Adding a background to a wildlife watercolor painting can significantly enhance the overall composition, bringing depth and context to the animal subject. There are two common approaches to doing this: painting the background before or after the animal. Both methods can yield beautiful results, but they require different techniques and considerations. Let's explore both:
Heres a quick video and refresher in painting the subject.
Adding the Background After the Animal:
Painting the background after the animal allows you to focus first on the detailed rendering of the wildlife, with less concern for masking or protecting the subject early on.
Techniques:
Negative Painting: This involves painting around the animal, carefully filling in the spaces to create the illusion of a background. It's useful for keeping your animal the focal point, but requires careful attention to avoid hard edges or overworking the painting.
Example: After painting a deer, you could use negative painting to add forest elements around it. This technique would allow the animal to stay crisp and in focus, while the background recedes.
Spattering/Sprinkling: To add texture and randomness to your background, you can use a spatter technique. Load a brush with pigment, then tap or flick it to create a spatter effect. This works well for foliage, gravel, or atmospheric effects like dust or snow.
Example: For a bird on the ground, you might spatter brown and green tones around it to suggest leaves and earth, helping to anchor the animal in its environment.
Dry Brush Technique: For creating texture in a background, especially when adding grasses, bark, or distant foliage, the dry brush technique works wonders. With very little water on your brush, apply quick strokes to create rough textures.
Example: If you've painted a fox and want to place it in a grassy field, you could use a dry brush with shades of green and yellow to give the impression of tall, windblown grass.
Adding the Background Before the Animal:
This approach ensures that the background feels integrated with the overall painting, blending naturally with the animal.
Techniques:
Wet-on-Wet: Start by lightly wetting the background area with clean water. Then, drop in diluted washes of color to create a soft, blurry backdrop. This is especially effective for creating distant trees, foliage, or atmospheric effects like mist. The wet paper allows the pigments to spread and merge without hard edges, resulting in a soft-focus look.
Example: Imagine painting a fox in a misty forest. Before painting the fox, you could use soft greens and browns to create an abstracted tree line in the distance, allowing the pigments to blend and blur.
Layering/Glazing: You can build up layers of color gradually, starting with light washes and adding deeper tones in subsequent layers. The transparency of watercolor lends itself well to this. You can add more detailed elements (like plants or branches) by using a dryer brush technique as you build up the layers.
Example: If you were painting a bird perched on a branch, you could paint the sky and distant foliage in a light wash first, building up to more defined shapes as the paper dries.
Masking Fluid: To protect the area where the animal will be, you can apply masking fluid before starting the background. This allows you to freely paint the background, then remove the masking fluid and work on the animal separately. It’s ideal when you want crisp edges around your animal.
Example: If you're painting an owl in front of a night sky, masking the owl while you paint a graded wash for the sky could keep the edges clean while you work on the rest of the background.
Considerations for Each Method:
Before the Animal:
The background will have a soft, unified look since it will blend more naturally into the subject.
Easier to create atmospheric effects like fog or distant backgrounds.
Requires planning to ensure the animal is well-positioned and protected.
After the Animal:
The animal can be painted with more attention to detail, and you don’t need to worry about affecting the background during its creation.
Background elements can be adjusted to complement the animal's pose and expression.
Risk of the background feeling too “separate” if the integration is not carefully handled.
Techniques That Work Well for Wildlife Backgrounds:
Variegated Washes: These are great for creating gradient skies, water reflections, or soft environments like fields or meadows.
Sponging: Using a natural sponge to apply paint can give a random, organic texture perfect for creating foliage or rough landscapes.
Lifting: After applying a wash, you can lift out areas of paint using a dry brush or tissue to create highlights, clouds, or the suggestion of light breaking through trees.
*All this being said please know that these are just thoughts and suggestions to consider paintings often come together in unexpected ways, so go with the flow. Combining techniques based on your subject and background can help you create a cohesive, harmonious painting that enhances the natural beauty of the wildlife.
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