Watercolor Demonstration: Using Arbitrary Color and Layers

This demonstration was done for the Peninsula Watermedia Society (Charles Taylor Arts Center, Hampton, VA). I think this is a great instructional demonstration about the strength of value (light, medium and dark) compositions and the possibilities of using layers to create values -- including the halftones for the major values.

I had a photo of this young calf, the drawing of the calf is fairly accurate -- the background is made up, because I didn't like what was in the photo.

Step 1: I put a wash across the whole page. If I had wanted to leave any white space, this would have be the time to do that. I made the wash with three colors; aureolin, rose madder, and cobalt blue -- all three weak, non-staining transparent colors. Notice that the paint is applied without regard to the drawing.

Step 2: Using the same colors (and the same concentration of color) I start defining the shadows in the light section of the cow.

Step 3: I apply another coat (layer) of the same paint-solution to the shadows. Notice that by layering another layer, the section gets darker. Transparent watercolor paints will darken as you layer them, until they reach the saturated body-color.

Step 4: I mix a richer, darker version of the same paints and randomly apply it to the background. Notice how the cow shape is now light by comparison.

Step 5: Making even richer colors, I try to break the horizontal and vertical elements apart. Notice the the path is lighter that the weeds.

Step 6: Although I am not satisfied with background, I paint in the some of the darks of the animal. This is done because of the time restraints of the demonstration. I use my staining colors: thalo green, thalo blue and alizarin crimson. They are strong, dark, transparent colors.

Step 7: A session at home and with a different focus. For some reason (to darken the background) I put a wash across the entire background. This makes it a little muddy. I darken some of the shapes on the cow, also.

Step 8: I finish of the spots on the cow. Break out the gouache and make some corrections. Notably the ridge on the cow's back and texture marks on the ground and weeds. The opaque marks make the muddy colors look more transparent. Not my favorite painting, but I do think we have located a shape in space, made the illusion of form and . . .

Working with the "Make It Work" Pile of Watercolors:

For a variety of reasons, paintings don't get finished and when that happens, I put them in a pile and move on to next painting or project. At some point I get back to working and re-working them. Many of these paintings loose their freshness during this process, but I am a firm believer that you can work through the grim periods and come back with a spontaneous and rich painting.

This is the new and improved (above) and an earlier phase (below). During an earlier revision, I had already added the upper right side trees to fill that area of sky, which as a shape was boring even though it was brightly colored. I had also recently added the moon to give the sky more interest. The slope of the hill has not changed that was just bad photography. The upper photo is more true. The big difference between the two is the ground color, lightened to create more contrast and to really establish a horizontal plane (catching more light than a vertical plane). The ditch was dominating the foreground, so I tried to minimize it -- I felt that it was an important element, just not that important. I also added more high lights and shadows to the trees. The house had a little work, but mainly it is the very light blue, instead of white, gray and brown, that helped to marry it to the rest of the painting.

Swamps and Other Wetlands

Green Mansions, oil on canvas 6' x 4'

Green Mansions, Study, Watercolor, 10" x 14"

Yellow Phoenix, Oil on canvas, 6' x 4'

For more than two years, I have been working on a series of paintings based on swamps. These paintings are from photographs that, most often, were taken from the side of the road, but they are not photo-realistic. I rely on my years of painting experience -- from life, memory, imagination and photographs -- to enliven the paint with gestures and space. There are 58 of these paintings, oils and watercolors, displayed at the Portlock Gallery in Chesapeake, VA -- thru August 23, 2010. Yellow Phoenix is an oil painting and is 6' x 4'. This painting took me almost 6 months (working at night and weekends) to finish. The process was pretty simple. It is painted in layers in a fairly standard way, from back to front. I doubt that I will ever paint another with this much detail. Except for some of the broad background, most of this painting was painted with small and smaller brushes.

Green Mansions was much easier to paint. First there was the watercolor study -- it is always easier if you have a map, but sometimes you have to fly by the seat of your pants. Second, I was able to use a little larger brush.

Oil Painting Process for Cows and Shade

Photo's loaded in reverse order. The underpainting is done with Terra Rosa, a soft earthy red tone that has a nice dynamic range and doesn't overpower layers that go over it. Often times the completed underpainting is satisfying as a drawing and it is hard to continue with the color layers. One easy idea about painting, in order to help control edges and spacial relationships, is to paint from back to front.

Variations as Doorway to Creative Self

It's been a hard couple of months, between winter colds and family problems, I seem to have lost some creative traction. I hope that it is not just an aging thing, but these little paintings are examples of ideas that in the past have got my juices going again. The first is the idea of tonal variations. Taking a image, maybe doing a few compositional changes, and primarily forcing myself to examine the value/tonal structure. It's an old exercise but a good one: put two of the three major values (light, medium and dark)in the subject and use the remaining value in the background. You could use them as the basis for a more ambitious color painting, but normally I just do several (maybe twenty or so)with the goal of making my right-brain more aware of the possibilities. The last two are color variations. Pick a composition and try changing the colors. I go through the seasons, the times of the day, and some favorite color combinations.

Gouache as a Quick Search Tool

Gouache and transparent watercolor on colored paper is a quick and easy way to explore textures, colors, and composition. I've been doing these quick gouache paintings for a couple of months. I use photographs as reference material and can do a painting in a single session (most of the time). Using gouache means that I can do a lot of corrections -- normally in terms of values; when using transparent watercolors I have a limited number of correction techniques and with oil paints my search is almost limitless, but that becomes the problem.

Start by Drawing

Start by Drawing -- These drawings are not really trial and error drawings, but they are the result of a lot of trial and error drawing. They are a synthesis of my heavy-handed diagram drawings, structure/form drawings, and searching line drawings. These drawings are the result of a more unified conversation between left-brain and right-brain approaches to seeing.

The love of the line and the yearning for perfection are still in these drawings; just like schema, children's drawings and primitive/naive drawings.

More to come: Just had to start -- New Year's resolution!

Holiday Wishes

Here is a holiday animation that I made for my friends. I am posting it as a fun message to any reader; if you like it, send it to your friends. Looking forward to sharing ideas and demonstrations in the New Year. I plan to post many links to favorite artists and art suppliers.

1. Just tried to view the animation and it is not working. I will try to find out what is wrong and fix-it soon. Got to think about it. Trial and Error. 2. Actually this is my third upload and this time I got animation, but the format (W x H) is wrong and everything is bunched together. Looking forward to another shot. Got to figure this out.

3. OBVIOUSLY, THIS IS NOT WHAT I WANTED. IF YOU KNOW HOW TO UPLOAD AN ANIMATED GIF, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. In art, as in life, sometimes asking for help can cut out a lot of nearly useless trial and error.

To be honest, I am learning to be a trail-and-error painter। I have been painting most of my life and because I have some drawing skills, my painting has been more of a fill-in process. For several years, I have been trying to become more of a spontaneous painter. Breaking old habits is hard. Learning to see what I put on the canvas and to adjust it accordingly, is my goal.