Wet Paint.....or How I learned to LUV watching paint dry.

Wet Paint

approx 8 x 10 inches

various watercolour brands, bit of acrylic paint, and some salt

on approx 140 lb watercolour paper, unknown brand

done from my drawing

Both this blog post and watercolour sketch comes from an experimental watercolor piece that came to be Wet Paint. It started out from an old phrase.....”That (whatever is being disparaged) is just about as exciting as watching paint dry”. Well I happen to luv to watch paint dry. I can learn a lot from the experience.

I have a very old stash of various sizes, weights and kinds of watercolour papers. After my disastrous experience with some watercolour board, a kind soul on a FB forum reminded me about stretching watercolour papers.

So off I went on a watercolour voyage of re-discovery. I took a 11 x 14 piece of approx 140 lb watercolour paper and tried holding it down with binder clips and masking tape. I decided I wanted a figure and to do a lot of washes for the background. I took a figure drawing I had, and laid in liquid misket for the whites and started wetting the paper for a watercolour pour. Even tho it was held down it immediately began to buckle. The washes of colour pooled in the “valleys”. So I took the paper and put it on an old piece of chip board and proceeded to staple it down stretching as I went along.

The second wash buckled as well. So more random colour pools. But the paper did dry flat....after the washes got really random. If I'm gonna get smoooooooth transition washes, I marked that in the “need more research” column.

So I went with the random colours. The next item I wanted to try was salt blooms. Since I'd never really given this a “scientific” trial, I did multiple doses of salt. This resulted in a LOT of salt blooms in just one piece. But I did sorta kinda learn just when to drop in the salt. It does leave a lovely random lacy pattern.

The next thing I learned was not to be timid when mixing darks. I really went wild with multiple watercolour hues.....holding mostly to blues and purples. They stained the deep colours without too much pigment remaining on the surface. I called that trial a win!

I then went onto “rub outs”......where you take a hard bristle brush and a lotta water and rub on already painted paper and remove some of the already applied colours. It results in a soft ghostly outline and is a lovely effect.

After everything else dried, I then removed the misket on the figure's face. Here I wanted to try just emphasizing the main features and expression with as little details as possible. As it measured only less than an inch....it wasn't too hard to do. Just a bristle brush of paint could change everything. I finally convinced myself to “let it alone”! Yet another lesson learned.

I next went onto a colour “lesson” I'd learned in acrylics....but wanted to try in watercolours. The figure had a white T shirt most of which was in shadow. I wanted that shadow to be luminous so I ghosted in yellow/rose madder genuine/cobalt blue in a light wash. Once the misket was removed....it glowed!

Finally at the bottom I wanted a real intense shadow. I laid down misket on either side and really poured on the blues/purples. When I thought, “This is too much paint” I stopped. When it dried.....it “matched” the rest of the painting's light perfectly!

So to recap:

I need to learn more about watercolour paper prep.

Drop in the salt on barely wet paper....not too wet and not too dry. Really helpful, right?

You can't overdo the watercolor color for a deep color wash....it never is TOO much.

“Rub outs” are a lovely way to find your “soft edges”.

If I can make myself “leave things alone”.....just a few bit of shadow can “tell my story”.

Ghostings of the three primaries will give a lovely glow to a “white” shadow.

Let graduated colors of a watercolour wash “do the work for you” when working on shadows.

Street Scene or Lemon into Lemonade

watercolour, 8x10 inches,various watercolour brands with a bit of gouche

my own photo reference

This watercolour is the result of a “lemon” kind of thing that happened to my watercolour board......which led to my title for this blog post.

I started out with my reference photo of a long ago street fair in Nashville. I wanted to focus on the crowd scene so I positioned that in the center of my composition. I've done plenty of buildings before so I figured I would ghost in some architectural details and let sunlight do the rest. I started out with my pour technique.....laying down some misket to reserve whites and pouring a yellow, then a red and finally a blue. This was done with a lot of water sprayed on the board.....and the very liquid watercolour wash done on top.

So far so good. With the multiple washes I'd laid down, the board (watercolour paper bonded to a cardboard backing....bought as a unit for watercolour painting) began to bow a bit in the middle. After it was dry I attempted to slightly bend it in the other direction, and went on painting, thinking no more about it.....BAD move! The next day I walked into the studio and found this:

In the center of the paper, the watercolour paper had separated from the cardboard backing. I tried to flatten this buckle down, by spritzing the buckle and letting it dry under heavy books....but no dice. The buckle was there to stay. So this is where the lemon = lemonade part comes in. I took a deep breath, and cut out the crowd portion of the watercolour board. It was not affected by the paper buckle. This section had the extra added attraction of really being the part of the whole painting I was really interested in, painting wise.

I was really pleased with what I'd already done on the street portion of the painting section. This older watercolour board had a tendency to show granulation (even dots of watercolour instead of a smooth wash) in some sections, so I went with that for the shadowed asphalt in the foreground. I had wanted to experiment with colourful shadows so I did a controlled heavy wash of dark compliments (a blue, red, and yellow gold) and let them meld together in this shadow space.

I did a lot of sputters and dots for the background crowd. I carefully drew the foreground walking men and the seated women to give a focus for the foreground. I wanted a really deep wash for the small columns under the awing, leaving the shadows to emphasize the crowd line. My misket wasn't as straight as it shoulda been, so the architectural detail was not convincing. So I did an experiment by wiping out some of the warm shadowed lines under the awning and relined the highlit columns more or less straight with a bit of gouche. The watercolour bled into the gouche and melded everything together. Not the highlights I would have wanted, but it read OK as that wasn't the main focus of this watercolour piece.

This watercolour piece has been a lot of fun to paint, as I was relieved from taking it too seriously....I mean it was just a salvaged piece of a painting....no biggie...right? This led me to a kind of “free place” to experiment with different kind of painting techniques without pressure. I may have to “ruin” more small watercolour pieces.....just to see how many different kind of techniques I can try!

Blue Vase or Waiting for Springtime.

Blue Vase

Acrylic 9x12 inches from my own reference photos

Now that it is high summer, this is about the last of the snow paintings I've got planned for this year. I took this pic of a cobalt blue glass vase, an antique store find, in last year's snow just as it was melting. I added in the “jump the gun” daffodils for the chance of a bit of yellow zing in all that cold snow.

I put the daffodils beside the blue vase in photoshop, liking that just the tip of the daffodil bud kissed the lip of the glass vase. I then ran the image combo thru a coupla of photoshop filters to just get a quick black and white outline. I printed up two copies on paper and I was ready to start. I wanted to emphasize the intense colour and transparency of the glass bud vase. I cut out the bud vase in the printout....and viola! I had a ready made stencil. I laid down my first acrylic glaze with a sponge roller brush.

I continued on with my glazing and moulding the shape of the vase.....just using my paper stencil. I painted in the glazes using both roller brushes and makeup sponges to lay in the various cobalt,phthalo and anthraquinone blue acrylic glazes. In between some of the blue glazing, I also laid in some layers of just clear glaze....mounding it up a bit on the vase's ridges. Clear glazing on top of coloured layers just gives extra punch to a glaze. That's why a top varnish on a painting can “perk up” the colours.

After I finished the vase it was time to start on the background. I decided I wanted to emphasize the shimmery glow of the reflected snow. Everyone “knows” snow is white.....but what about the shadows? I knew that three primaries red,yellow, and blue would make a grey if I mixed the paints on the palette so the same should hold true in glazing. So I painted over the shadow areas with first a yellow glaze, and here, a lite pink glaze and I am just getting ready for the final blue glaze.

Now that I've gotten in my shadow glazes it's time to start in on the foreground daffodils and background foliage. You can see in this photo angle the result of my raised clear glazes on the vase.....it shows off the ridges in the vase's design.

You can see here I'm closing in on the finish of this colourful painting. I'm putting in the background foliage and twigs. I've painted the daffodils and am working to even out the shadows and glittering highlights of the snow.

  

Coyote Sunset

Coyote Sunset

12 x 18 inches

Acrylic

This post is a continuing of my (warm weather) interest in painting all things snow. Frank got me some lovely snow shots this winter and the last, and I've been pushing back against 90 degree temps and humidity, by painting all sorts of snow scenes that I just couldn't even contemplate while the temperatures were 0.

For this painting, I choose a late sunset snow scene, and paired it with a couple of shots of coyotes, that Frank had gotten a few years ago. I wanted to work in acrylic paints, using them both impasso style and glazing. I started out with glazing the late afternoon colours in the background trees, to get the translucent atmosphere of a late winter sunset. I painted in more of the background trees, leaving the mid ground alone.

After that had dried I began with opaque impasso painting of the coyotes. I purposefully choose the reference photos because they DIDN'T have a lot of detail. I tend to really add in details, which sometimes is a good thing.....and sometimes it can work against the “feel” of a painting. In this case, compositionally, I wanted the main action to be in the upper third of the painting, leaving the other two thirds for the snow shadows. This put the coyotes in the middle/back ground. In addition, with the low light of the sunset, the coyotes were going to be backlit, and have a sunset “halo” in their fur.

Instead of sketching the coyotes' form on the canvas then painting “within the lines” I used an outline drawn on a sheet of acetate......laying it over the painted broad strokes of colour......to make sure that I kept the ratio of head/body/legs in check. I would repeatedly lay this over my painting to make sure that the coyotes' form stayed true to the reference photo. This helped me to identify different colored masses of the coyotes' forms.....without getting too fiddly with the paint.

I painted both coyotes impasso style.....i.e. With broad strokes of colour to mould their forms, fur and all, and leaving off details. I used earth colors for most of their forms, but left the “raw” reddish hues of sienna and umber, since I was going to glaze over it later. Since I was using "open acrylics" i.e. slow drying acrylics, I made a quickie color value grid on my palette.

After I got the coyotes to suit me, I began the glazing process for the coyotes' shadowed sides. I glazed cobalt blues over the coyotes and snow shadows. I followed that with some red glazing and finally a bit of yellow glazing for touches of the setting sunlight. I alternated this with heavy white impasso painting where the snow mounded up and interrupted the shadows. I finally “brushed” out the coyotes' coats all around their outline for the “haloed” effect of the backlighting sun, using a bit of yellow glaze for the final effect.

After finishing the coyotes, it was (ahem!) all downhill. Literally! I sponged in the foreground blue shadows of the hill of the right away, and the corresponding dip up to the road, leaving white sparkles for the bit of snow hit by the sunlight. I had fun making the small lacy slush piles by the road and their corresponding shadows. I alternated white paint and blue glazing, with just a touch of a red glazing with the sunlite yellows, to show the effect of the mounded snow. A few multi colored glazes finished off the black sunlit pavement. I felt that this painting had a really nice mix of painting styles and colours and had a blast doing it!

Mitten Found! Or Watercolour “Ooopsies”

MITTEN FOUND!

7.5 x 11 inches on 300lb rough watercolour paper 

Various watercolor brands, acrylic paint, colored pencils 

with a touch of red gouche for mitten stripes

I started this illustration right after finishing WinterGlow. I wanted another shot at pouring on tree trunks and snow shadows. I didn't really have a composition in mind, but figured I'd see where this went. I quickly “sketched” off a tree trunk and the snow portion of the shadows in misket (laytex rubber liquid mask quickly applied with a wooden stirrer), let it dry then poured a blue mix (phthalo,dk. cobalt and a bit of purple)over the tree trunk, and continued pouring on down to the snow shadows with cobalt only.

After this had dried I pulled off the misket lines and found I'd let a bit of the wash drift over into the sky.......but I kinda like the “wood cut” look this “watercolour oopsie” left. I marked out a horizon line in more dots and daubs of misket and laid in some warm pastels, yellows, rose madder genuine with just a touch of cobalt in a very wet wash for a background line of trees.

I went back in to the snow shadows and decided to “soften” the hard edges left with the misket, so I took a stencil brush (a very short stiff bristle brush) and with clear water rubbed the paper to remove some of the hard edged watercolors. During this I noticed that a little patch of misket had taken a bit of my watercolour paper up when I'd removed it. Oooopsie! So I drew in a few lines for branches and made it into a snow covered bush.

I decided that I wanted a little boy standing on the left to balance out the composition, and that he needed to be dressed in a warm colour (pun intended). Warm clothes, yes! since he's out in the snow, but also a warm colour, red in this case. I wanted a warm colour to balance the cool blues elsewhere in the picture. I then turned my attention to the snow around the yet to be drawn in little boy's feet. I wanted to show the roughed up snow that the little boy's boots had kicked up, but all that was there was poured blues. Oopsie! So I drug out my handy white acrylic paints and smudged in a bunch of snow over the watercolour. The acrylic paint often won't quite cover a dark colour underneath.....which in this case was a definite plus. It made the snow just that more believable. Since I had the white acrylic out, I went ahead and put a bit of “snow” on the oooopsie bush.

Now I decided what I was going to use for the little boy. I'd found a really old family snapshot of a little one looking down at his feet. He was all bundled up in snow gear. This little one would compositionally “connect” the snow shadows and the background trees. I sketched him in in watercolours and added some textures in with coloured pencils. I just indicated his face and hair without too many details. But I still needed some reason for him to be looking down. I settled on a lost mitten that he'd found. The mitten really needed to stand out, so I grabbed a tube of red gouche that I knew had a lot of “kick” in the color department. I finished the mitten and called it done!  

Face in the Glass....Acrylic Glazing

Face in the Glass

16 x 20 inches

acrylic paint

I started this painting in the dreary heart of last winter. I was so needing some really intense rich colours in my “world view”, and this painting sure fit the bill. The photo I was working from was one I'd taken a while back of a still life setup featuring a teensy antique perfume bottle surrounded by some reflective easter eggs. I choose this view because of a reflection that I saw when viewing the greatly enlarged photos on the computer screen. Just above the gold reflection band, I spotted a reflection that just looked like an eye, and a bit of a nose and mouth right below......and viola! my sub conscious read it as a face. Much like seeing a dragon in clouds or a puppy in random specks on wall paper.

So I decided I'd run with that. I gridded the photo I'd printed out, made a corresponding grid on my gessoed masonite board and got to work sketching. At the same time I made some paper “templates” of different objects in the painting. I knew I wanted to use sponge brushes (both square and roller) to evenly spread my acrylic glazes. Using paper cutouts to mark off the working areas was a technique I'd used many times before in my illustration work.

I really luv using acrylic glazes (acrylic paint thinned with a Golden Acrylic glazing medium) to get a graduated glaze of intense transparent colours.

In this pic I've begun the glazing process for the vase and two of the balls. Following the photo reference, I've put down the first glaze defining the reflections for the blue ball on the right. I've just about finished the magenta glazes on the “red” ball on the left. I've put in the base glaze for the magenta vase. Note the blue watercolour pencil gridding that I used for sketching the main components of the picture. I've also blocked out with paper, the etched flower design on the vase. I'll paint that in later, as it should only need one light glaze of blue.  

I continued on with my glazing process. I alternated Phthalo blue glazes with Anthraquinone blue(a navy blue) glazes and magenta (P.V 19/122) glazes. I used Hansa light yellow and Quinacridone Gold for the gold touches. This was a primary triad (red,blue,yellow) with blue as primary. As I progressed with the glazing I needed a bit of a different surface glaze for the etched flowers and the gold bands. I'd “reserved” their white spaces with a bit of paper taping their cutouts down on the canvas. I removed the paper masks, and begin glazing over these reserved spaces with the appropriate colours.

This whole process for the reflected glass surfaces and round balls is done with a technique similar to watercolour.....working from light to dark......covering the painted surface with veils of colour. But in the case of acrylics, I'm using a sponge brush on my canvas...to mimic the flow of graduated watercolour over the paper. And also different from watercolours, once an acrylic layer is dry....it is totally isolated from the next layer of colour. In addition, if I loose a bit of white needed for a highlight I just paint in plain white acrylic and off I go. Those highlights can also be adjusted with more glazes.

I continued to adjust the blues and purples till I was satisfied with the 3d look. The colors were deep in a low light, and rich in full sunlight. For a bit of a change up, I switched to totally opaque paints (white plus phthalo blue, magenta, yellow) for the background in a heavily brush stroked blend.

WinterGlow or Pouring it on.

WINTER GLOW

16 x 20 inches watercolour

This blog post has a winter theme, now that it's like about 85 degrees out. I couldn't seem to get to this painting until I'd thawed out from the winter chill, which was when the reference photo had been taken.

I'd recently been looking at some old painting books and decided to try out some of the techniques they suggested. A couple of watercolour books by Roland Roycraft especially caught my eye, “Fill Your Watercolors with Nature's Light” and “Fill Your Watercolors with Light and Color”. They featured a lot of snow scenes, and low and behold, I just happened to have a LOT of snow photos. I pulled up a shot of late afternoon snow and trees and began the set up. I lightly sketched in the trees with a watercolor pencil on a Crescent watercolor board, a very thick board covered with a medium smooth watercolor paper. Following Roland Roycraft's general technique I outlined the trees and the main foreground shadows with a liner misket covering the snow areas. Then I started to have fun.

His technique called for three successive watercolor washes to establish a sunlit glow. And I'm talking real washes! I mixed up three deep wells in a discarded plastic ice cube tray, one of lemon yellow, another of rose madder genuine, and a third one of cobalt blue. I sprayed water over the whole board to give the watercolor places to run and make the “glow” I was after.

I first poured the yellow on the tree shapes and foreground water, and let it dry a bit then poured on the rose madder genuine and let them both dry completely.

After those two washes were dry and room temp to the touch, I poured on the cobalt blue wash, and encouraged it to run on the trees and the foreground shadows. I also poured over the entire water area on the left, and a bit in the background trees. I then direct brushed some deeper blues, prussian, indigo,phthalo blue on the tree trunks and shadowed water areas. When most of the water had dried I direct brushed some burnt umber on the tree trunks only. THEN I let everything dry overnight.

The next day, I pulled off most of the misket and reapplied a bit more on the background trees and the foreground branches, and reapplied some more blues. After this dried I “lifted” (wet stiff brush over the darkest colors) some lighter tree trunk areas on the right hand tree/bush area, leaving the background darks for other branches.

All that remained was adjusting the different shadows, rubbing some out, and adding more shadows where needed.

I'd also used this technique for Jeeves the Glamour shot......

where I'd misketed over the bird outline then poured on the background tree trunks and branches.

This is a really fun technique and I anticipate exploring it further!