Suggesting Water and Reflections

Andy Braitman demonstrates how to suggest water and reflections with wet-on-wet painting in oils.

1. Mix the color for the water:

a. Start with Van Gogh Violet + a mixed white + Old Holland Green Umber = beautiful gray tone

b. Make a lighter version of the gray by adding more mixed white

c. Do not overly mix your grays!Using the same wash brush as in the previous lessons, Andy starts with the lighter version of the gray at the farthest point of the water and as he comes forward he switches to using the more intense violet color

2. Andy uses a lot of paint with long horizontal strokes to suggest water

3. Once he has the water blocked in at the edge of the bank, he then scoops up some of the water color with a paint scraper and puts it on the wet paint of the trees above

4. Next, he scoops up some paint from the wet tree mass and reflects it vertically down in the water

5. At the end, he mixes any excess paint he has with more Liquin and slings it across his canvas. This avoids too much control in our paintings and allows for the beauty of some chaos!