Glass effects with Watercolors?

Neo_God

Even though this is more fine art than digital art, I decided I'd ask anyway.

I'm currently doing a watercolor, and it involves a bunch of glass bottles, and I'm not entirely sure how to go about doing this properly.

I was wondering if someone who's perhaps done this before could lend a helping hand? If not, then I suppose I'll just go about teaching myself by trying various techniques.

Eric Chadwick

I haven't painted with watercolors for awhile, but watercolor is basically a light-to-dark medium, so the way I worked was that bright areas I simply didn't touch as much as the dark areas.

You can try subtracting color to get back some brightness, using a damp sponge or tissue, but you can only do so much before you start to damage your paper.

You could also try frisket. Kind of tricky to use, but allows you to mask off areas so you can do broad washes.
http://www.watercolorpainting.com/watercolorpainting/masking.htm

Here's one of the last watercolors I did.
http://www.ericchadwick.com/portfolio/html/chadwick_risd_crestedbutte.html
It's a quickie, but I had fun with it. The chrome bumper is probably the closest thing to a bottle, maybe the hubcap too. The lightest parts I hardly touched, while the darker areas have three or four layers of paint.

For me careful observation is the key. Working from a photo is not as good as working from a real-life setup... in my experience a camera can only record so much range, while the eyes themselves are really an HDR imaging device, capable of seeing a huge range of shading in the brights and the darks.

Can you post an example of where you're at?

Eric Chadwick

Oh yeah, you can also paint the whites back in afterwards with an opaque paint like gouache. Helps when you want those highlights to pop.

Neo_God

Well I don't really have anything to show as of now. It's just the drawing. None of the actaully coloring has begun yet

Thanks for the link though, I'll most likely use Rubber cement to mask off the main high lights. Rubber cement seems to do the same thing as that frisket.

I won't be gouaching this time, I had done it on a earlier piece in the class, and my teacher is pretty traditional. (To her, white water colors are evil incarnate)
Though she trusted me enough to do well with it.