Using Glazes to Finish the Background - Painting and Drawing Tips

Do you play the slot machines?  

Drop in the money, pull the handle, Bing! Bang! Boom! you win or lose.  You're Done! No second chance, everything happens in that one pull.

Golden Finch & Apple Blossoms - 10 x 8 watercolour on wood cradle $200 

Of course you are going to tell me that you can always pull again. But, that is with new money.  Things are different.  

Glazing with watercolour is just like your Slot Machine . . .

You only get one chance.  One pull with the brush, then you have to leave it.  That is the hardest thing because believe me.  It. Is. So. Easy. To. Fiddle.  You know what I mean.  Run over it again with the brush.  Dab a bit.  You know, Fiddle.  

What is glazing with watercolour?

Glazing is putting an overlay of watercolour onto colour that is already dry on the paper.  Thus allowing the colour underneath to show through.  

Why would you want to glaze over a colour?

There are many reasons:

1. to adjust the value by making the area darker

2. to modify the colour of an area

3. to give richness to an area as both the top colour and the colour underneath will show. 
4. to build on the illusion of depth (very useful in backgrounds)

Things to think about as you glaze
1.  The painted surface must be dry and paint set so you do not mix it into the new layer you are adding.  If you do, you lose that transparency look you're looking for. And worst you might end up with mud.
2.  To get a true transparent look you need to use transparent watercolours.
3.  Your glazing layer should be thin to keep it transparent so you will be doing multiple layers. Each layer must be dry before adding the next layer.  (see note #1)  Check for dryness by touching paper, if cool it is still wet.  I generally use 3 or 4 layers but some places may take more. 
4. Use soft brushes as a stiff brush many lift colour and leave brush lines
5.  The colour layer you are adding will change the colour layer underneath so you may want to have a test sheet handy to see what will happen. 
6. Watercolour dries lighter than it looks when applied. 

Want to see what glazing can do? . . .
Below is my Golden Finch & Apple Blossoms.  At the left is my picture at the starting point. I used frisket to protect my mid-ground and foreground areas as I applied the background wash.  (see post of Saving Whites )  I then removed the frisket and painted the mid-ground and foreground.  This is where the glazing happened as I made changes to the background.  In some areas I wanted to darken it alot, as you can see with the leafy area in the bottom right hand corner. That took several layers.  Can't say how many as I lost count.  I just kept letting it dry, checking the value and adding more.  

Not the difference in the background areas when I made adjustments with glazes.  

In other areas I added only a light glaze.  Note the suggested flowers in the background.  One is just to the left of the bird.  Those suggested blooms did not look like they were in the distance, they were too bright.  A thin glaze of purple set them back.  

Glazes can make a Big Change  . . 

There were two areas where I made the big changes in my picture.  One was the areas glazed with Winsor Blue - Green Shade (WB).  That was not one of my original colours.  I was just going to use Ultramarine however, I found that did not add enough zip to my picture.  (Remember that post last month on Visual Complements)  I tried glazing with a bit of WB and really liked how my yellow started to sparkle.  You can see in the picture how much it not only darkened but added life to the greens.  

The other change was in the bottom left corner where I used Permanent Rose as a glaze.  Here I created a leaf shadow.  I left the edge a bit rough to really make it 'leaf like'.  This seemed to subtly add another layer to my background. I really liked that. 

Interested in playing with glazes a bit more? 
Next post is glazing with hard and soft edges - step by step.  Are you a glazer too?  I love the mix of glazing and opaque colour to create my wildlife paintings.  

This little paint is a watercolour painting which I have mounted on a wood cradle .  Here is a side view.  (To see mounting watercolour paper on a wood cradle and paint techniques )

GOLDEN FINCH & APPLE BLOSSOMS - 10 X 8 inch watercolour on wood cradle $200

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Artists reading this post also find the following valuable:

Matching Colours to Values here
Playing with a Very Limited Watercolour Palette here
3 Ways to Turn Drawing Despair into Action here

How to Find your Starting Point here

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Wendy