When a Seascape Wash Turns Into a Dragon: A Monochromatic Watercolor Experiment
Starting With a Single Color
Hi, I'm Valerie Englehart, and in this painting I decided to work primarily with a single color, a monochromatic piece using Daniel Smith Lunar Blue. I did pop in a little Daniel Smith pearlescent white here and there. It is a shimmery paint that you barely notice, especially on camera, but I love the subtle shimmer it adds at the end. Aside from that touch, the entire painting is Lunar Blue.
I started by spritzing water onto a block of 4x6 cold press watercolor paper. Using freshly squeezed tube paint and a fan brush, I covered the paper while holding it up at an angle, keeping a paper towel nearby for the inevitable mess. I was after texture. This technique actually works better on hot press paper, but the store only had cold press that day, so I made do with what I could get.
Since the paper was wet, I held it up and splattered on fresh paint, letting gravity and the water do some of the work. Looking back at the footage, there is a point where I wonder if I should have stopped. It would have been a lighter value, but I am curious what textures might have developed if I had left it alone. My original idea was a seascape, since I live in the Puget Sound area and have plenty of inspiration nearby.
Mini Painting Season and Why It Matters
It is mini painting season for me right now, which means galleries are asking for small-sized pieces meant to be gifted. A small 4x6 painting is a much easier gift than something 40x60, both in terms of space and price point. These minis are also great for people just starting to collect original art, and that is part of why I like using iridescent paints on my originals. When I make prints of these pieces, the shimmer does not translate, so that little bit of sparkle stays unique to the original.
Finding the Dragon in the Wash
After the first wash, I let the paper dry at an angle, and then spent a good while just flipping the block 90 degrees at a time, staring at it. My plan was still a seascape. I was thinking about crashing waves, maybe a lighthouse, or fish, or a cliffside landscape. Instead, I looked at the wash and thought, that looks like a nostril. That looks like a dragon.
That put me at a crossroads. Do I stick with the plan I am confident will sell, something I already have reference material for? Or do I follow the unusual idea that has a real chance of not getting into the show and possibly not selling at all? Well, you clicked on the thumbnail, so you already know. I picked the dragon.
Painting Without a Sketch or Reference
Since I had no sketch and no reference photo, I used whatever shapes I saw in the wash as placement markers. I saw a nostril, so I placed a nostril. Nearby, I saw the suggestion of a mouth, so I started painting one in. A lot of this piece relies on negative painting, where instead of painting the subject directly, I paint the space around it to bring the shape forward.
I lifted around the nostrils to suggest horns, working entirely from imagination since I could not find reference images that matched what I had in mind. I told myself, “you are an artist, you have done plenty of animal paintings, just make it up”. Medieval paintings are full of animals that clearly were not observed firsthand, and if that was allowed, I figured I could paint my dragon however I wanted.
I used a small round Mimick brush to lift out fangs, letting them angle in whatever direction felt right, loosely inspired by the kind of curved teeth you see in Asian dragon art. My daughter had watched K-pop Demon Hunters the night before, and I will admit, I love Derpy.
Working With a Pigment That Lifts
Lunar Blue is a fun pigment to work with because it separates into other colors as it moves, giving you a turquoise blue alongside some black, and it lifts easily. That is good news for pulling out highlights, fangs, and later, whiskers. The bad news is that same liftability means I have to be careful and confident with every negative painting decision, because fiddling disturbs the layer underneath. Since watercolor is transparent, any misstep shows.
At one point, while lifting around that first nostril, I had a small panic. I was not sure I had done it correctly, and I was not sure I could fix it. That led to another decision: keep going or abandon the painting. It was too early to quit, so I kept going and trusted I could work it out.
Choosing the Right Brushes for the Job
I stuck with an oil fan brush instead of a typical watercolor brush because I like its scratchy, uneven texture. At one point, just for fun, I grabbed a specialty brush simply because I felt like it. Once you hit that moment of thinking you have already messed up a painting, it gives you permission to experiment freely. What is the worst that can happen?
Using a large brush like the oil fan also keeps your shapes loose and forces you to think in big forms rather than fine detail, which I find gives the piece a rough, organic quality I love. For smoothing some areas, I switched to my size 8 Silver Black Velvet brush, one of my favorites. Its softness helps blend without disturbing the pigment below, though because it holds a lot of water, I have to be careful. Any water added to the surface can reactivate the pigment already there and displace those granules, even without direct scrubbing. I kept the paper at a slight angle throughout, since I like the rivulets that form naturally, whether I intend them or not.
Thinking in Values
Since this is a monochromatic painting, values carry the whole piece. I focused on establishing a dominant value rather than splitting things evenly between light, medium, and dark, which can end up looking flat and cut out if you are not careful. In this painting, my mid-tones are dominant, followed by darks, with light tones playing a supporting role.
This follows a similar logic to composition rules like the rule of thirds. You want a predominant value, a predominant color, and a predominant temperature. Here, the temperature is clearly cool throughout. If I were painting with multiple colors, I would still want one dominant temperature, whether that is cool with pops of warm or the reverse. Too much balance tends to read as boring.
Letting the Painting Change Direction
I added tree-like horns near the top, letting the shapes in the wash guide their form, using negative painting to create depth and make the horns lift off the page. This is one of the real benefits of painting without a sketch. I laid down a wash with one intention, changed my mind, and it did not matter because there were no pencil lines locking me in. My plans stayed flexible, and the painting itself stayed fluid, organic, and spontaneous, shaped by the textures the paint and paper offered rather than a fixed plan.
If you paint a wash in one direction, it does not have to stay that way. Turn it sideways, flip it upside down, and see what emerges. I set out to paint a landscape and ended up with a dragon. If I had sketched a landscape first, I do not think this piece would have happened at all.
Working Through the Tricky Parts
Adding the eyes came later, and watching the footage afterward gave me new ideas, like what if I had left the dragon without eyes, or made it a cyclops, or given it too many eyes. Those thoughts are already feeding future paintings.
The neck gave me some trouble. I liked the big plated scales running down the front, snake-like, but was unsure how to handle the side. A dark value risked reading as background. A light value felt wrong against the edge of the painting. I settled on keeping it mid-tone, then added more water to shift the texture without changing the value itself. It worked out, helped along by the fact that the focal point was elsewhere.
When it came time to place the eye, I picked a spot and painted a single line, then decided to commit further and add a full eyeball. On mistakes in general, my approach is simple: if something happens that you were not expecting, treat it as a whoops and leave it alone. Move to another part of the painting instead of over correcting, which usually just draws more attention to the area. As long as the mistake is not sitting in your focal point, most viewers will never notice it unless you point it out yourself.
Layering In the Smaller Details
I lifted the bottom of the eyeball to add a bit of shine, and continued lifting small bits along the fang to bring more of the paper's white back through. After establishing my big value shapes, I moved into the in-between tones, the gradations that sit between light, medium, and dark and keep the painting from feeling flat. The advice I always come back to is working from big shapes to small ones, filling the jar with rocks before the pebbles and the sand.
Lifting out whiskers came next, and because there was dark pigment underneath, some parts of each whisker came out looking shadowed while others lifted completely white. This kind of lifting technique depends entirely on your pigment choice. It would not work with staining colors like my perylenes or phthalos. Staining pigments have their own beauty if that is the effect you are after, but I personally gravitate toward pigments that lift easily, and that is simply a matter of artist preference.
If you prefer staining colors but still want to attempt a painting like this, gouache or white acrylic ink can get you there. I am not a watercolor purist; I believe in using whatever materials help bring your vision to life. I actually considered pulling out acrylic ink toward the end, but decided I liked the mistiness of the piece as it was and chose not to add more. That restraint is a choice too, and there is no shame in reaching for white paint if you have lost your lights. What matters most is how you feel about the painting in front of you.
Two Passes, Start to Finish
Nearly this entire painting came together in just two overall steps. The first wash was the initial pigment layer that I let dry completely. Everything after that was worked while the paper stayed damp rather than fully dry, since lifting pigment is much easier on damp paper than on paper that has dried completely.
For each additional whisker, I used a clean brush, moved along the path I wanted, then dabbed the lifted pigment onto a paper towel. When the brush got too dry, I rinsed it and used fresh water, always keeping the moisture controlled. Damp, not soaking, keeps you from displacing pigment you want to keep in place.
Final Thoughts:
Painting without a sketch lets your subject shift and emerge naturally from the wash itself
A monochromatic palette forces you to rely on value hierarchy rather than color to create depth and interest
Know how your specific pigments behave, staining versus lifting, before planning a technique around them
Working from big shapes to small details keeps a painting from feeling overworked
Small mistakes are best left alone rather than corrected repeatedly, since over correcting draws more attention to them