Alla Prima Watercolor Tutorial

I have been a silent fan of Tiffany Varga for a long time. Recently I saw this tutorial that she posted on Youtube. It's amazing and a style that I need to practice. She has a number of other video tutorials that one can find through the "Video" page on her website.




I also found a three video lecture series that Tiffany has posted, below is part one...



This post was particularly enlightening. Tiffany explained a concept that I have never heard of before.  She was introduced to the concept herself apparently after art school while reading a book by Richard Schmid entitled "Alla Prima".  The concept is basically conserving value by turning the form with color, which in the process also maximizes the readability of the piece.  If that makes absolutely no sense, watch this video and you'll totally get it.

Thanks for posting Tiffany!

Session 7 - Opening the Palette

Last week I felt really constrained sticking to two colors, but this week when I had four colors to work with, yikes! I was wishing for just two.

I'm not as happy with this painting as the first, especially the grass, but it was a great exercise.

Session 6 - Two color watercolor study

Helga P has inspired me to get going on my homework for our online class How To Be A Children's Book Illustrator. So thanks Helga! Here is my homework for this week. I am going to try and keep up with Helga who is apparently very dedicated to getting her assignments done weekly.

Painting an image using only two colors was a fun exercise. I loved the process of mixing the two colors to get the color and the tone I needed.