Guatapé Colombia Watercolor Painting: Creating Light by Lifting Paint
This watercolor painting of Nuestra Señora del Carmen, the distinctive white-and-red church in the center of Guatapé, Colombia, began as a demonstration during my recent Watercolor Outside the Box workshop in Washington, North Carolina.
Watercolor Outside the Box focuses on techniques that move beyond traditional transparent watercolor painting. We experiment with painting on YUPO synthetic paper—which is basically plastic and behaves completely differently from watercolor paper—creating photographic bokeh effects, removing and lifting paint, and exploring unusual pigments such as Daniel Smith Lunar Black.
The goal isn’t to be different just for the sake of being different. Each technique gives you another way to create texture, atmosphere and light while taking advantage of the things watercolor does naturally.
Creating Light by Removing Watercolor Paint
This painting of the church in Guatapé started in a slightly backwards way.
Instead of carefully preserving the white watercolor paper, I covered the entire sheet with paint.
All of it.
No white paper left.
Once those initial washes were established, I began selectively removing paint to bring the light areas back into the composition. By lifting color from the paper, the lighter shapes slowly emerge from the darker washes surrounding them.
It’s almost the reverse of traditional watercolor painting.
Normally, we are taught to protect the white paper from the beginning because watercolor doesn’t have an opaque white. With this technique, I deliberately cover those whites and then recover them later.
The result creates a softer, more atmospheric kind of light. Rather than having untouched white paper sitting next to a painted area, you get subtle remnants of pigment and texture inside the lifted passages. That variation helps recreate the feeling of light bouncing across the white walls of the church instead of simply painting them as flat white shapes.
And if I remove too much?
I can paint back over it.
Watercolor is considerably more forgiving than people give it credit for.
From Colombia Travel Photograph to Watercolor Painting
Like many of my paintings, this one began with one of my own travel photographs.
I photographed Nuestra Señora del Carmen while visiting Guatapé, a colorful mountain town outside Medellín, Colombia. The original photograph gave me the architecture, composition and light—but I wasn’t interested in simply copying the photograph.
The photograph is the starting point.
The watercolor gets to decide what happens next.
For this painting, that meant simplifying the architecture, exaggerating some of the color relationships and using lifting and pigment movement to create an interpretation of the church rather than a photographic reproduction.
That’s the part I enjoy.
Learn More Experimental Watercolor Techniques
Interested in seeing how the painting developed? Watch the time-lapse video below to see the process from the initial washes through the final lifted highlights and details.
I also teach these techniques in my Watercolor Outside the Box workshops. The class is built around experimentation: YUPO, unusual pigments, lifting, bokeh, alternative ways of applying paint and other techniques that encourage watercolor to actually behave like watercolor.
I teach workshops throughout the country for watercolor societies, art organizations and other groups. If your organization is interested in hosting a Watercolor Outside the Box workshop, feel free to contact me about scheduling.
Watercolor doesn’t always have to be carefully controlled.
Sometimes the interesting stuff happens when you stop trying so hard to control it.
Ryan Fox AWS, NWS, TWSA
Ryan Fox Painting
(919) 645-8345