Lake Tahoe with Ron Pratt May 2012

"Painting Lake Tahoe" as taught by Ron Pratt in his watercolor class at Rossmoor May 22 and 29, 2012.

Access Ron's website  www.ronaldpratt.com


Start with a good pencil sketch
First, sketch out your scene with pencil. Remember, don't be a slave to the photograph. Add, move, change as your artist's eye sees fit. When you've got the scene drawn in to your satisfaction, mask out the areas of rocks in the foreground and any prominent tree trunks you want to save to paint for later.

Prepare your color palette. 
We'll start with the sky so mix up some Thalo blue, Cerulean blue, and a nice mix of magenta and Ultramarine (or other colors you wish to paint your sky - these are just suggestions for a Tahoe blue summer day) on your palette.


Paint the cloudy summer sky
Wet the area of the sky with clear water. It's okay to get some blue onto your mountains but not too much or too dark and don't get into the Lake Tahoe water area yet. Drop in 2 strokes of your darkest blue at the top of the paper, and follow up with a stroke or two of the light blue beneath that. (Remember, skies are darkest on the top and get lighter toward the horizon.)

Quickly, while the paint is still wet, begin to blot out cloud patterns with Kleenex. As you blot, keep twisting the Kleenex to a new spot. If you blot with Kleenex that has paint on it, you'll stamp blue patterns into your clouds and that's not what you want. Work fast, use a lot of Kleenex. The cloud shapes will blot less cleanly as the pigment dries. Once you have a good selection of cloud shapes, STOP.


Dry the paper. Then come in with a very weak solution of magenta/ultramarine and lightly paint some shadow areas on the bottoms of your clouds.  Try not to have hard edges on these shadows but if you do get some, you can follow up with a damp Q-tip to blot out those hard edges when the paint is dry.



Block in the mountains and snow
Our objective is to create a mountain backdrop with a little snow remaining on top. To do that, we're not going to rely on masking, we'll just leave some white holes randomly shaped and randomly placed on the mountainside. The brush to use here would be a 1/2" flat and we'll use the same the blueish purple and blue colors we used for the sky but watered down and with less intensity than the Thalo blue in the darkest part of the sky.

We will use a technique called "chasing a wet edge." If you're right-handed, it's best to start in the far left of the mountain and work toward the right so you don't have to drag your hand across wet paint. Create variety in the colors and the shapes as you go. Don't worry at all about copying the photograph, just try to keep the snow patches up toward the top.

"Prioritize your paintings. How important is each major element? In the case of our painting here, we have the sky, the mountain, the water, and the foreground rocks and trees. I would say that the mountain and the sky are low priority. If it's low priority, don't fuss over it. Just paint it and leave it."

Paint in the water
Get your color palette ready for the water. Use some of the same colors we used in the sky, but you may want to add some of the turquoise hues that Lake Tahoe is famous for. Like the sky, wet the entire area of the water first. Stay off the edge of the mountain shore a little bit to keep the planes separated.

"When you paint water, or any level plane that recedes into the distance for that matter, you must vary the value from light to dark. It doesn't matter if the dark is in front or back, just that there is a shift. This is what makes a plane appear to flatten out and recede. The biggest mistake I've seen in reviewing 1000s of paintings is that the painter fails to do this and the water ends up looking like it is standing straight up."

Similar to the way we painted the sky, drop a couple of brush strokes of your lightest OR darkest value color into the back of the water. As you come forward, change the colors in order of value. In my case, I have a Thalo/Ultramarine mix in the back, moving to Turquoise blue, then to Cerulean. In the lower left, I dropped a medium dark value into the corner to add variety but it's not as dark as the water in the far distance. When you have the water colors painted in, take a thirsty brush and pull out a few strokes of paint to streak it and add variety and lift a bit of color. In addition, mix a little of the darkest value and some magenta and put a few shadows underneath your foreground rocks and also suggest a few submerged rocks in the foreground water itself. (If you get fuzzies on these shadows, simply take a thirsty brush and clean them up until they no longer bleed.)

Rocks and Foliage
Wet each rock shape individually with clean water first. Then, drop in color. Use a small round brush. Don't wet to the very edge - leave a small dry strip so that your colours don't bleed into the next rock. Vary the color with a light tone at the top and let it bleed into a darker tone on the bottom. Not too garish though!


As you go, move around to different rocks so that your wet rock shapes are dry before you work next to them again. Sprinkle a little salt on some rocks to get an interesting pattern, if you wish.

Work intermittently on the ground foliage as well. To create foliage, use the chasing a wet edge technique. Simply place the lightest green at the top, then move to a mid-tone green in the middle, and paint in the darkest green at the base of the greenery. The most important things here are the top edge of the greenery - make it interesting! - and the bottom edge. What's in between can just be a random pattern of interesting coloured shapes that mix and blend.

"Remember, more detail doesn't make a better painting!"

Continue in this way until your rocks and ground foliage are completed.


Trees and shadows
Start with your tree trunks. A flat brush may give you more control on creating straight lines but a round will work too. Paint in your dark side, then paint in your light side of the trunk in a greenish brown and let the color bleed together in the middle. Skip a little bit here and there - you don't want a solid tree trunk from base to tip because it won't look natural. In the empty spaces you'll put in greenery and branches that represent the part of the tree that's thickly green and obscuring the view of the solid trunk.

Trunks

Keep Going

Start Foliage

Next add foliage to the trees. Use a varied palette to achieve shape: lt. green, mid-tone green, dark green, and brown. Create interesting shapes with your greens and browns. Don't worry about making it exactly like the photo.

Finish the trees

"The minute you stop copying you become an artist!"

You can even place your greenery strategically to hide things you're not happy with in the painting behind the tree - such as a funny cloud shape or crooked horizon line. Finally, add in a few dead branches to give your tree more personality.

Finally, paint in some darker shadows on the rocks. You can use Payne's Gray, Burnt Sienna, and Ultramarine blue - the main idea is to use dark values. Use the shadows to create more shape in the rock and to bring the eye down to the brighter focal point of your painting.


Then, you're complete!

Ron's Finished Painting. Beautiful!