Rocks in Watercolor: Double Arch Step-By-Step

Double Arch, Arches NP, 8x10"

As I said in my previous post, I have been teaching a series of classes on "Features In the Landscape", and this fall I am covering rocks and mountains.  In addition to demonstrating El Capitan as in the previous post, in this post I demonstrate Double Arch from Arches National Park.

Double Arch is a bit more of a challenging painting mainly because we are closer to the rock and can see much more detail in the rock, both in color and form texture.

Reference Photo

The reference photo was taken mid-day, which is pretty intense light for most situations and usually unfavorable.  However, this rock formation has a lot of overhang so much of the formation at this time of day is in shadow, so the interesting streaks and textures are subtle.  There is also interesting glow of reflection on the downward-facing surfaces from the brightly-lit floor.

First Wash

I regard the first was as an opportunity to break the ice with a painting and exaggerate the color.  The sandstone rock of this formation generally reads as orange, so for my first wash I chose to work wet-into-wet with a warm yellow (Indian Yellow in this case, but I also like New Gamboge) and a rose.  I first wet the entire rock formation with clean water and dropped in the yellow and rose, letting them mingle on the paper.  I tended to emphasize yellow in the more sunlit areas and rose in the shadowy areas.

In hindsight, I would have liked to have used stronger concentrations of color at this stage because it required later washes of yellow, rose, and burnt sienna to correct the color.  But it is better to err on the side of being too light because that is easily correctable in watercolor by going in with more layers.

Layers Two and Three - Shadow Shapes

 After the first wash you generally have a choice between working on the shadow shapes or working on the local color and textures.  In the El Capitan painting of my previous post, I chose to layer in the color and textures on the rock face in the second wash then work on the shadow shapes after that.  In this painting, I chose to work on the shadow shapes first, mainly because they were a particularly important part of this painting (I think it's nice to do the important parts first!), and when shadows are so prominent in a composition, painting in the shadows can really make a painting come alive for me earlier in the painting process, which I find exciting and motivating.

In the first layer of shadow shapes I painted in the entire shadow shapes as one, not differentiating between the arches or neighboring walls.  They all received a continuous wash of rose plus ultramarine, not uniformly mixed but allowed to mingle on the paper in their separate components.  I wish I had remembered to take a photograph after Layer Two to show you!

In the third layer I refined the shadow shapes, painting the deeper shadow areas with an ultramarine-heavy mix with rose and drawing out the paint with a clean damp brush to blend it and soften the edges.  Refining the shadow shapes helped to separate out the distant arch and rock wall from the foreground arch.

Layer Four - Glaze in more orange color

I felt I needed more color in the overall rock shapes so I glazed in a very dilute wash of warm yellow, rose, and burnt sienna.  I think this warmed up the rock more.

Final Layers

I still felt I needed more color so I did more glazing of warm yellow (taking special care to the underside of the far arch to include the warm reflection from the sunlit rock below it) and also included glazes of pyrrol orange.  More burnt sienna and rose glazes as well were added.

I also begun to add the streaks of colorful patina in the rock.  I used washes of burnt sienna mixed with indian yellow, rose, and/or dioxazine violet or ultramarine to provide the varying color and value to the streaks.  The brush technique I used was to paint the streak with one brush, loaded with color, then soften and/or draw out the streaks with a second clean damp brush.  If I wanted the streak to stand out more I used more paint and less water; if I wanted the streak to be subtle I would mix in a bit more water.

I also used the same colors for the blotchy shapes on the rock as well.  A bristle brush was helpful for this process at times because that assists in providing natural irregularities.

I also painted the sky in the three visible sections.  In my blue skies I tend to use a total of four blues:  cobalt teal blue, cerulean blue, cobalt blue, and ultramarine, and use them in that order as a gradient from horizon to zenith.  I also love to drop in bits of rose in the upper reaches of the sky to add interest and color.