Yes to Class at the Civic Center in Libertyville  August 27th from 1pm to 3:30pm

When an artist starts a painting they usually start on a blank white surface and they have to fool the eyes of the viewer that there is a dimension in that flat surface. one of the easiest ways to show that there is something in the distance is to blur it out and give it a soft edge making it look like it is out of focus. 

 

A lot of watercolorists don't use this technique of blurring the edges of things because it is a very hard thing to do in watercolor. To get a blurred soft edge in watercolor you have to wet the surface first and paint into that wet surface and create the soft-edged shape you want and controlling how far that soft edge will bleed is a very challenging way to paint. If you practice painting wet-into-wet after time you start getting really good at controlling your washes and soft edges.

Cameras these days are so good and take shots where everything is in focus and that is because their depth of field is huge and puts everything into focus. Things in the distance seem as close as objects up close. As an artist, we want to use that field of depth to control the image in back to stay back there which means it should be out of focus or at least have less contrast and less vibrant colors.

 

With this image below it started out with everything being in focus and all the values being very close together. To make it more dimensional one needs to create large patterns of light and dark to create depth. 

See below how I took the background and blurred it and I also gave it less contrast from the foreground. I darkened the foreground so it would stay forward and the lights in the back stayed back, giving the whole image a better value pattern which gives it a lot more dimension.

Blurring a background is an easy way to show dimension, so start to practice learning how to control a wet-into-wet wash.