Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Onion Experiment



This is another of my "spearmints". I have done a set up of some beautiful red and yellow onions I bought, two of them are red onions, the others yellow. I have them drawn alike on two pieces of watercolor paper. For this one I am doing a sepia underpainting and will add the appropriate colors on top of the underpainting. The second painting I will just paint directly in the colors, with no underpainting. I want to see how much vibrancy I lose, if any, by using the underpainting method. I find myself drawn to doing these value studies as underpaintings so I want to see how much it affects the final painting. Stay tuned for the results!

5 comments:

Vicki Greene said...

I will be very interested in the results too. Good start.

Watercolors by Susan Roper said...

Thanks, Vicki...I am liking the results of this one so far, but decided to try glazing colors on and I think that won't be a true test of vibrancy when over the sepia underpainting. But, I like the concept of doing it this way and will continue on this afternoon. I'll post whatever I end up with tonight. For the second one of these I will just paint directly onto the paper with juicy but rich colors like Carl Purcell does and compare those results.

Kari Gibson said...

It will be interesting to see what the two look like side by side. An interesting spearmint!

Watercolors by Susan Roper said...

Thanks Kari. There is still lots to do on the first one, so we may have to wait awhile to see that side-by-side!

RH Carpenter said...

You have a beautiful start, Susan. Glad I have time to check out some of my favorite blogs today :) - will have to look back to see what you mean by "spear mint" - d'uh!!! - in typing it out, I just got it! ha ha