How To Incorporate Figures Into Your Watercolor Scene

It can be intimidating to include people in your paintings, and there is only really one way to get past this intimidation, and that is practice, practice, practice.

It's good to isolate the skill and just paint figure after figure after figure, but then you also have to figure out how to incorporate them into a scene so they don't feel like an afterthought or like they're floating in another dimension, separate from all else that's going on in your painting.  

Become More Confident Painting Watercolor Figures

In today's video, I walk you through the process of painting a single figure, incorporated with his background and other objects in the scene, using my 3-step painting process. 

First, I draw the figure.

Then I lay in the lightest values.

Next I paint the middle value shape.

And finally, I add in the darks and details. 

Why Paint Figures in Your Watercolors?

While I don’t incorporate people into every one of my paintings, they can definitely elevate a painting. Here are some of the reasons you might want to begin including figures in your paintings:

• People Serve as a Scale. People are familiar subjects to your viewers, and therefore they serve as kind of a "key" for understanding the scale and size of the rest of your painting's subjects. They help orient the viewer to the rest of the watercolor scene. 
• People Suggest a Story.  Our brains are hard-wired to look for and react to a narrative. So adding figures and human interaction helps your viewers connect with your painting. Take a look at the paintings  below. It’s common for your eye to go straight to the figures and ask questions. Where are they going? What is their relationship to one another? How do they feel? When you add figures to your painting, you’re posing questions like these to your viewer, which automatically gives them a reason to care about your watercolor.  
• People Enhance the Believability of a Watercolor Scene. Considering the same paintings (now above), think about the realism that these figures infuse into the watercolor. The proper, dancing postures on the bottom right add to the believability of this scene because they support the other elements we're seeing - the formal attire, the chandeliers, the fancy drapes. In this way, people can complement the atmosphere and particularities of the scene.
• People Bring the Scene to Life. When people are added to a watercolor scene, they broaden its perspective. They have a unique way of representing the culture of a locale, the daily life of a particular place, or the mood of a scene. People are expressive in a way that no other aspect of a painting can be, and including them in your paintings will add vibrancy.  

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