Painting the sand dunes with watercolor
The next step is to lay down the color of the sand dunes.
Start by producing two mixes of Raw Umber. One should be lighter than the other.
Start laying down your wash at the top of the sand dunes with the lighter mix of Raw Umber. Then add more of the stronger mix and you move down the page. Your board should be at about 25 degrees when you are doing this. Add a little more Raw Umber to your stronger mix, and while the sand area is dry paint in some stronger bands of this mix to give the impression of undulations on the sand dunes. This whole step has to be all done wet on wet, if you need to give your painting a light spray of water from your spray bottle, before it loses it shine, to keep the surface of your sand dune workable ( I will talk more about using a spray bottle to allow you to keep working in another article).
Watercolor painting of sand dunes before shadows
Once the sane dunes are done, try to splatter a mixture of quite thick paint (Burnt Siena, French Ultramarine and a little Raw Umber) along the bottom of the painting as in figure 5. The before this dry lightly run your finger over the wet dots of paint away from the direction of the sun to give the impression of soft shadows.
Now let this dry thoroughly!
Continue to: How to paint sand dunes with watercolor -Â Step five
