Help?

[gumbogumbo]

This is really incomplete but I have no idea what to add to it. Any advice?



I don’t know how to add watercolor detail :(

Comments

[armaina]

I don't really have a lot of advice for watercolor in this style as I've only ever used it with lineart, since watercolor works very well with something else providing the details (pastels, colored pencils, ink) but I'm also gonna point out you might wanna put a thumbnail version of this image or put the image under a cut.

[gumbogumbo]

Oh, I didn’t think of putting it under a cut, thanks :)

[gumbogumbo]

I’m only on mobile I didn’t know how big the image was (also I’m struggling to cut it)

[blackmare]

Reflected shape of one or more birds on the water?

[dray]

I'm deffo not a watercolour pro, but I suspect that since you have such rich colours already laid down, a combination of black pen and white gel pen would do really well to work details in here.

Unfortunately, I believe it's hard to work back to pale once you've added a lot of colour, and watercolour does not allow you to blend too much before the colours start to get muddy. You could try taking a dry, very fine brush, using some very undiluted paint to get a hit of pure colour for details, but I think what this piece might need is some cohesian of colour palette, and perhaps some way to help give depth of field. Generally, when something is very close, it has a more chromatic look than something further away. (This is atmospheric perspective) -- Since your piece has really bright colours in the middle ground and paler, less saturate greens and yellows on the right hand side, I don't know if that is going to work.

...You could take a wash of acrylic or gouache white (and I mean fairly watered down) over the background behind the lake shore, and then re-work a little colour back in overtop, but beware muddying the painting by adding too much.

As for cohesion of colour palette, I think you're most of the way there. Are you working from a reference? I'd be curious to see what the photo (or photos) are, as I'm not quite able to think out how I'd pull this one together. I think this piece might lack a focal point--unless you mean it to be the tree towards the center of the painting, and its reflection? Whatever focal point you choose, you could pump up the saturation and detail of that area and let the rest be less detailed, and that might also solve the colour cohesion concern... Looking at it some more, I think it's less cohesion of colour (it's really well distributed, the warms and greens and cools) it's just that the saturation of the entire shoreline competes and makes it difficult to tell where the focal point is.

...I really rambled, sorry! I hope some of this was helpful.