Fish Creek Cottage Demo

Fish Creek Cottage: Demonstration of Outline – Refine – Define

In an effort to help my watercolor students loosen up and get a little more bold with their initial applications of paint, I worked this demonstration.

I started with a 16 x 20 block of watercolor paper. I created the drawings side-by-side. The fun and yet tough part of this was to apply my first, or “Outline” phase in the same manner to each of the two designs. That is to say, I worked to get both sides of this work as similar as possible. With watercolor, you will never get the same results twice, but it is still a fun challenge. When this “Outline” phase was completed and dried, I  selected the painting on the right side to use for my “Refine” and “Define” stages. This enabled the students to better understand the steps necessary to create their paintings. It also helps them to see how they can go a little more bold with their initial washes of paint to help keep their finished works fresher and a little less muddy.