Hudson Hornet Watercolor Painting ART

I recreated a picture I took while on vacation with my family a few years ago, for an art project. My art teacher wanted all the students to use a picture that meant something to them, and recreate it using watercolors. I found this old photo of a Hudson Hornet saved on my phone and thought it would be awesome to try and paint. It took me an especially long time to paint because I wanted to make something meaningful that I could be proud of, so while my classmates moved on to other projects I stayed on this one. It took me about a month of art class for me to finish it, and then a few days to find a good frame for it. I can happily say that I am proud of the painting and the hard work was worth it. It now hangs framed on my family's living room wall.

I used a watercolor set and some paintbrushes. I used rubber cement. I painted on a 90 pound watercolor paper. I used water from a sink and put it in a red solo cup. I used paper towels. I also used a 2H pencil.

First I used my 2H pencil to make some of the shapes I needed to pay attention to. For example the car the trees etc. I had no need to try and sketch everything in the background because that wasn't the main part of the painting, so I could make it up as I went. Next I used rubber cement to seal off ares of certain color. Since I was starting with the brown section of the rusty car, I put rubber cement on all the places I wanted to make a different color. This allowed me to paint the car fully brown and when I removed the rubber cement the brown paint comes up with it leaving the paper white underneath. After the base layer of brown was done I painted the non-rusty parts of the car with a light blue, I made by mixing colors. Next I painted the front bumper and the grey ornament on the hood of the car with a grey color. I used a thin paintbrush to outline them with black. I then used the same grey for the window frames and made a new variant of blue for the broken glass panes. I used some black and darker colors to make shadows on and under the car. Finally I made the wheel using shades of black for the rubber and brown and orange for the rim. To finish up the car I added some orange-brown in places to make the rust more lively.

For the ground I started off by making a base layer of light brown being careful to not get any on the already finished car. Once the base layer was down I added splotches and lines of different browns, I made by mixing colors, to add a leafy texture. Next I did little saplings by using a brown color to shape them, then going over it with a lighter brown on the edge to give it highlights. Finally I used green to make little weeds and other living plants, and yellow in spots to make a few patches of freshly fallen leaves.

Finally to finish off I needed to paint a background. I painted a base layer of green over the whole background. and since I had rubber cement still on my trees from step #1 I didn't have to worry about carefully staying between the lines. I then added some darker greens by dabbing my brush onto the paper, then I did the same with some yellow's and brown's. This just gave the background a bit of color and texture so it didn't look bland. Finally I rubbed the rubber cement off my trees and carefully painted them. For the brown trees I just made a base layer of brown and added highlights and shadows in places to make them pop. For the birch tree's I painted them white and added little dash marks of black to make the bark. Now all I needed to do was find a frame that fit so I could preserve the painting.