Still Life Painting, My Way!

Watercolour Painting My Way :Still Life

Note from the author: Since authoring "Still Life Painting, My Way!" I have had a lot of emails, from folks all around the world thanking me for the demo. Some have asked for a line drawing. I have created a line drawing for folks who are interested in following along. It is a large image, so a good size printout is possible without becoming too pixelated.

To view the actual line drawing, follow this link, or click on the thumbnail to the right. To save it to your hard drive, SHIFT-CLICK on the link, and save it out to your PC. Enjoy!

	Set up the still life study outside in the sun. Background and base are pieces of masking board. Adjust items for best composition and then photograph using a digital camera. You could use a normal camera and have the photo scanned at your local photo shop.
	Using your computer image software, first crop the image and then adjust contrast/brightness to give a faded image. When printed in mono this will use far less ink.
	Set up your printer to the size required for your watercolor paper you normally use. Mine is set to 34cms wide and 31cms high. As this is larger than A4 the poster and smooth resize will need to be ticked. Set to mono , we do not need a color print.
	This is the output from the printer. Four sheets of paper with image divided between them.
	We now trim and paste together.
	Glued and lined up, repeat and trim all four ready for tracing.
	I use "Graphite Transfer paper" which should be available from your local art shop. If not cover the back of the printed sheet with soft lead pencil or charcoal pencil. Then drawn around outlines you want transferred to your watercolor paper. Don't press too hard or you will damage the paper!
	Here is the transferred image on "Saunders 300gm Not" paper stretched and held with gummed paper strip. We are now ready to start painting.We have our sketch and the original image can be displayed on the computer while we are painting. This has the advantage that you can now eat the apples while painting.

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