Dumbo @ Art - Watercolor #1: Bricks

This post is actually a reminder to myself of the new trick I learned today. It is something that may come in handy when painting buildings in watercolor.

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The picture below (kind of fuzzy, because the phone on my camera has no auto-focus, so, at close distance, this is the best it could do) is a practice painting I did this afternoon.

Err... don't try to guess the motif of the picture (especially those out there who are Chinese-educated); there was no motif. I wanted to draw a brick wall, so I drew a brick wall, and then simply added a man and some dry branches. I had NO motif in my mind, OK?

Now, having clarified that, let's get back to the issue at hand: painting brick walls. The bricks you see in this picture are practically impossible to do with a soft brush. Unless you are the real master in this sort of thing.

So, how was it done?


With a broad-tip calligraphy pen.


Yeah, I know. That's kind of cheating. But, well, I'm just an ordinary guy trying to paint a passable brick wall once in a while, OK?

The part I loved about doing this is the unexpected variation in colors. I had a few pools of various hues mixed from vermilion, cadmium yellow and cobalt blue. Then I just "layered" out those bricks, going through the different pools of hues without washing the pen. And, voila, an interesting brick wall in three simple steps:

1) mix pools of desired colors (it can't be too diluted; it has to be a bit thick so as not to run all over the place);
2) imagine a brick wall (not plastered over, of course);
3) draw the brick wall.

OK... I'm not cut out to be a good arts teacher... :-)

But there, a brick wall.

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I was quite pleased with the result of the experiment, until my wife came in:

"红杏出墙？" she laughed.

How many times do I have to say, I had NO motif in my mind when I did that!!!