Extended Practice: Practicing watercolour backgrounds

For my extended practice I would like to paint all the backgrounds in watercolour. This is an idea I'd had pretty much from the very start of the project. I'm a big fan of Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli films of which the backgrounds are all painted and while I knew my skills would never be at the level of quality you see in those backgrounds, I did want to go for a similar feel of that 'hand crafted' aesthetic.

I begun with virtually no knowledge of watercolour painting and had very little to no experience in using the technique. So I felt the best way of learning the method was simply by doing.

I own the book The Art of My Neighbor Totoro (2005) by Michelle Pangilinan and Yuji Oniki and I used the background art presented in this book from the Studio Ghibli film My Neighbour Totoro as a visual reference to do watercolour paintings that copied the ones in the book.

I had a look at all the art in the book for inspiration but I wanted to look particularly at the way the artists painted buildings and try to replicate this with my own paintings. I believe the above painting of the house featured in the film is exactly the image I painted. 

Above is my first attempt at watercolour painting backgrounds. As a first attempt I think it works very successfully. I'd love to say I knew exactly what I was doing but essentially I just got lucky. And unfortunately it did turn out to be exactly that of beginners luck. I do understand why my second painting did not turn out as successfully as my first though. I was given feedback that I was using too much paint and not enough water. I think I was used as much water as I did because I was aware of the fact that the image I was working from was a lot darker than the previous so I felt that the colours needed to be deeper.

Edward Hopper 

Portrait of Orleans (1950)

Farm House at Essex (1929)

Wayne Thiebaud

San Fransisco suburbia

American urban landscapes

Valley Streets (2003)

Ripley Street Bridge

I wanted to look at a variety of artists works who use watercolours in their work. The reason why I wanted to branch out from looking just at Studio Ghibli art for inspiration is because I did not want the visual aesthetic of my background designs to resemble that of Studio Ghibli films, I felt it okay that they are noticeably an inspiration but I'd like to keep it as just that.

Wayne Thiebaud was a good example of an artist who uses watercolour is his work successfully. I really like how intricate yet colourful his paintings are. It is important to me that although the background designs are visually pleasing, they cannot distract attention away from the characters who are on screen. Therefore they cannot be too bold, the colours need to be toned down, not just to not distract attention away from the characters, but also so the backgrounds do not change the emotional tone of the story.

Above is a watercolour background art mood-board and as you can see, looking at other watercolour artists for research was necessary as at this point most my research had been limited just to Studio Ghibli films.