Painting houses - some pointers

Last time we were only a small group and we had fun, working hard and smart at the same time. We didn't finish our projects though and decided to keep the pictures for a later post.

Which means that this week I'll use this space - to give a couple of pointers for painting houses (I just finished a commission for one)...

1:  If you have to paint a fence or a railing that is in front of something else, it works really well to leave the railing white and start with the background - paint it around the railing. Draw the lines with pencil and rub them out when the background is done & dry (you can also use masking fluid but it is lots of work and often a bit messy for straight lines).

Ok, so you have the white railing like the picture above, now decide the direction the light comes from in your picture, and leave a tiny line white where the light would fall on the rail, even if you don't really see that.

2: Below two balcony's done in this way... What you also see there is THE trick to make a window look sunny: just make the top parts of the doorposts dark - and there it is. Works like a dream! Try it!

Note that shadows are much darker (at least 40%) than the sunny parts - and it is not bad to overdo it a bit in your painting...

3. And here's another important one for if you want to paint a realistic-looking lawn in front of a darker background: start with the grass and paint the background around it - or leave the pointy grass shapes out when you paint the background.

If you don't do it like that, since aquarelle paint is transparent, the darker background will shine through - like on the left:

That's it for now... o, don't get me started, there 's so much more where that came from... but I'll keep it for other posts. If you are interested, below a small "making of" movie of the housepainting-commission I just finished, and that I used for the examples above...