Banff Springs Hotel
Watercolour, and crayon
©2014 Charlene Brown
My first impression of red underpaintings
was that they were something of a make-work project for artists working with
oils or acrylics. But then I noticed that there are wonderful effects to be
achieved by leaving just the right flashes of an underpainting exposed, and of
course, I wanted to try one.
As this technique is not really open to watercolour painters, I decided to try something that might simulate the result… Starting by drawing the picture in a complementary-coloured wax (paint-resisting) crayon. Given the colours I planned to use to complete the painting, orange seemed like a better choice than red for the fake underpainting, and Banff Springs Hotel is the result.
