This week I am going to try Exercise 15 from ‘The Natural Way to Draw’ by Kimon Nicolaïdes: The Modelled Drawing in Watercolour.
“Use large sheets of cream-colored manila paper (fifteen by twenty inches) and three tubes of cheap water color – yellow ochre, burnt sienna, and black…
This is essentially the same exercise as the modelled drawing in lithograph crayon, but, naturally, whether you press lightly or hard with a brush-load of color makes no difference in the lightness or darkness of color that appears on the paper. Therefore, you will use the dark colors to give the sensation of pressing back that you have gotten previously by actually pressing with the crayon or pen. Use the lightest color (yellow ochre) for the first step, the building up of the form from the center to the outside surfaces. For the next step, touching the vertical and horizontal contours, mix burnt sienna and black until you get a sort of chocolate color, with which you model the forms before the yellow ochre is too dry. Keep the whole thing going at once and, as before, pay no attention to edges.”