Hello all,

I was wondering if you have any tips or tricks on how to do rocks in watercolour. Mine seem to end up being blobs. Any advice highly appreciated.

Thanks very much in advance

Dana

Hello Dana! Depending upon what kind of rocks you want to paint, try the following and see what you get;
Using a suitable colour (try Cobalt Blue and Burnt Sienna to achive a neutral grey), paint in the rock as a solid colour, then carefully and lightly scrape over the grey with the flat edge of a Palette Knife or (with great care!) an old razor blade.
Try to decide where you want the light to come from, and lightly scrape on this part to get a better 3 dimentional effect, leaving the darker shadow area as solid.
You'll find that the texture of the paper will affect this, but a rough watercolour paper (try it on SAA Practice Watercolour Paper - Rough) will give a better result.
You can practice with different pressure and different colours, but this should give you a good starting point, to inspire you to have a go.
Best wishes,
Steve Williams
RSC
PS Let me know how you get on.

Thanks very much, Steve, I give this a go and let you know :-)

Got the rocks sorted :-) I painted thick yellow ochre and added a bit of green, the used the palette knife to scrape the shapes and added umber for the dark bits. Am very chuffed with them. Thank you so much for your help.

Best Regards

Dana

Charles Evans suggests using a credit card to scrape away the (dark) colour to reveal the
rocks ! It works I've tried it !!

Hi
Yes I have scraped with various items.
You can also cover the wet paint with cling film scrunched up. Let the paint dry before taking it off. More colours can be added on top and process repeated.
You can also put down basic colours which you let dry. Then use a candle in parts over the top before covering with more colour and then repeating the process. Just keep experimenting and have fun