Watercolor sketches of a little old cart and a koi

I don't know how old this little cart is, or where it was made, but it's full of rustic charm and very fragile.

Also here is a recent watercolor and gouache sketch of a koi, using Daniel Smith's Cascade Green and Undersea Green in the background. I really loved using these colors and the beautiful effects they produce. I also used some  Perylene Green for the very darkest green close to the body at the bottom of the koi. The koi is painted with gouache.

Here are some in-progress photos:

Koi sketch in progress

Koi sketch in progress

Little old cart watercolor sketch

Koi, watercolor and gouache, 5x7"

Gouache Color Study

Color study of Marie-Gabrielle Capet self-portrait

Here's a small gouache color study (4.75"x6") painted using a limited palette of primary red, yellow, blue, black and white on Fabriano Artistico hot press paper. I used Winsor & Newton Designers Gouache set of six primary colors. 

Initial pencil drawing

#gouache #colorstudy finished 4.75"x6"

A photo posted by Carol Pascale (@pascalestudio) on Apr 28, 2016 at 2:31pm PDT

A Painting in Progress

Oil on Arches oil paper, 4" x 4.5"

Progress steps

I've painted this little pitcher before with strawberries. I love how the light from above reflects off the gilded table top and illuminates the gold luster on the bottom of the pitcher.

The paper was prepared with a light coat of a neutral gray gesso so I could begin analyzing the relationships of value and color temperature from this middle value. I took comparative measurements of height to width and sketched in the jug lightly with a white charcoal pencil, analyzing all the relationships of horizontals, verticals, angles and negative shapes as I went. 

As I started to proceed with paint, I could see that the inside of the jug was about a middle value 5, but the temperature was slightly warmer. I arrived at this conclusion by placing my neutral gray gessoed paper behind the jug and deciding if the gray inside the jug looked warmer or cooler. Once I established this, I used it as a point of comparison to begin finding all the subtle value changes that would describe the form of the jug. I placed the brightest white highlights, some of the warm background color, the deep red around the rim and the darkest umber shadow under the jug. From there it was a lot of squinting to see how each value compared to all the other values and making adjustments where necessary.