and apply the paint to a segment at a time, using brush strokes that curve with the form of each segment. That way, when you do get unwanted hard-line edges as the paint you’re applying overlaps, the lines will be in directions that help to create a sense of the rounded form.

Method stage: 1 Lightest tones, pink hues

Before we work on the berry any further, let’s paint the lightest tones in the rest of the subject that are different hues, beginning with the pink hues (see guide image, below). Create a super-watery mix of Permanent Carmine with a touch of Burnt Sienna. Make sure the grey paint is dry and use a size 1 brush to apply the watery mix onto those areas where you see it – you can use the tip of the brush to create a few dots and lines where you see this hue within a segment.

Permanent Carmine with a touch of Burnt Sienna: super-watery consistency

Method stage: 1 Lightest tones, green hues

With a size 1 brush, mix some Winsor Lemon, a touch of Burnt Sienna and just a tiny hint of Payne’s Gray. As with the other colours, this can be applied into areas that are this hue and tone or darker – so can be applied anywhere you can see this slightly greenish hue.

Winsor Lemon, a touch of Burnt Sienna and a tiny hint of Payne’s Gray: super-watery consistency

Method stage: 1 Lightest tones, brown hues

70% Burnt Sienna and 30% Payne’s Gray: watery to milky consistency

Many of the browns in the stem and sepals are quite dark, but there are some lighter brown colours there too. So for now, create a mix of about 70% Burnt Sienna to 30% Payne’s Gray and take it a little less watery than the grey mix we created before on page 73: making it a watery to milky consistency.

Apply with the size 1 brush in lots of little lines where you see a rougher, more hairy visual texture. Apply wherever you identify a brown hue – even into the areas of brown which will need to be much darker.

By the end of this sta...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Welcome to my world
• How I got here
• The Inspiration
• The Approach
• The Painting Method
• The Projects
• Keys to Improving
• Backcover