I am about to send this painting to my new friend Clair Quist. He was the wise, funny, capable, patient, helpful, sweet natured man who, along with his swamper Simone and their friend Cody, safely (yet thrillingly) navigated our 35' raft 222 miles down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. What a thrill and a joy it was for Tom and I to make this trip with these lovely people.
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This is the finished 12" x 16" watercolor painting and here's how I did it:
I made a fairly detailed drawing on 140# Arches and then used resist to hold a few of the white areas in the brim of the hat and around the mustache.
I laid in the background wet in wet in light values.
Next I laid in the initial washes in the figure.
Here I have begun to add some of the mid and dark values and suggested his eyes behind the tinted glasses. I rubbed off the resist and softened some of the lines it had left.
Finally I added a little more interest in the background and added the all important hat strings...no hat strings, no hat! If you click on the picture to see the detail you will see that I had to enlarge the glasses and then I put some warm colors in his skin tones with colored pencil. I wasn't able to add more washes to his face with watercolor because the earlier washes were lifting off the paper.