Watercolor Studio - Missouri Watercolor Society

Make Your Paintings Pop
With Strong Values
by Debi Watson
This scene was from Myrtle Beach, S.C. I’m an early riser and was up with my camera and coffee before
dawn. I had to lay down in the sand and wait for the sun to get this angle. Several joggers eyed me curiously
as they went by. I think they thought I’d slept on the beach, but I wasn’t a vagrant, just an artist, looking for my
own unique point of view.
For this painting, I drew right on my 300 lb. cold-pressed Arches paper. (Often I blow up my photographs on
my computer to the size I want and transfer the image to my paper with saral graphite paper, but I made so
many changes in this photo, I had to draw it.) My palette consisted of quinacridone gold, quinacridone burnt
sienna, cobalt blue and my own black, which I mix with raw umber violet and thalo (Joe’s) blue, using Cheap
Joe’s American Journey paints.
1. Initially, I put a wash of the gold touched
with the burnt sienna down on everything but
where the waves would be. When that was dry,
I painted in the pier, using my black, the cobalt
and burnt sienna. Establishing my darks early
in the painting helps me to judge all the other
values. The raw umber violet, thalo blue mixture
make a rich, glowing dark that can easily be
made warm or cool.
2. Next, I started putting in some of the darkest
reflections and shadows in the waves.
For the shadows, I mixed the cobalt blue with
the black.
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