John Singer Sargent had an eventful life as an artist. He was an incredibly successful and famous painter, mostly recognized for his portraits. He was a very productive artist, creating more than 2000 watercolors and 900 oil paintings. John Singer’s watercolor paintings were often inspired from the landscapes that he lived in. He was quite the traveler having lived in England, Italy, France & the United States. This plethora of diverse environments filled him with inspiring subjects and landscapes to paint from.
How did John Singer achieve such brightly lit water color paintings? He used precision, gouache and wax resist to help him brighten certain areas in his paintings.
Wax resist or adding gouache consists on applying wax on the paper in areas where you would not want the water color painting to sip into. This leaves the natural bright color of the paper to act as highlight!
Today, you can use masking tape or even better, masking fluid to help you with this technique!
He was an intensely committed artist. He would often times spend the whole day producing art. The yellow tint is this piece is darkened with ochre tones and purple tones. Purple is the complementary color of yellow and this is a great trick to enhance shadows and keep the temperature of the piece feeling alive. He placed the right tones in the right places. In order to accentuate light, he would place sharp dark areas next to bright ones. You don’t always need to blend your areas!
John Singer Sargent worked with watercolor in a way that truly brought life to the medium. One can learn so much just by gazing at a few of his pieces for a few minutes. We hope that this article, but mostly his pieces, brought you some inspiration & lessons.
Thank you for reading.
