Watercolor Painting of a Beach Dog

I first needed to do a couple of drawing studies of this image, to think about how big I would want to paint the dog and its cast shadow, and how much space I would leave around the dog on the top, left, right, and bottom. Composition is always important, so I spend at least 15 minutes to study the drawing on white drawing paper before I mark on the watercolor paper.

The key points in the watercolor painting process are the following: when should you apply a new color, how much water saturation is in the brush, and how wet the paper should be. It is about timing. Practice will give you the experience and confidence. After you master the techniques, you will be able to freely express your design, concept, and statement that you would like to create.

In the painting process, I started with very wet-into-wet wash covering almost the entire painting area except for a white space targeted for the shapes of the dog’s head and neck. Since the body was darker than the background, I washed over the body and legs with the background color. As I washed from the top down, I added more and more red paint into the mixture, and when I reached the bottom, the color became warm purple gray.

Before I started to add some warm darker paint into the top area for some distant objects, I used a brush to lift off the excess wet paint at the bottom of the paper to avoid a run-in effect. Next, I would paint the shadow shape in the head area and the cast shadow on the ground. Then I applied the dark purple color for the body and legs. During the painting process, I sometimes paused at one area and started painting a different section, because the area was still too wet and not ready for the application.

Watercolor painting is very involved and spontaneous. You have to consistently modify the process due to the various uncertainties pertaining to the paper’s water saturation. However, we always have to keep in mind throughout the painting process what we have envisioned the final product to be. That is why watercolor painting is so challenging and fun at the same time.