Spend a day in beautiful Kyoto, Japan surrounded by magical cherry blossoms and sharpen your observation skills capturing the mood of this amazing place.
In our first exercise we test our wet on dry and wet on wet technique with several different brushes as we develop the blossoms.
While testing the pigment and brushes with these techniques, we apply water (uniformly) to a section of the paper and create a chart of the different paper wetness stages. Working from top to bottom as the paper is wet, we touch our brush with a light value of the pigment and work our way down. We are letting time pass as we continue each row of touching the brush with light pigment the paper, the section below has time to dry. From wet to moist to damp and then dry - we can see the effect coming together. The wetness stage of our paper will give us more or less control over the pigment dispersion.
With a pencil sketch and considering our composition, we now take a look at our color scheme and plan our first set of washes. The main idea is to capture the mood - you can always do this without an excess of detail. Your line quality as well as quantity will deliver stunning visual appeal when balanced with your color work. Less is more is a good philosophy and in this case it can be very tempting to want to add al of elements, lines or brushstrokes which can saturate and overwhelm your image. Make careful and patience decisions as you continue adding layers - knowing when to stop is a great skill.
