Lerri's Watercolor Classes

Winter 2012 Watercolor Class

2012-01-27T11:22:00.001-08:00

Watercolor Winter 2012 Week 3

Torrance students the instructions for the project are the same as they were for the PV classes so please go back to the previous two entries for instruction. The only thing I did different was I made my sky a bit more colorful or more intense so that what we do next will show up better but everything else is the same.

PV Class, we worked on a couple of studies of rocks. I make up my own rocks usually because I have done them so often though I did borrow a rock picture for one of the studies. It is in your best interest to make up reference files of everything you want to paint. These files can be of photos you have take – these are the best in my opinion – or check out the travel sections of the paper, there are good images there or cut them out of magazines or collect postcards on your trips, all of these things can be used as reference material when you are trying to figure out how to draw or paint something. If you have time to sketch, those sketches are also great references just keep a camera handy and take lots of photos. I have started a reference photo page for common things like rocks, waves, leaves etc and will update it when I find another good reference for you, you can find the link to it here or in the side bar under the Lerri's links section.

Rocks are painted like everything else starting from light going to dark so I'm not going to go through the basics here, the problem most of you have with rocks is you are human. It is in our nature to line things up and organize things, well, rocks are far from organized unless a human has been involved.

Whether you are painting rocks on the beach, sharp desert rocks or smooth river rocks each rock has its own shape. They are bigger or smaller than their neighbors, different colors, some have chips and cracks, some are flat, some are round…the more you look at rocks the more you will see and the only way you are going to get better at painting rocks is to study them and paint studies of them.

Start with the above mentioned reference photos. Make a folder either a real folder or one in your computer for just rocks and when you find rocks take photos or cut out the image and save it. If you have rocks in your yard, sit outside and sketch them. Look at how the light hits them at various times of day. Collect them if you can. I have small rocks all over the house and in my planters, rocks come home with me. You can use these rocks in set up or use the photos you've collected then DRAW the rocks. Try to find as much detail as you can.

Once you have your drawing, get it on your paper and paint what you see. These don't need to be big drawings or paintings, you can get some of those watercolor cards at the store and paint on them for practice, then send them to friends, it is the practice you are going for.

If all your rocks look like turtles or loaves of bread, you need to get more reference material. We can do these studies every class but unless you practice these at home, you will always have turtles or bread.

I will be doing waves and water next class so try to find photos for class. There are some on that link but just like the rocks, you need to start finding your own, even if you Google waves and get them off the Internet, it is a start. See you all in class.

Winter 2012 Watercolor Classes

2012-01-20T10:59:00.001-08:00

Watercolor Week 2 – Foggy Point Vencente

We are now up to the fog and this step was a combination of adding color and lifting color depending on the area and the need. Take your time and keep a paper towel handy as you work.

I wanted a line of fog behind the point of land with the lighthouse that went along the horizon and continued past the lighthouse almost to the edge of the paper. However, when it got into a darker sky area near the edge it went from adding color to lifting color so keep that in mind as you paint.

I mixed a gray color with my blue, a touch or purple and orange. Usually I use burnt sienna but the orange seemed to work better for me this time, a word of warning a little orange goes a long way so if it gets too orange, add more blue, you want a nice cool gray.

I applied this at the horizon area and just a bit lower using quick circular strokes, these are basically clouds I'm painting so I want my strokes to mimic the bubbling and boiling of the clouds. I was also rinsing my brush and with just water, softening some of the areas at the top of the fog and also all along the bottom of the bank of fog so I didn't have any hard lines. I also occasionally dabbed with my paper towel to lift a bit of color. I repeated this process behind the cliffs until I got into some darker sky, then I switched to just water on my brush, using the same stroke to lift some of the existing paint, then pressing my towel to the paper to lift the rest of the color.

I also lifted color along the bottom of the distant cliff, the rock in the water and the area between the closer cliff and foreground, sometimes I added color to a lifted area while it was still wet, other times I just left the faint hint of what was behind there so it looked like thin areas of the fog. Another word of caution as you try to lift the color off, don't work in one area too long because if you keep trying to lift color the paper gets too wet and you run the risk of damaging your paper, it is best to work around you paper when lifting letting the paper dry a bit before going back into to lift more.

The weeds in the foreground are just there, I didn't want them to draw attention away from the lighthouse so I kept them in muted grays so they looked like the fog had come up over the cliff making them almost like ghost shapes. I did lift out a rock in the corner but that was just to show how, it isn't necessary.

Using my small angle brush I lifted out the shape of the lighthouse before putting in the trees. Don't make it too big because it is far away and don't do too much detail on it for the same reason. There are some other buildings that you can just lift out some shapes to suggest they are there, the viewer can fill in the rest.

One thing you want to make sure that you have before lifting the lighthouse, is that the area behind it is dark enough because you need the contrast so the lighthouse will show up against the darker fog bank. I didn't get my quite dark enough on the one I did at PV so I need to remember that when I'm working at Torrance, my fog could have been a shade or two darker and it may have been but just went down the page because I have to work upright.

With your liner brush you can add in the palm trees and some of the bushes around the lighthouse if the area behind it is dry. This is a gray/green color so you can add a touch of Hooker's green into any of the gray you have on your palette to get the color. These are just shapes, these trees are too far away to see any detail and they are planted so close together their parts run into each other, so just make a series of marks to indicate "palm trees" and don't over think it.

I am going to be doing some studies on various things like rocks and waves maybe some bark, if you have watercolor cards, this is a good way to practice, if not, have paper with you so you can do several, I will look for reference photos but you can also find reference photos to work from. See you in class. end#

WINTER 2012 WATERCOLOR CLASSES

2012-01-15T11:16:00.001-08:00

Watercolor Class Winter 2012 Week 1 – Foggy Coast

Torrance students you will be a couple of weeks behind PV so use the older blogs to see what we did in class. It will be very similar.

PV class, I started by getting my drawing on my paper first. Because there is water in this painting be sure that you get the horizon straight or your ocean will look tilted. You don't need to do all the detail on the top of Pt Vencente for now, just indicate where the two bluffs are and the little pile of rocks, that is really all you need.

Once your drawing is on wet the entire paper. You can use your sprayer or a big wash or haki brush or both you want to get the paper wet so it stays wet for this process. Keep the top of you paper elevated an inch or two so the paint doesn't pool up, you want it to move a bit.

Starting at the horizon with cad yellow and a lot of water, paint all the way across the paper at the horizon line. Don't worry about the drawing at this point, it really doesn't matter. Do be sure to dilute the color down and get this color in both the sky and water areas.

Next, use your cad orange on either side of the yellow while you paper is still wet. Start just above or below the yellow depending on if you are in the sky or water and let the color find its way to the yellow. You may need to encourage it a little but this is why the paper should be wet so the paint can do its own thing.

You need to work quickly so don't fuss with this step, just put the paint down and move on to the next color which is your napthol red or alizarin crimson. Again this color goes into the sky and the water but it shouldn't be to intense so add water before going to your paper.

The next color is a mix of ultra marine blue and a TOUCH of purple. I saw a lot of students with purple skies while it isn't life or death the problem with the purple is it is hard to lift when it dries and we will be doing some lifting throughout this painting so just a touch of purple and again, keep the color pale and this goes in the water and sky but this time, in the sky, start at the top of the paper and let the paint flow down into the other colors, it will give you a natural gradient to the color. Now, let it dry completely.

This kind of painting works better if you let it dry naturally rather than taking a blow dryer to it so resist the urge to hasten the process. If your paper was wet enough, these colors with continue to move and blend for several minutes giving you smooth blends and interesting colors, if you try to force the blends and then drying it you can end up with mud and hard lines, just let the watercolor do its thing for a few minutes before halting the process with a dryer.

This is your under painting and it should cover your entire paper, the water should be a reflection of the sky colors. I did not paint around anything so I will have no pure white on my paper, things will look white by comparison so I'm not worried. Watercolor dries lighter so if you kept your colors pale, this step should have pale colors as well.

When it is completely dry, I want to start back up in the sky with an intense blue color. This time I used the same ultra marine blue and purple but I didn't use as much water. If you want to make your watercolors more intense (darker, more colorful) use less water, if you want to make them light and less intense, use more water. I know it sounds simple and logical but many of my students struggle with this, amounts of how much water to use can be mystifying, just remember if it dries too light you can always add more washes. It is better to have to add color rather that try to lighten a color so error on the side of too light. In this case, you can be pretty dark so add enough water so the color will flow off your brush.

I hope that you are all able to down load and print out a copy of the reference photo, my printer was out of ink last week so I wasn't able to print off copies for class, I was using the photo for reference for the upper part of the sky, I liked the way the clouds were breaking up and it is something you will see when fog rolls in and out.

I do want to point out that your brush is a tool to create many different kinds of looks and textures. Many of you just use it one way in long sweeping strokes, which is fine for some things but not all. When I was making these clouds I wasn't just applying color, I was trying to create a texture around my clouds so I was mostly dabbing around the edges alternating between adding color and water to move it around. The clouds were done using a negative painting technique, I was painting around the clouds with the dark sky color that is behind them. I just laid down a small area of the color, then I rinsed my brush and with a damp brush with just water. I went back into the edges of the clouds, dabbing and moving the color, even lifting (removing) color in some places, then painted another dark area around the clouds to repeat the process until I had my clouds the way I wanted them.

Basically, I was working wet into wet because I could get the desired look that I wanted, this can cause blooms as wet paint or water moves into a drying area, but this really works when you are doing clouds, learn to use these tendencies of watercolor to your advantage because it is one of the beauties of the medium.

Once I had my upper sky the way I wanted it I added color to the cliffs starting with the furthest with the lighthouse. Again, I was dabbing but I was angling my brush diagonally so that the brush marks were going in the direction of the erosion of the cliffs. I used several colors including burnt sienna, orange, grayed greens (hookers with a touch of purple) and touches of some of that sky mix to suggest shadows. I was working wet on dry but as I painted, it became more wet into wet, this creates texture.

In the water I used a dilute mix or UM blue and water, then with the flat edge of my brush I created a series of horizontal lines some closer together as they got closer to the shore but I did want to leave some of the under painting for the highlights (see photo page).

This is where we stopped, I will probably finish this up in the next class putting in the fog and finishing the cliffs and foreground. Think about something you would like me to demonstrate, I am open to suggestions. See you in class.

Winter Watercolor Class 2012

2012-01-07T10:15:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone

I hope that you all had a great holiday vacation, it is now time to get back to work.

I am going to show you how to create different moods using a reference photo. All the fog we had lately got me to thinking about how interesting fog can make a painting but it is kinda hard to photograph because everything has to come together at the right time and place and I just don't have that kind of time. However, I am an artist and I should be able to use what I know and apply it to the scene I want.

I am using a photo I took of the light house at Pt. Vencente looking north and I've made a simple drawing both on the picture page but if you would like to do something of your own feel free to do so.

I'm getting antsy for class to start, I like my time off but I love my classes. See you all soon.

WATERCOLOR FALL 2011

2011-11-06T10:01:00.001-08:00

Watercolor Demo - Backgrounds

There are many ways to start a painting and one of my favorite ways to start a painting is to do an under painting that establishes my light source, this sets the mood for the painting from the start. It can seem scary at first but once you get past the fear and try it a time or two you will see what a dramatic difference it makes in your paintings.

While I can visualize how a photo may look using this technique you may what to look for photos that have a strong source of light and deep shadows until you feel comfortable enough to "ad lib" on your own.

Once you know where your light is coming from and were it is going to be on your paper choose a color for your lightest area. It can be any where from paper white to a warm color like yellow or orange or pink to a cool color in blues or violets or greens, this is totally up to you and the mood you are trying to set.

In both demos I did I wanted to establish a sunny warm feel so my lightest area was a cad yellow. After I thoroughly wet the entire paper – I wanted it very wet so it wouldn't dry out while I was painting my background - I started with the cad yellow in the sunniest area painting a rough circle slightly bigger then the area I want this color. Keep your colors light, use lots of water when mixing.

Mixing in the same area of my palette I added a slightly darker color for the bamboo background, it was orange, the other a light green, and water and painted this new color overlapping the outside of the yellow and into an unpainted area in a rough circle around the yellow. I continued this process each time mixing in the same area of my palette, just adding a darker cooler color such as to the orange I added a touch of red and to that red a touch or sienna and to the sienna a touch of purple until I was using the purple mix in the corners and the areas that would be my darkest, coolest areas. The key is to go from your lightest warmest area where your subject will be to your coolest areas when your painting is done it will give a very strong sense of light to your painting almost like a spotlight, it can be very dramatic.

My goal as a teacher is to expose you to different ways of using your watercolors because no two people are exactly alike and what may be fun for one person is tedious for another so I try to give you enough information and some different ways of doing things that you will try something new and different even something you have seen in a magazine or at a gallery, what you as a student need to keep in mind is you are learning. The things you see me paint or the things you see in magazines or galleries are from artists who have been painting for years. Let me repeat that: ….Artists who have been painting for years! Every artist has to start someplace and they all have a learning curve. They weren't perfect their first time out or even their second, they had to experiment and find teachers who could guide them, a process that can take years or even a lifetime to perfect as they develop their style.

I took classes for over ten years just like you are doing now until one of my class mates decided I needed to be in front of the class, not in it. I would have never thought to do it myself but I am so thankful that she pushed me past my reluctance because I truly love teaching each and every one of you and I marvel at the improvements I see in my students. You may not see it but I do and your classmates do, so please remember that you are learning at this point and while what you are doing may not be perfect, with each painting you are getting more skill and knowledge with each brush stroke. When you don't have to think about which brush or what color and just paint it is like learning a musical instrument when you start playing the music not worrying about which fingers go where.

When I can find them on TV, I watch other artist paint regardless of what medium they are using because I can always learn something and I think it was the late Bob Ross who said don't focus on the things that you don't like about your painting, focus on the things that you do. Pat your self on the back and blow your own horn because if you don't know one else will. He called his show "The Joy of Painting" because that is what it should be. If it isn't you may need to rethink why you are painting in the first place, art should be an expression of who you are not some other artist. Learn what you can but make it your own and celebrate the difference.

See you in class.

FALL 2011 Watercolor Class

2011-10-20T09:41:00.001-07:00

Watercolor Demo – Sketching with Pencil and the Brush

Most of you who have been in my classes for a while know that I encourage all of you to draw as well as paint. While drawing is an art to its self, it can also be a tool to use to make a better painting. You can work out problems or designs on sketch paper long before you ever get to your watercolor paper.

Whether you are doing a full blown drawing or just a few sketchy "thumb nails" drawing will help you in your painting. You can use it when you are on location or doing "plein aire" painting or you can use it when you are going thru your photos and you find an image you like but maybe the composition needs work. Or you may want to combine images from one photo into another this is called a composite painting because you are using elements from different sources to make one painting. I do this a lot and more often than not I just do a few thumb nails to work out my composition and many times I look at these sketches and wonder what someone else who didn't know what I was trying to do would think because it often resembles a bunch of chicken scratches on the paper but I know what I mean. It's like shorthand for painting and we all can develop our own "shorthand" it just takes practice.

Always keep a sketch book or a sketch pad with your art stuff. If you are using a large pad you can divide the page into several smaller squares and try different designs in each square. If you are working from a photo, try to imagine the scene in both vertical and horizontal formats, if it is a landscape try different times of the year. A good "rule of thumb" is if the subject is vertical, it works best in a vertical format. Be sure to use all of the space and move things around so you know where the best place is for all the elements you plan to put in your final painting.

I started out with 2 photos I took on a trip a few years ago. I really liked the house but the surroundings were real special except the tree. Same with the hand pump. I liked the pump itself but I just couldn't get the right angle for the pump and get a decent background so I took the picture of the pump for reference. When I was looking for images for this class I went thru my photos saw the house and thought I could use that then came on the pump and presto! I had my demo for the class.

In class I showed how to do a few thumb nails placing the house and the pump in different places and settled on the one that places the house in the background and the pump in the lower right foreground.

Now one of the "tricks" to sketching is not to hold the pencil like you are writing braced between the index and middle fingers with the thumb on the back and the pencil resting on the space between the thumb and index finger, instead hold the pencil between the thumb and index finger so that the back end of it is in your hand. This will let you have freer movement when you are sketching so you can twist it into a position to get the stroke or shape you need.

Once I decided on the design now it is time to paint but I'm not going to draw the design on my paper first, I am going to use my brush to do the sketching. This is a technique that can work very well when you are out on location and it is another way to sketch plus you get the benefit of using color, just not as easy to erase as pencil.

For most of the painting I was using my ¾" angled brush because it gave me a lot of flexibility from big broad strokes to finer detail on the tip but you can use a round brush or a flat brush and remember to use a large brush to start out with, keeps you loose.

I mixed a gray color with my cerulean blue and a touch of orange and fairly light, I just want to use this color to sketch in my elements so I want something that is fairly neutral in color. If I don't get it right I can just put come clear water on it and lift it off but do not worry if you can still see the lines, they will disappear as you paint.

I started to add color by adding the lightest version of the colors I saw such as for the house I used a watered down cobalt and painted all the walls. The trees behind the house were the gray I was using with a touch of burnt sienna in it. The path was a touch of burnt sienna and yellow. All of these colors were their palest color. Things like the trees and grasses were done very loosely but my brush strokes followed how they grow: Grasses were shaggy and sort of vertical though not straight up and down they had curves and angles to them. The trees grew in clumps so my brush strokes reflected that but all these strokes were not little, dainty, precise strokes, they were very wild and free. I also didn't worry about covering every square inch with color, if I left white spots of paper that is a good thing. This type of painting you will see a lot of that because the artist wants to continue painting so will leave little slivers of dry paper so they can paint another color next to a wet area and the two won't bleed into each other.

Once I got my under painting done I started to deepen the colors where I needed to like adding shadows into the building or into the trees. I detailed out some of the areas like the pump and the path. I added the red trim to the house as well as windows and I repeated that red on the house in the flowers in the foreground. You can do as much detail or not once your under painting is established. If you want you can do a bit of pen and ink work on it, I use a Sharpie for this if I do it, it is less messy.

Painting like this really demands that you concentrate on shapes and the shape of the colors. This is a more suggestive way to paint, it is looser and freer than what we have done in the past and can be a bit scary at first but some of you might embrace this technique or try it when you take a vacation or when you are working from a photo you want to give your own personality. I do hope that you try it and maybe paint out in your yard to try and capture the essence of what is there rather than the detailed thing. It is good experience.

Please be sure you have something to work on in class, this goes for both PV and Torrance. Not sure what I will demo yet, still thinking about that so it may be a surprise to all of us. See you soon.

WATERCOLOR CLASS FALL 2011

2011-10-15T13:44:00.000-07:00

Watercolor Demo – Using Watercolor for Value Under Painting.

I continued working on the painting of the Colorado lake and fall colors to show how the value under painting using shades of gray made by using various blues and oranges and be a great way to start a painting. It doesn't mean that once you have your values established you can't go back in and tweak them as you apply color, it just gets you headed in the right direction. As you add the color you can fine tune the values where you need to or change something if you need to, we are working on paper not stone so make adjustments, they are part of the process.

Never be afraid to try something new or different or even take classes from other teachers, you can always learn what not to do but more often than not you may learn a new technique that you really enjoy. I should have had all my classes at the TAG meeting last week because we had a watercolor painter who works very differently than I do but I really enjoyed his process. While it may not be for me in a total change of the way I do things, it did give me ideas on how to do sketching with my brush and how to use one photo several different ways. If you want to do plein aire or if you like to take your sketch pad with you when you travel, you might enjoy this. This is new to me so I will be learning along with you but it should be fun.

See you all in class.

Fall 2011 Watercolor Class

2011-10-09T15:01:00.001-07:00

WATERCOLOR DEMO – Values using Watercolor.

A few years ago I went on a week long watercolor seminar up in the Big Bear area, it was a fabulous learning experience and I often start my own painting the way the artist – Don Andrews – showed up how he painted. I like it because it establishes the values of the painting early and it sets the mood for the entire painting, besides, it is a good way to work.

Just like we used the ink washes to create the different values in our last project, we learned how to use our watercolor to do virtually the same thing starting with light grays and creating darker and darker mixes to get our values, then finally adding color. The results were quite satisfying.

A former student sent me the lovely fall photo that is on the picture page, it shows the fall color and is quite peaceful as well as being simple enough that I could do most of it in a class or two. I did adjust the composition a bit by moving the foreground tree closer to the right side, as an artist, I am the ultimate in Photo Shop so I can move trees if I want, whereas when you are the photographer you may not have the option to move something to get the photo you want, so you take the picture, you will be using it for reference only. Never look at a photo as the goal of your painting, you already have the photo if that is what you want, as a painter you need to add your feelings and interpretations to your paintings.

The biggest reason I moved the tree is it created 2 pictures. There was the main picture of the lake and hillsides on the left side of the tree but there was also a picture that demanded almost as much attention on the right side of the tree with the bright reflections surrounded by the dark tree and shadows. By moving the tree more into the shadowed area, those areas that were asking for attention become part of the larger image and therefore less distracting to the eye. Be aware of this when you are taking your own photos, bright things will attract attention and hard lines like the trunk of that tree can divide your image.

As I do with all things I am painting, I first look at the reference to see where my brightest highlights are and my darkest shadows. One thing I noticed about this image was there were no white whites. If you don't believe me, take out your value scale and place it on those white clouds. They are not white. The brightest thing I see is the tree trunks on the left and it is on the tan side but I did want to protect that brightness so I masked out the two trunks. EVERYTHING ELSE was given a wash of gray.

To mix my gray I started with my lightest blue on my palette, for me that is my cerulean blue and a touch of orange. The orange is a powerful color so a little goes a long way but it makes a very nice gray and I used a lot of water. I just wanted a tint of color this is where some of you get a bit heavy handed and you start out way too dark with your colors then have no way to get back to the value you want. It is better to have to put 2 or 3 washes of color on then to try and take it off if it is too dark.

I used this mix of cerulean and orange, mixing a bit stronger each time for the first 3 or 4 washes, then I switched to a darker blue – I have cobalt on my palette – and orange for another 3 or 4 washes. When I want my darkest darks I use my ultra marine and burnt sienna. Each time I paint a layer of value I am doing exactly what I did with the ink, I am leaving the next lightest areas unpainted until I have my full range of values.

In the sky, I lifted out clouds with a paper towel at the second and third washes of grey and because the sky is a fairly light in value, after about the third wash of gray, the next wash was cerulean blue and cobalt I made sure to lift out my clouds. The water is darker in value (use the value scale) but I did the same thing as I did in the sky only I waited to the third and forth wash to pull out the clouds and the 5^th wash was color (cobalt, ultra marine and a touch of my Andrew's Turquoise). I waited to add color to the trees and hills until I was closer to being done with the washes.

One thing to remember when you are painting the water is to keep you brush strokes parallel to the top and bottom of your paper. This will make your water lay flat if you happen to leave streaks with your brush.

I will finish up the painting in class so you can see what I am doing, if you have any special requests let me know and I can do a demo for the class because chances are if you have a question someone else will also have a question.

See you all in class.

WATERCOLOR CLASS FALL 2011

2011-09-30T10:32:00.001-07:00

WATERCOLOR DEMO – Values and Color.

Torrance Class – You will need to go back a couple of weeks to get the first part of this value study, I did post a picture of the one I am doing in class so you can see where we are. I also posted a photo of my drawing for this version of the value study. This is good to note for both PV and Torrance classes because if you want to do detailed paintings in watercolor, you need a good drawing.

I started by transferring the drawing I posted on the picture page but then I took the reference photo and carefully went over the image looking for detail that wasn't included in the original drawing (figured it would scare the pants off everyone ;-) . I looked for shapes in the vase, and in the reflections, I also found that I had mis-drawn the leaf that is below and behind the flower so I corrected that. I put as much information is as I thought I needed to help me with my washes. You DO NOT need to do this! However, if you want to do more detail in your paintings, this is what you will need to do.

PV Class – I decided that I had most of my values for this study about where I wanted them so I switched from the diluted ink I had in the bottle to straight drawing ink because I wanted to get the black areas black. That is not to say that I didn't go back into some areas with a diluted wash, but I could just add water to the ink to make it lighter when I needed it.

There were many areas that needed to be almost as dark as the background, especially around the flower itself. To make the flower look light and bright, I really needed to get dark around it. Many of you were still way too light right around the flower petals so you flower didn't quite jump off the paper. I took my full strength ink and put it in between and around the petals, rinsed my brush and with just water, pulled the ink out to blend it in with what was there. I did this a couple times until I got the darkness I needed behind my flower.

This is the point where the artist has to make decisions: How much detail do I put in and do I add color? I added quite a bit of detail by using the reference photo and finding where I wanted/needed to add more values or darker values. When I was done I let it dry for at least 20 – 30 minutes so I was sure that the ink was completely dry then I came back in and added some color to the flower, leaves and vase. I did this so students can see what it is like with color, the one I am doing at Torrance I will leave black and white for comparison.

Next week I am going to do a demo using my watercolors in a similar way to build values, I will be working from a photo from a friend and former student Kathleen Russo who graciously said I could use it in class. However, I am not going to use this as a class project it is a demo, if you want to paint it you can, or you can find something else you would like to paint and just watch the demo.

I hope that students will find a project of their own to get started on so I can help you with it during the rest of the semester. See you all in class.

FALL WATERCOLOR CLASS 2011

2011-09-23T12:51:00.001-07:00

Watercolor Demo – Value Study Week 2

Torrance students we started on making our value scales in class, if you haven't finished we can do that on Monday. These scales come in handy in many situations so even if you don't do the project, I hope that you will finish the value scale. We will start the project on Monday so I hope that everyone has their drawing on their paper and ready to go.

PV students what we did was more of the same as last time but each time we add a wash of ink we are leaving out more and more areas until we get to the darkest areas of the photo.

You need to really look and use your value scale if you need to, to see where values change which values are darker than others and paint accordingly. The glass and the reflections are going to deserve your attention at this step. Glass not only distorts images of things in it or behind it but it can also distort the value of those same things so really look at the things you see in and behind the glass.

For instance: There is a shadow that goes behind the vase that is offset from the shadow but it is also a shade or two lighter than the shadow outside the vase.

There is a lot going on in the reflections, if you miss something and are still adding layers just paint around it so it may be a bit darker that it should be or you can forget it as long as it looks like a reflection you are ahead of the game. Remember we are artists. I think I've missed some things because my printer didn't print a good enough reference photo for me, but that's okay, it is just a study.

I also want you to notice that I stared adding shading to the flower petals. I did this just like I did the rest of the painting starting out with a light wash and gradually making it darker where it needed to be darker, I did leave the brightest areas the white of the paper.

At this point it is almost done thought I think that there are some areas that need to be darker and I may go ahead next week and take straight ink to finish of the very dark areas. I won't make that determination until I am satisfied that the darks are all I have left to do and that may take another lay or two of washes to make that decision. I'm not in a race, I could take the rest of the semester to finish this and if I were doing this on my own, I probably would take more time to get it "perfect" before calling it done but for instructional purposes torturing my students with more that a couple of weeks of ink washes is enough to get my point across. I may put some color on it when I'm done but I do have the option of leaving it as a black and white, since I am doing two, I can do both.

Please be looking for something you would like to paint whether it has glass and/or reflections in it or not because once we are done with the class project, I would like you all to have something to work on that you want to do and I can give you some help getting started and answer questions that come up. Choosing subject matter is also an important lesson.

Keep painting.

WATERCOLOR FALL 2011

2011-09-18T14:21:00.000-07:00

Watercolor – Values Week 1

Torrance Students this if the first of the blogs for the Fall '11 semester, you may be a week or two behind the PV Class as far as the demos are concerned so if you read a blog that seems like I've missed a step, go back one or two to catch up.

PV Students we started out our class by making a value scale with ink. Most of this class project will be done with ink although, you can mix a gray color with your paints and it will be about the same. I had pre-mixed ink in the class so every one had the same value of ink with the hope of getting some consistency with the scales everyone was making. I think it worked out to be about 1 part ink to 10 parts water.

Part of the reason I mixed up some ink is so everyone could see how by building up layers of one value, you can create darker values with each layer you apply. This is a key element when you are painting with watercolor and one I don't think many understand. Watercolor requires patience because if you are doing it right, you may go over and area many times to get the value and the color intensity to be deep enough. Too many of you try to get there in one fell swoop and you don't like the results, watercolor works best if you build it up layer by layer.

I handed out a strip of paper to everyone and gave out ink, I asked the class to skip about an inch at one end of the strip then paint a layer of ink on the rest of the strip, then let it dry completely. No, you won't be able to coat it in one stroke probably and if you want it perfect you will need to go to the art store and by a computer generated one, just try to make as even a coat of ink without going over and over or adding too much ink into the same area. It must be dry before you do the next step because, like watercolor, if the area is wet, it will bleed into the damp ink and ruin your results.

While you are waiting for the strip to dry, you can transfer the project drawing onto your paper, this will give you some thing to do besides watch paint dry.

When the first layer of ink is dry on your strip, skip another section next to the white section then paint another layer of the same ink mix on the rest of the strip. Do not dilute the ink. Be sure that if you have rinsed your brush, dry it well before dipping into the ink. Again, try to make an even coat of ink and let it dry. Continue this procedure until you have at least 10 sections painted on this strip, each time leaving a bit of the ink you just put down before you move onto the next. Your last section should be black or very close to it. When it is dry, you might want to take a hole punch and punch a hole in the centers of each section, this will allow you to isolate a value either on your painting or a reference photo so you can see just how dark you need to go.

Remember this procedure because this is how we are going to paint our project: Layer by layer.

I've had several requests for glass and reflections in the past couple of semesters, when you do glass you are more often than not doing reflections as well so I thought this would be a good project not only for the glass and reflections, but also for practicing values. I found the simplest vase in the house and the simplest fake flower I have and made the easiest set up I could think of so really, all you have to do it think of it as values and shapes, which when you come right down to it, that is all any subject is values and shapes.

You will be using your value scale while you are doing this project and the first place you will use it is on the reference photo. Before I ever start a painting, I look at my subject, this goes for any plein aire (on location) or still life as well as photos. What I am looking for are the lightest lights and the darkest darks. If a painting or photo only has a limited range of values say from white to about the fifth gray down you scale, your painting will look flat. You need the darks to show light and you need a range of values to create excitement in your painting. This is what I am looking for and if my reference doesn't have enough darks and lights, I look for places to put them. This takes practice but your paintings will benefit in the long run if you can learn this skill, but that is later.

I placed this setup near the glass doors of my back room that was my only light source, there is no other light other than any reflected light on my subject. Having only one light source keeps the lighting simple giving you a direction of light. The light is coming in from the right so all the shadows will be on the left.

Now that I know where my light is coming from, I look for the brightest areas of my painting and those will be the highlights on the glass and the flower petals in the actual vas not the reflection. Right now I am treating all of the petals as the same value and will go back to that when I am closer to finishing this painting. These bright areas can be masked out to save the white though I am going to paint around them.

I do want you to notice that the reflection in the Mylar is a couple values darker that the subject itself. Use your value scale if you need to, to prove to your self that it is because to make a reflection look natural it needs to be a bit darker than the thing it reflects. This is true for all reflections, not just these reflections, keep that in mind when painting water reflections.

This first wash is what seems to confuse most students who have not painted like this before, so I am asking you to trust me here, it should all work out in the end, for right now with the exception of those bright areas, everything is going to be painted with the same value of ink. The ink I mixed is a bit dark so there are a couple ways to dilute it: Add more water to the ink just not too much, probably best to put some out on your palette and pick up water on your brush, it should be about half the value of what it is now, or you can wet an area on your paper with water and work the ink into it, or you can put the ink down then quickly pick up water on your brush and spread it out. The value should be somewhere between the white and the first section on your value scale.

When I say "paint everything" except the brightest areas I mean PAINT EVERYTHING! Do not worry about your drawing at this point the only thing that will not be painted are the highlights on the glass and the flower petals in the vase, everything – including the flower petals in the reflection – gets a coat of this ink. There should be no other white showing on your paper. Do not paint around the vase or the reflections, p a i n t E V E R Y T H I N G! You should have a nice light gray paper with a couple of light spots on it, that is a good thing. Now let it dry completely.

While it is drying, you need to look for the next lightest areas, the ones that aren't quite the brightest but almost. These will be the next areas that we will leave unpainted when our paintings are dry. Check them with your value scale so you understand, and more importantly, SEE the difference. The more you can see the subtle changes in light and dark of your subject the easier it will be to get them into your painting. I know that sounds like stating the obvious, but most of us need to learn to see these subtle changes in light and dark to even know that they exist. In our normal everyday life we have better things to think about but as artists trying to create something that looks real, these subtleties become very important.

Look at the reflections in the glass, notice the shape also notice that the shapes on the back of the vase are darker than the ones near the front this is what I mean about subtle. You will not paint the ones near the bright side this time, but the ones near the back need at least one more coat of value.

Once you have determined which areas are the next lightest, EVERYTHING else gets another coat of value. That is the key to this kind of painting: going over the darker areas each time building up the value rather than painting sections at a time, your watercolor will work the same way building layers of color and value to create depth in your painting, it is almost like carving the image out of your paper, each time you make a deeper and deeper cut until the image stands out.

This will also be a lesson in patience something every watercolorist needs to produce quality watercolors, so this may take 2 – 3 weeks depending on how fast the class works. What I would like to see for your own project when we are done with the class project is if you can find something you would like to do with reflections and/or glass in it. This will help you see how you can use what you have learned in paintings you want to do and I can help you work thru the problem areas. Keep this in mind and start looking for references.

Next class, more of the same.

FALL 2011 WATERCOLOR CLASSES

2011-09-08T11:50:00.000-07:00

The new semester is about to start and I wanted to let you know what we will be painting this time.

I have gotten several requests to do glass and reflections so we will be doing both! With an added bonus of learning how to use values in our paintings.

One of the things I notice with my students is they are afraid to go dark with their values and most stay in a very safe range which makes their paintings look flat. You need the dark to show light and depth so we are going to be doing a black and white study to start, color can be added later. Yes, this is an exception to my "no black" rule.

I will bring some ink to class for those who would like to use ink or you can mix to your dark, I will show you ways to accomplish similar effects with your paints.

The photos on the reference page include the reference photo and some detail photos but I will also be bringing a set-up so you can see it in real life.

This should be a very informative lesson and I hope that I can convince a few of you to not be afraid of the dark.

See you soon.

Summer 2011 Watercolor Class

2011-07-29T13:53:00.001-07:00

Watercolor – Demo: Pelicans in Flight Week 4

PV students, most of what we did in class this week is documented in the previous blog so check there for details. Torrance students you can go to last weeks blog to see how I did the water, I am going to concentrate on the hills on the island this time. Both classes we are basically done with the birds there are just a few details I might go over in class just in case you would like to see how I might finish, but this is nit picky stuff and you might want to move on to something you want to paint.

When I write these blogs, I have my paintings sitting next to me while I write so I can figure out what I did in class. Sometimes when I look at them I notice things that bother me but I'm too busy in class to figure out what it is, sitting here trying to make sense of all this it at times jumps off the paper, this was one of those times.

Looking at all 4 of my paintings (2 watercolor, 2 acrylic) I realized that not only did it look better with some ripples in the water (did that at PV and liked it), it also came to me that maybe there should be a bit more detail in the hills of the island, it just looked too plain, it needed something.

With that in mind, I mixed a color that was similar in value but just a bit more purple for my hills. Remember that watercolors are transparent and are accumulative in nature so that the color underneath will influence the next layer both in color and in value (darkness). The more layers the more intense the color and deeper the value, it is why we start light and work our way to dark in watercolor. I don't need to mix a darker value for my shadows because it will automatically be darker when I paint over the color that is already there.

I mixed my blue with my crimson – you can use the napthol red as well – to create a cool wine color that was about the same value as the existing hills. Be sure to add enough water so the color isn't too intense. The sun is coming in from the top left so my shadows will be on the right sides of the hills and down in the spaces between the ridges. I would put down the color, rinse my brush, then with just a damp brush go along the edges of the color to blend it into the existing color to create soft shadows.

Sometimes if you look at the dry paint, you will see shapes that you can use to your advantage to create cliffs or other distant details on the hills. Just be sure that your shadows don't have hard lines and that the color isn't too dark. If you need to look at a photo or at the local hills/mountains to see how the shadows play on the hills, by all means, see what Nature does when she paints the hills with shadows to give you an idea of where you need to go with your own shadows.

It is good practice as an artist to keep files on all different subject matters whether it is something you cut from a magazine or newspaper or photos you take for yourself, having a reference file available when you paint is invaluable if you don't have one, start one.

All students need to bring in something that they want to paint for next week, I can help you get started on it and if you need a demo on something I can do it in class for everyone. See you soon.

SUMMER 2011 WATERCOLOR CLASSES

2011-07-23T11:04:00.001-07:00

Watercolor – Demo: Pelicans

PV students look back in the previous entries for detail descriptions on doing the sky and the island, we did out clouds a bit different because instead of lifting, we negative painted the clouds. By using a little blue on the tip of my angle brush, I painted the sky behind the area where I wanted my clouds to be. In negative painting you paint what is around the thing you are painting, not the thing itself. Next, I rinsed my brush and with a damp brush, blended out the top of that line of paint into the sky so I didn't have a hard line. I rinsed my brush again and with a damp brush, lightly went over the other side of the line to soften it – clouds should not have hard lines – and I rinsed often so I didn't get too much blue into the tops of my clouds. I did a similar thing along the top edges of the birds to increase he contrast between their light areas and the clouds.

The under painting for the pelicans is also in the previous entry and please refer to the picture page to get an idea of where you need to be in class.

The one thing I didn't do in the Torrance class – I will when we meet next – is to do the water. It was suggested that the water needed to have more blue and though I do like the greenish color, I did think it could stand a bit of detail and I could accomplish both at the same time.

I turned my painting so that it was vertical and using my blue with a tiny touch of purple on my brush (I used my 1/2 " angle brush but a small round or liner brush will also work), using just the edge of my brush, I made a series of slightly curved, vertical lines. Sometimes these lines touched, sometimes they didn't, I wanted to leave the color underneath to suggest highlights and I sometimes used just a clean damp brush to lightly blend areas together. Also, the marks near the foreground were wider, darker in color and spaced further apart, as I went into the background, I was using mostly the color left on my brush making the marks lighter, I also made them smaller and closer together to create distance, they faded out altogether before they got to the island. I let the blooms that formed when I paintied in the island act like reflections in the water.

Torrance students, we worked on the birds adding detail and more shadows, this is where having a good print of the photo comes in handy, some of you have much better printers than I do but don't get too caught up in the details of the main bird, look more for the value changes that give the bird its shape.

Mix up a very dark mix of your blue, sienna and purple (mostly blue and sienna with very little water), this should look black even when painted on your paper, if you can see color or see the paper white coming through, it has too much water in it, add more pigment to make it dark. You can thin it out on your paper when you need to but for now it needs to be very dark.

Now you don't hear me say this often and I'm only suggesting this for specific areas, but if you have black (pause while you get over the shock) you can use it on the wing tip feathers, the tail feathers and the back of the head ONLY! These areas are pretty much black in color so it may help you get them dark enough but please, these areas only. Make sure you rinse your brush well and that you don't have any black in your mixing area, it is a color killer, use the dark mix for the rest of the shadows because it will be more alive.

There are dark shadows under the wings, around the eyes and under the top part of the bill and under the body. You will notice that there is a bit of reflected light on the breast of the main bird I added a touch of orange to the wet area and lightly blended the edges into the surrounding dark with a damp brush.

Be aware of your brush strokes, they should follow the growth pattern of the feathers and will change depending on what part of the bird you are painting at the time.

My photo didn't have the pelicans in their mating plumage so I looked on the Internet to see what I could find to liven my birds up, they do become more colorful when looking for mates. Starting around their eyes, the feathers are a burnt sienna color that fades to orange then yellow as it goes back on the head, this will test your blending skills and be sure to use a small enough brush so you aren't fighting your equipment, I saw this with several of you. Even I change brushes occasionally.

On the bill, the tip of it is yellow, then it goes into a mix of red and a touch of orange, darker near the tip and fading back to the eyes, then under the chin it seems to be darker near the face and lighten as it goes to the tip. On the distant birds just a touch of yellow on the head and a touch of the orange red on the bill and that is enough to suggest detail.

While you can call this done at this point if you want, as I look at my painting as I write this, I see a bit more I would like to do. It isn't necessary but just in case you feel your painting needs a bit more, this might help you get some ideas, otherwise, have something you want to paint in class on Monday and I can help you get started.

See you all in class.

SUMMER 2011 WATERCOLOR CLASS

2011-07-16T10:56:00.001-07:00

Watercolor Class – "Pelican's in Flight"

PV students, you are about a week behind the Torrance class so please check the archives to see what we have been doing. I cover the same material. If you are going to follow along with the pelican project, please have the photo and the drawing on the picture page downloaded and printed so you can have them for class. If possible, have the drawing on your watercolor paper before class so we can get started.

Torrance students we did get pretty far along with our painting with any luck at all, we might finish it in the next class so you might want to have something else handy to work on.

We have been practicing sky and clouds for the past couple of weeks so check the previous entries for detailed instructions on how to do the sky. This does take practice to get a nice graded blend, just remember that it is art, not a photograph so those little imperfections are what give your painting character. Perfect really isn't necessary and may not even be desirable.

If you feel it necessary, you can mask out the light areas of the pelicans with masking fluid, I really didn't feel it necessary, I just kept a paper towel handy and when paint was in areas I didn't want it, I just wiped it out of the area, this is just another way to save your whites and it shows you that you needn't panic about your white areas if you forget to mask them prior to painting the area. You could also wait until it was dry and lift color out if you haven't used a staining color. Mostly what will make it look white is contrast. I will get to that later.

Once you have your background in and it has dried completely (ß this is important), if you have mask on your pelicans remove it. Masking can create hard uneven lines so you might want to take a damp brush and soften and straighten your lines. Rinse and dry your brush often, otherwise you may end up putting down paint rather than lifting it.

We are now going to under paint the pelicans and I need to remind everyone that we do this in layers or washes. Everything that isn't white can all be painted with this first wash of color because it will be dark anyway and this gets us started. What you want to avoid is finishing as you go and when you are a beginner it is an easy habit to get into, you want to see it done but you need to have patience, it will pay off in the end.

I mix my standard grey – ultra marine blue, burnt sienna and a touch of purple – keeping it on the cool side. Mix in enough water to make a medium light grey color, not too dark not too light. This is the first wash of color I will use on my pelicans, it will go on everything that isn't white. In the areas where this color come close to the white areas, I rinse my brush and with a damp clean brush I run it right along the edge of my color to make a graded color that blends into the white area. This is exactly what we did in the sky when we were blending the color down with just water but on a much smaller scale.

There were also several areas like under the wings where there is a bit of reflected light shining up into the shadow areas, remember they are flying over water so there probably would be a lot of reflected light hitting them. I did a similar thing as mentioned above, I put my color in the darkest areas (this is where having the reference photo is your best guide), rinsed my brush then teased the color into the lighter area with just the water on my brush.

Another thing I want to mention is when I have to remix the color when I run out I am more concerned about matching the value (lightness or darkness of a color) than I am matching the color. I use the same 3 colors but if it is more brown than blue or more purple, I can always add a bit more of the other colors to get closer, it is the amount of water that changes the value in watercolor.

I also needed to darken behind the light areas of the birds so there would be some contrast between the birds and the clouds. I used a little bit of blue on my brush and put it next to the white areas of the birds, rinsed my brush and blended it out into the clouds behind. You need to have contrast – light against dark – to show that your light areas are really light. I may need to do more, but I will wait until the end to see if and how much more I need to do.

This is where we stopped, I hope that everyone (Torrance) can be near this point when we meet on Monday. Like I said, we may finish this project depending on where the class is at the end of the day so start looking for something you would like to paint.

SUMMER 2011 WATERCOLOR CLASS

2011-06-28T12:57:00.001-07:00

WATERCOLOR DEMO - Grids, Skies, Clouds and Feathers

I didn't want to start the project with the 4^th of July holiday the next week because we would have to go back to square one when we did come back to class, however this was a great opportunity to practice what we will be doing on the project in the hopes of working out the bugs before we get to our project.

The first thing I covered is how to get an image on your paper. There are several ways to get an image on your paper that do not require a lot of drawing skills, which would be your first option but in a practical sense I know that most of you do not have good drawing skills, I will keep encouraging you but in the meantime you need some alternatives. You can buy a program that will enlarge a photo or a drawing in your computer, I have the link to Poster 7 in the side bar or you can use an opaque projector or even take your photo to Kinkos and get it enlarged but one simple way to enlarge a picture or drawing is using the grid system.

The grid system has been around for hundreds of years. Before photographs artists would create these huge elaborate grids with rope and wood and set their subjects in front of them to get a precise rendering of the scene. Today you can buy sheets of clear plastic with a grid already printed on it or you can buy paper with a grid pattern or you can buy a kit that will make you an "instant artist" using the grid system or make your own grid with pencil and ruler the process is the same.

What I do when I use a grid – yes, I have use the grid system when I need to – I will print a copy of my subject on a full sheet of paper, the image is usually around 8" x 10" and I mark off 1" squares, it keeps things simple. On another sheet of paper like drawing paper or tracing paper that is at lest the size of the paper I am going to use, say 16" x 20" I will make my grid with 2" squares because my paper is twice the size of my photo so the ratio is 2 to 1. I can make this as big – or as small – as I need so long as I create a grid with squares I can enlarge something to wall size if I needed to just be sure that you have the same amount of squares on your paper as you have on your picture.

It can be a bit tedious drawing the grids but once you have them drawn, the real work begins. If you are working from a photo what you will be looking for is the edges of objects and important detail such as eyes or doors or as much detail as you think you will need. You could do a line drawing from your photo either by using a light box or taping it to a bright window and tracing on another same size piece of paper the important lines, then putting your grid on the line drawing.

Pick a spot to start on your photo or line drawing, you can put numbers and letters along the edges so you can just go to the 3C square or just count over and up, then what ever shape you see in that square you want to recreate it on your paper grid. Note where the line(s) intersect the lines of the grid and where they stop and start. You can just put dots to indicate starting and stopping points or high and low points then when you draw you line it will be like the "connect the dots" you did as a kid, you do need to be aware of the line you are drawing as you connect the dots so if it is a curved line or a straight line you need to do the best you can to recreate the shape of that line. Remember: That is all it is, a line. A line that creates a shape and if you got all your lines and shapes close you will have your subject enlarged and transferred. Don't think about the thing think about shapes only. Practice this and you will be amazed at how well it works.

The next thing we practiced was skies. Awwww, the simple blue sky: So pretty yet so deceptive in its simplicity. As you probably figured out when you were trying this in class, getting a even, graded blue sky isn't as simple as you would think, it does take practice and patience but if you stick to it, you can create beautiful, flawless skies.

You will need to have the top of your paper elevated so that gravity will work for you. A roll of tape or a brush box will work great, just prop it up on something. Next wet the entire area that will be sky with water. If you have a drawing already on your paper, turn it so that the horizon is at the top. The horizon can sometimes be a different color (yellow to orange or red) and it is always best to paint the lighter colors first so they won't get contaminated by darker colors. What ever color you choose, streak it across the horizon area (this should be at the top now) and with just small amounts of water and gravity, guide this color down the paper. Brush the water just at the bottom of the color so it moves, you will get a gradual change from dark to light if you do it right, it does take practice but a graded wash is a valuable tool in your watercolor knowledge box.

When you have gotten the color about half way down the sky area, turn your paper so that the horizon is where it should be and with blue and a little purple do the same thing in the sky area. Your paper needs to stay wet for this whole process so wet it good to start and work quickly. You can rewet with your brush but you run the risk of blooms, though in a sky, they will look like clouds.

You can also lift clouds out while your sky area is still wet. You can lift them with a tissue or paper towel or you can use a damp brush. This will make soft nondescript clouds perfect for a lot of different land/seascape situations. This is also the easiest way to make clouds.

Another thing you can do while the sky is still a little bit damp (this takes practice to time it right) you can add and distant mountains or in this case, islands. Use a color that is just slightly darker that the sky it will be against and paint it in. The slightly damp paper will diffuse the edge and make it soft, a good thing for distant objects.

On the pelicans we will use a couple differ techniques, variations on a larger scale we just used. First the graded wash in a small area: If you are using a round brush you will first put down your color in the darkest area, rinse your brush and dry most of the water but not all. Run the damp brush along the edge you want to soften so that you are wetting the paper just beyond the paint as well as the edge of the paint. If you are using an angle brush or a flat brush, clean your brush and slightly dry it so it is still damp and load color onto the tip or corner, put that where you want it the darkest but put your whole brush on the paper and paint the dark area. You should get a soft graded color with both of these techniques.

Next we will be lifting color off with our brush so first we need to paint an area and let it dry. Be sure that you are using a non-staining color or a staining color with a non staining color. The diox purple is a staining color but the ultra marine and sienna are not. These three make a very dark color in combination with each other and when lifted the color that will stay mostly behind will be the purple. Test colors if you are unsure of their staining qualities.

Once your dark paint has dried, with a clean, damp brush (I like my angle or flat brushes for this) using the edge, lift lines out of the dark paint. If your lines are too fat and fuzzy, you had too much water on the brush, rinse and dry, and try again. You will need to rinse and dry your brush often to keep from putting the paint back on the paper but you can get some very interesting effects with lifting.

Next is dry brush. This is where so many of you have problems with either too much water on your brush or too much paint or you are pressing too hard…Remember, dry brush means exactly that: Dry brush. Rinse and dry your brush well, pick up paint with your brush but remember that you are also picking up water along with the paint so lightly squeeze the bristles near the ferrule to remove excess water and with a light stroke touch brush to paper. Press too hard and the line can be too solid, this will also happen if you have too much water or paint. Practice is the only way you will learn how to control the water but this is a great stroke for all kinds of textures from feathers to hair to grass and wood grain, it will be worth your time and effort.

I hope you all have time to practice these techniques before the next class and if you can, please try to have the drawing on your paper. Remember, if you are tracing the drawing onto your watercolor paper be sure to use graphite paper or rub the back of the stencil with soft graphite and copy it that way. Never use carbon paper, it has oil in it.

Have a good 4^th of July, see you soon.

Summer Preview

2011-06-17T10:34:00.000-07:00

I have posted the picture I will be doing in class if you want to take a look. As always, you do not have to do the project so if you aren't interested in pelicans you can find something else to paint, just remember you can learn something from every project, even ones you aren't thrilled about.

Class project link.

We have enough people to have a class but we may have to shorten it time-wise unless we get another person to sign up. I think if we do shorten it by a half hour we can still get out 9 weeks in and keep the office happy.

See you soon.

Spring 2011 Watercolor Class

2011-06-04T13:03:00.001-07:00

Watercolor PV Class – Washes and Trees

Since we aren't doing a project, I am trying to concentrate of some specifics. I look around class and see where you are having problems or struggling too hard to make things happen, remember my saying: If you fight the watercolor, the watercolor will win. Most of you are still waging war with your watercolors and loosing the battle. You cannot will things to happen with watercolor, you need to learn to work with it, when you finally do, you will be much happier.

First washes. As I look around class, I see that many of you still do not understand what a wash is or how to create one. Basically, a wash is a wash or glaze of color. It can be just one color or many but its main characteristic is its transparency.

You can create a wash a couple of ways, for beginners the easiest way is wet into wet – wet paint onto wet paper. Before you put brush to paper, make sure that the top of your paper is raised so gravity can help you (at least an inch or two) also, you might want to create wells or puddles of the colors you will to use for your wash and then wet the area of your paper where you are going to use these colors. A wash can be as big as your sky or as small as an individual leaf, think about all the places you can use a wash. While your paper is wet add one of the colors and let it run down through the wet area. When it has gone as far as you want, you can add another color or colors, you can turn your paper, tilt it change the angle…Experiment with how the paint blends as it moves through the wet area of the paper. You can also add just water to make it move more, how it moves is yours to explore, I can only give you suggestions to try.

The other method of creating a wash is wet on dry – wet paint on dry paper. With this method you paint an area with your color, rinse your brush and with the damp brush, start at an edge and work the color across. If you want a graded color (dark to light), rinse your brush often as you move across the area you want covered. You can also add other colors the same way starting in a dry area then blending with water until the two colors meet. The only way you will know how this works is to do it and that means practice.

You paint brushes are your tools. I know that sounds obvious but how you use them will dictate the outcome of your painting. Like the difference between a master carpenter and a kid building his/her first bird house, while the tools may be the same, the outcome is very different. That master carpenter probably did start out building bird houses that no self respecting bird would get caught dead in but as the skill of the carpenter increased so did the likelihood that the houses became more desirable. He/she may still be using the same saws, hammers, planes that were used on the first bird house, so that hasn't changed, just the skill and knowledge of how these things work in concert to help the carpenter to make bigger and better things. The same thing goes for your brushes, the more you use them and try different things with them the more knowledge you have on how they work and where they work best. Practice.

I did a demo on some different tree barks. Trees come in all different sizes, shapes and colors. Some have rough bark, some have smooth, some have peeling bark, some have thorns, it is your job as an artist to create the idea of these different textures since you aren't creating the actual texture of the bark, just a visual representation of the bark. Remember: We are illusionists; with our brushes we create illusions of things we want to share with others.

For the rough textured bark, I used the edge of my angle brush - working on dry paper- straight on, making short, choppy, vertical strokes. I went from a dark mix of sienna, blue and purple to orange/yellow using this same technique across the trunk of the tree. The smooth bark tree can be done with either a wet into wet wash or wet on dry. If we into wet, you can put the paint down then turn your paper so the paint will run into the wet area and lay it flat when you want it to stop. You may have to lift a bit of color in the sunlit area. If you do wet on dry, remember to rinse you brush often and if you use choppy strokes you can create some texture on the tree.

The eucalyptus was done wet into wet with a base color of sienna though some are more gray, then dropping color into the wet tree trunk. These trees can have almost any color from greens and blues to pinks and oranges especially if they have just dropped their bark. Look as some up close, take pictures. Have fun.

The final tree was a white barked tree like a birch or aspen. Remember, just because something looks white doesn't mean that it is white. Quite often there is little if any actual white and that would be in the brightest spots. That said, I made a shadow color of blue and purple and started in my shadow area and with just water moved it around to create a graded wash on the trunk. While that dried a bit, I mixed a very dark color adding more blue, purple and sienna to create my darkest color. This is mostly paint with little water. Be sure that your brush is dry and a flat or angle brush will work best here. With this dark color, dry brush little "U" shaped marks on the tree or little dots and blotches. This is good for trees in the middle ground; close up trees may need more detail but work on this first.

May do more wood as a demo, I'm thinking about it.

Watercolor Class Spring 2011

2011-05-25T11:36:00.001-07:00

Watercolor Demo – Studies

I know that both of my Torrance classes are between semesters, it doesn't mean I'm letting you off the hook. The subjects I cover in PV are relevant to all my classes or any medium for that matter so Torrance students consider this homework.

The real lesson here is taking the time to do studies of different things. It could be anything from plants to animals to rocks to eyes. If you want to get to know your subject better, you need to understand it and the way to understand it is to isolate different elements in your art and practice them by themselves. This is particularly true of things you have problems with like rocks or negative painting or getting distance in a picture. If you want to do portraits you may want to practice doing eyes from different angles or noses. You may want to practice hands or feet if you do figure work, the point I am trying to make is before you can create your masterpiece you need to practice and understand your subject and to be familiar with your equipment.

I'm sure that you would think it ridicules if someone suggested that a professional musician just grabbed a stack of sheet music before going out on stage and to give the performance of a life time never having seen the music before. Yeah, he/she might have heard it over the years and maybe gave a decent go of it but the performance would have lacked the nuance of the music that only practice and understanding will help bring about. When that musician gets on stage he/she knows it backwards and forwards as well as the instrument he/she plays is a part of who they are so when the musician plays, it is coming from the heart and soul because the mind and hands already know what they need to do, there is no thinking involved just the interpretation of the music. This is the importance of doing the studies so when you get to your canvas or paper, you just paint and you don't have to think about it.

I know that you have heard me more than once tell you that becoming a good observer will help make you a better artist, that is where these studies will hone your skills as an observer. You can be as detailed as you want to be in a study which I know will satisfy a need in most of you. This is a good thing because you get a better understanding of what is going on with your subject. You can write notes in the margins about color, or time of day, or place…anything that will help you understand it when you look at your study. You might want to get a sketch book or a nice watercolor field book to keep these studies in so they are in one place when you need them. These can be pencil sketches, watercolor sketches, pastel, colored pencils oils or acrylics, whatever you want them to be or whatever happens to be handy at the time. You can even take photos or cut out photos and paste them in your book as reference. You are limited only by your own imagination.

Before you start painting or sketching, look at your subject first and continue to look at it until you start to see the subtle changes of color, textures and shapes, this will be your right brain kicking in your left brain will have already named it and wants to move on (it's a stick with leave on it, let's go!), when it gives up your right brain will take over, this is when you start sketching either with your pencil or paint. Try to recreate what you see, watercolor students, you will need to concentrate on the lightest areas first because we work from light to dark, the acrylic students look for the mid-tones. All of you should be looking at the shapes – the curves and angles that make up the subject, don't name the parts just look for shapes – and the way they fit together and relate to each other. It is much more complicated to write this than it is to do it but like everything else, it takes practice.

You all can do this, should do this, even those who are new to painting. You have the knowledge and the basic skills even if you have only started this semester, you can do this. Studies are not meant to be perfect, they are the artistic equivalent to musical scales and finger exercises. I certainly wouldn't expect you to sit down to a piano and play Moonlight Sonata if you have never been near a piano, I don't expect perfection and neither should you, the goal is experience becoming familiar with the subject and the equipment the masterpieces will come but not over night. Be patient with yourself and practice any chance you get.

There will be more mini demos in the PV class. See you all soon.

Watercolor Spring 2011

2011-05-20T12:20:00.001-07:00

Watercolor – Utah Fall

The Torrance class basically finished up what they were working on there wasn't anything new from last time but I did do a mini demo in both classes to show how I negative painted at the bottoms of my rocks to leave white areas for grasses. I was asked if it was okay to use masking fluid – of course! What ever works for you is perfectly okay, but you do need to see that there is more than one way to do something. I just didn't want to wait for the masking to dry so I just painted around the grasses but I have in other instances used mask so feel free.

I was also asked if the grasses could be done with the liner brush, again of course! I usually do as much with my flat or angel brush as I can because it covers more ground and I save the liner for individual grasses but all of the closer grasses can be done with a liner if you so choose.

If you want to add some texture to the road, get out your toothbrush and splatter the road with some different colors, you can even splatter some purer colors up in the trees if you want though you might want to cover any areas you don't want splattered because it tends to go everywhere.

For Torrance that was the last class, the next class will start June 20^th and will run for 9 weeks not 8 fall classes will be 10 weeks again. PV classes we will be doing some studies for the next few weeks because I see there are areas we need to work on and I'm not sure we have enough time to finish a new project so please bring extra paper even some sketch paper and a pencil will come in handy. See you all soon.

2011 Spring Watercolor Class

2011-05-15T10:11:00.001-07:00

WATERCOLOR CLASS – "Utah Fall"

PV students the one thing that I did different in your class is I didn't under paint the green and orange trees until after I had negative painted their shapes with the darker trees behind them, other than that the previous blog will apply, just add the yellow and light orange under painting in your tree areas.

Torrance, this was our last day on this painting for the most part, I started by adding more shadows to my rocks. Again the mix is sienna, blue and a touch of purple and only a little water. We are painting the NEXT DARKEST AREAS, not the darkest yet we will get there, just not all at once. This wash helps define the individual rocks even more, that first wash defined the sunlit tops of the rocks, this wash will help define the bodies of the individual. Please follow the photo where you can, it is your best resource. You will be negative painting some rock by painting darker behind them and positive painting other, just start in the darkest part of the rock and work your way out, rinse your brush and blend areas together. It doesn't need to be a smooth transition it will give texture to your rocks. At the base of the rocks remember that there is grass growing in front of them, if you want that grass you can negative paint around the grasses, mask out the grasses before you start on the rocks or scratch them out later, it is up to you, just remember it is there and proceed accordingly.

If you want ruts in your road, you might want to lightly sketch them in, simple lines will do, just so you know how your ruts go back into the distance. Remember they are prospected lines meaning that as they go back into the distance they get closer together.

To paint the ruts you might first want to first practice with a pencil doing "u"s and upside down "u"s. I want you to see that these shapes can suggest depressions – u's – and rises – upside down u's. If you connect them you will see that it visually looks like rises and falls, when you are working on a two dimensional surface like paper or canvas, you only have shapes to convey what you want your viewer to see, in this case curved lines. Flat curves will look shallow or low, deep curves will look deep or high. If you start out with a wide curve then make a slightly smaller curve on top of it and so on up the page until the shape is almost a dot, you should get the sense that the shape it going back in space. This is what we will be ding in the road and you need to under stand it so it will make sense to you.

All that said, I made a mix of sienna and a touch of purple and along the lines for the ruts of my road I made a series of shallow "u" shapes with my brush, making them smaller and lighter (more water) as I went around the rocks. The distant part of the road is too small for any detail. These marks can be rough and uneven, giving more character and texture to the road, just be sure that they aren't too deep.

Conversely, on the top of the road, using light mixes of color – sienna, orange, yellow, grey, any or all – meaning color mixed with a lot of water, make a series of convex shapes (upside down "U"s) to give texture to the top of the road. I also took my toothbrush and splattered different colors in the road area, you can use any or all you have on your palette, they should fade out around the big rocks, keep the very small detail for the foreground .

All that is left now are the grasses and bushes along the sides of the road. The bushes are done just like the trees in the back, leaving some of the light area as highlights and when you get around where you want grasses, you will have to negative paint some of the foreground grasses just like you did in the rocks. You can also positive paint grasses using the tip of your angle brush, a round brush or your liner brush, I do want you to notice that the grasses are many colors: Different greens, browns, oranges, some grays – don't be afraid to add those colors as you paint your grasses it will actually make the grasses look more natural, if they are in Nature, they can be in your painting.

Some minor details and this is done. First, you may want to put shadows on your road from the grasses, just be sure that your strokes follow the contours of the road: If a bump goes up, so does the shadow, if it goes down, so does the shadow. Next, we need to add the trunks of some of the trees. This is best done with your liner, mix sienna and purple with a little water, you want it dark but not too dark, then add tree trunks into the deciduous trees. These are lost and found lines because some of the have leaves and branches in front of the trunks, just put in a few where they will do the most good and let the viewer fill in the rest.

This was the last day for this project and Monday will be our last class. Please have something for critique, it can be something you have worked on in class or something from home or another class, any media, something current or something you have done in the past, just as long as you need a second opinion bring it in.

Registration starts soon and the summer classes will be 9 weeks and it looks like the fall classes have gone back to 10 weeks so please get signed up ASAP if you want to take classes. See you.

Spring 2011 Watercolor Calss

2011-05-07T10:57:00.001-07:00

Watercolor Project – Utah Fall

PV Class – You will still be referring to the previous blog posts for the steps we covered in class but there is a difference you will notice: At Torrance, I under painted the deciduous trees before I painted in the tall evergreens, in your class, I just negative painted around those trees and will under paint them next class, either way is fine, there is no right way so if you are going by the blog to catch up and you see the PV painting looks different, do not panic, you are fine.

Torrance class, we worked on filling in the middle ground dark trees and the lighter deciduous trees in front of them. The brighter trees were created by negative painting around them, leaving the light area. I hope that you practice the negative painting because as watercolorists it is a very useful tool in your tool box of knowledge, by painting darker behind and area you can make another stand out so when you are painting the trees, if you want to suggest a branch coming out off that tree, you paint dark around the area you want as that branch. Go out and look at different kinds of trees, notice the light and dark areas and think of how you would paint that tree knowing that you have to save your lightest areas.

In the deciduous trees, I was using my 1/2'" angle brush on its tip, I usually start in the middle of the tree with a light color – this will depend on if it is a green tree (sap green, yellow and water) or the orange trees (yellow, orange and water), and I tapped the color on with over lapping dots leaving some of the under painting showing for highlights and worked my way to the edge of the tree. Remember that under painting is your highlights for the tree so do not cover the whole thing up, leave some of it to show the light in the trees. This is also where you can suggest branches in front by leaving light shapes in the body of the tree (see the sample I have on the picture page).

While the tree was still wet I went in with slightly darker versions of the color of the tree (more paint less water) adding that to parts of the tree I wanted to suggest were in shadow, I did not cover up everything I just did, just some parts especially towards the bottoms of the trees where they may be more in shade. And finally to that color I added touches of blue and/or purple for the darkest shadows and added this to only the areas I thought should be the darkest.

I do need to clarify something when I say I make a series of dots: I don't mean Dot. Dot. Dot. I mean dotdotdodotdoot dotdotddoot dotdodottodot. The overlap and become one shape rather than a bunch of individual dots that look like ornaments hanging on the tree. The dots allow me to leave small spaces to let the under painting show through and creates texture.

Also note that when I got down to where the weeds and grasses start I negative painted around them to suggest the weeds and grasses.

If you are going to have a path in your painting – some have opted not to have one and that is okay by me – under paint it with a watery mix of sienna, yellow and a touch of orange. Be sure to get the path in the background going into the trees. The grasses are under painted with watery versions of yellow, sap green, and orange. You can paint both the path and the grasses with water first to help the paint move and to help keep it light. This is just a wash so it should be very pale.

Last but not least, I under painted the pile of rocks with a mix of blue, sienna a touch of purple and lots of water. This is just a pale gray that I put one everything that will be in shadow leaving the white of the paper as my highlights. If you need to, re-draw your rocks so you know where you need to leave the white of the paper but everything that is in shadow get this first layer of color so don't worry about painting individual rocks, they will come out later.

I noticed a couple of things I forgot to do so I will show you, you don't need to panic if something isn't perfect, we all need to know how to fix things we don't like so this will be a good demo. We only have 2 weeks left so I hope that everyone is up to this point in class. See you soon.

Watercolor Spring 2011

2011-04-29T11:55:00.001-07:00

Watercolor Class Project – "Utah Fall"

After last week when I turned around and saw a bunch of deer caught in the headlights, I realized that we needed to do some practice on negative painting before we continued on with our painting. Negative painting is one of the cornerstones of watercolor painting and you need to understand it because you simply can't escape it if you want to continue with watercolor.

In watercolor we work from light to dark. What this means is anything that is white is the white of the paper and we work to darker colors from there, saving white and light areas using various techniques such as when we used the masking fluid. Negative painting used more often and when you understand it you automatically switch from positive painting (painting the thing) to negative painting (painting the area around the thing). You use it in large areas or in very small areas; it is almost like carving out the object with your brush out of the white of the paper. You do need to practice this and you need to learn to see it in the pictures you are working from.

I handed out some small pieces of watercolor paper and had you just drop some light colors like yellow and orange onto the wet paper, then let it dry. When it was dry, I suggested that you draw a tree on this paper, using one of the trees in the reference photo as your model it didn't have to be perfect but you did need to know where you were going. Some of you did not do this and were having problems. Even seasoned professional watercolor painters will do detailed drawings so they know where they are going. It's not like acrylics or oils where you can paint over something you don't like, it you paint something dark that should be light, you may not be able to lift enough color off to make it look white again, so please, get those pencils out and sketch in your "road map", it will save you a world of grief.

After I had my sketch on, I mixed a dark green color of Hooker's green, blue and a touch of purple to make the color of the pines behind the leafy trees in front of them. Remember this is just for this particular painting, I have some light green and orange trees against dark green pine trees, different scenes will require different handling, you could do this with ink on white paper if you want, it is the technique not the color.

With this dark color and my ½ angle brush, I used the tip of the brush to make a series of overlapping dots to create a lacy edge to my trees. Many of you were making dashes or marks instead of dots so you weren't quite getting the lacy effect that dots will give you, plus you were leaving even spaces between the marks and dots and you were making regular shapes. It is a human thing but as artists you need to be aware of it and work towards a more natural look. These are wild trees that grow at irregular rates, they are also deciduous trees with lots of leaves, they should look very lacy with lots of ins and outs. If you take the end of your brush or a pencil and trace the edge of a tree either in a photo or in real life, you should see that the end of the brush or pencil moves all over the place! This is what you need to recreate on your paper.

The end of my brush dances around like I have the coffee jitters, making these little overlapping dots to create the outside edge of my tree. Beyond the tree I can just paint as normal but that outside edge needs to be very irregular to make it look natural. I also added some "see through" areas in the trees and negative painted some branches in these areas.

Even in the trees where I wanted to show that one branch was sticking out from the others, I can negative paint the area behind that branch which will give the tree depth and form. Practice this! It will make you a much better watercolorist.

The next thing we went over is the pine trees. They aren't that hard to do but like everything else, they do take practice. I've mentioned before to get some blank greeting cards to do these little studies or use the back of an old painting, just something you can practice on and not worry about if it is "right".

I use my angle brush for this but you can use a flat or a round but you will need to work out the particulars because they are just a little bit different. With the very edge of my angel brush, I touch the paper a couple times to create a line to suggest the very top of the pine tree. I DO NOT paint in the full length of the trunk of the tree because most of it will be hidden by branches, I can suggest parts of it later. Starting at this line a bit down from the top with the tip of my brush and my brush on its side so it is perpendicular to the paper, I press and lift and I swish out from the center line. Small movement creates small branches, longer bigger movements make longer braches but the technique is the same: Press, lift and swish!

As I move down the tree, I do start along the center line but I will make marks across the center of the tree. Many of you only had branches coming off the sides of the tree at regular spacing giving your trees a "fish skeleton" look. Just like the deciduous trees, pine trees grow irregularly, and you must remember that there are branches all around the tree. Towards the bottom of the pines the branches can droop as they might do in nature and the will be come more congested then the tops.

To create a grove of trees start with one trees then just add the others around it starting the same way and overlap the branches especially near the bottom.

Practice! Practice! Practice! We will be continuing on the painting next week so you will need to know how to do this.

Both classes are about at the same place now so PV if you need instruction on the sky look in the achieves. See you all next class.

Watercolor Utah Fall

2011-04-22T10:16:00.000-07:00

SPRING 2011 – WATERCOLOR CLASS – "Utah Fall"

PV Class – You will have to go back into the archives for the finishing touches to the boat. Please be ready to start the fall picture next class by having the photo and the drawing with you and have a drawing on your paper. The drawing does not need to be exact, just close enough so you have a decent road map. This also goes for my Torrance class if you haven't done so already.

Now the sky in this painting is a bit blah so as artists we can create something more interesting. For this painting I didn't want anything over powering to take away from the scene itself, I wanted something to compliment it so I choose blue to compliment the oranges in the trees.

Before I move on, I so want to remind you to have some elevation to the top of your painting, this will let gravity work for you and it in this first step it is essential that you get some movement in your paint. You don't have to work vertically like I do even an inch or two will help so put a roll of tape or your brush box or something under the top of your painting to get an angle.

First, I wet the sky area and the area where the distant hills are going to be. The reason for wetting all this area is one, I want the color to run down the paper and I don't want a hard edge where it runs into the hills so it visually looks like it is going behind the hills. Second, I am going to need the hills wet anyway, this will give that area a chance to dry slightly so edges will soften but not blur.

In the wet sky area with my 1" angle brush right along the top of the page I applied blue. I used ultra marine blue but you can use any blue you like, though I would advise not to use pthalo blue because it is a powerful color and it will not lift off.

After I applied the blue, I rinsed my brush and along the bottom of this color with a damp brush, I moved the color down with just the water on my brush. The paint may move enough on its own so this step might be unnecessary but it is good practice, just remember to rinse your brush between passes. You might also find that you need to add a bit more color to the top of the paper so repeat these steps as needed.

Your sky shouldn't take too long to do so everything should still be pretty wet. If you want to add clouds, you can lift them with a paper towel or your brush or you can drop water into the wet sky, this is optional and you might want to try it out on a separate piece of paper before starting your sky but it is okay to add clouds.

If your hill area has dried, you will need to rewet the hills and the sky just above the hills by maybe a quarter inch, just enough so the paint will have some place to go when we are doing the distant trees. The colors I used for the hills was a watered down mix of sap green and a touch of purple, just enough to gray the green slightly. Remember that as things go into the distance they become less intense and grayer in color so keep this color very pastel. Also have an orange ready that is mixed with a lot of water and some of the green mix to slightly gray the orange, you will be working back and forth between these colors as you paint in the hillsides. Notice in the photo that there are patches of the orange color all across the hills, when you want to add the orange, just drop it in or lightly touch the tip of your brush to the paper and let it blend in on its own. Another thing I need to mention is not to worry about the dark foreground pine trees just paint the hills like the trees weren't there, you need that color behind the trees for one reason the second and most important is because the pines are so much darker the color on the hills won't affect them much if at all. It will save you the added misery of trying to put the hill color in after you have painted the pines.

If and you are painting the hills the paper seems to be getting dry, you can rewet as often as you need to. If you are working under a vet or it is a dry day, you paper may dry out faster than you can paint so don't be afraid to rewet if you need to.

Once you have finished painting the base colors in for the hills, there are some trees on them that need to be painted in while the paper is still wet or at least damp, you don't want it dripping wet but it should still feel damp to the touch. In that same green/gray mix you made add a touch of green and a touch of blue to darken it slightly. This value isn't much darker that what you have already, it just needs to have a bit of contrast against what is there.

These are distant clumps of trees and they are not phone polls, they should be various sizes should be clumps both large and small, as well as individual trees, also, don't line them up like a tree farm, these are wild trees. They are also suggestions of trees so no detail, just make a vertical mark or marks and let the wet paper do the rest. We may come back and add some features, not necessarily detail, just keep it simple at this point. Now let it dry completely before starting the next step.

The next area we will be painting is the line of green and orange trees in the middle ground. Actually, we won't be painting the trees we will just be painting their basic highlight color. The orange trees are pretty straight forward because they are orange we need a lighter version of the color to under paint them, the green trees aren't so obvious to most. Look in the lightest areas of the green trees you will notice they are very yellow so that will be our under painting for the green trees.

I wet the areas for the trees as I painted them doing the yellow first then the orange, if the colors blend a bit together that is okay, do not worry about it. The yellow was fairly rich in intensity meaning I used more color and less water, the orange was a bit different it was basically orange but I added a touch of red because it is more of a salmon color and a lot of water, I want to keep this light. You may also need to add a bit of water as you paint, remember this is just the under painting for the trees just paint the mass color and don't worry about whether they look like trees at this point. Let this dry completely.

The last thing I did was I started adding in the dark pine trees and as I did that, shaped my middle ground trees using negative painting. First the pines: I mixed my Hooker's green with a touch of purple to make a very dark green, there was only a little water. I used my angle brush and working on dry paper, I first made a straight line to mark the top of the tree – not the whole trunk, just the top – then starting from that line with a flicking motion, I made the branches of the tree. This is something you may need to practice on another piece of paper, the problem I saw around the room was people were either painting them too solid and too uniform or were making them look like fish skeletons, branches come out from all sides of a tree, there are gaps between branches, branches from one tree overlap the tree next to it there could be smaller trees in between…It is Nature, it is messy.

At the top of the trees you might see some individual small branches, but as you work your way down, the branches get longer and more congested there are also more shadows so add more blue or purple to you color near the base. There is something else you need to do as you get near the other trees and that is to create the shapes of the middle ground trees with this dark green color by negative painting the outside shape of the green and orange trees. Remember to be random in your shaping, these are not manicured trees, they will have odd shapes. We will do more of this next class. Negative painting is how we keep our light areas in watercolor.

We will continue this at Torrance and will start this at PV so be ready to work. See you all soon.

Spring Watercolor 2011

2011-04-17T14:41:00.000-07:00

Spring 2011 – Watercolor – Fanta-Sea

For my PV students you will need to go back a couple weeks to see the beginning of Fanta-Sea. I have done nothing different just follow along as best as you can, any questions ask me in class. You might also want to download the photo and drawing for the next project because we might get started in the next class.

Before I get involved in talking detail for finishing up the boat, I want to go over how to create a graded wash, it is something a lot of you struggle with and it is one of the most versatile techniques you can use in watercolor. It can be used in big areas like a sky or small areas like the sides of buildings or petals of a flower, once you learn this technique it is simple and will make your watercolor cleaner and fresher.

What I mean by graded is it goes from dark to light in a very smooth blend and there are several ways you can create a graded wash. The first way is to wet the area where you want/need the color to go from dark to light. Wet beyond where is should be the lightest so the paint doesn't just stop when it reaches dry paper. Then, starting in the area where you need it darkest, apply the paint. Rinse your brush and remove the excess then with just the damp brush, run it along the edge where you need to soften the color. This can be done with most brushes whether they are round, flat or angled, just be sure to use most of the brush on the paper with the tip a bit into the color and the rest of the brush away from the color.

The next method is to work wet on dry paper again, you can use any brush but you do need to practice this so you know how your brush works. Load your brush with the color you need then apply it to the area you will be painting. Rinse your brush and immediately with your damp brush, run it along the edge you need to soften and lighten. You can't wait too long or the paint will start to dry and won't move. This is a good time to remind you it helps to have the top of your paper elevated so that gravity will work for you, helping g the paint to move. You may need to do this again until you get the desired look you want.

The third method works best with flat or angle brushes. Rinse your brush and slightly dry it then load your paint on to one corner (flat) or tip (angle) and then slightly work it into the bristles about a third of the way across by working it on your palette. Place the tip/corner of your brush where you need the darkest color but have the whole edge of your brush on the paper with the opposite end of the bristles in the area you want the lightest. Again, this takes practice but it is very effective.

Now to the boat.

Make sure that you have the color around your boat intense enough. You need the contrast between the color and the white of the paper to make the sail and the boat stand out. This is best done before you remove the masking, however, if you need to, you can add color around the sail or the boat, using the technique above to fade the color into the sky or sea, just find a color that is in the area you need to intensify, paint it around the boat or sail then with a wet brush, fade it out to the sides of your paper.

When you are satisfied with your background, be sure that the paper is totally dry before removing the masking. Moisture likes to gather at corners or angles. If you are using a hair drier, be sure to use the low setting for the heat and hold the drier back at least 18" from the paper. You don't want to melt the masking into your paper or you will have trouble.

Do not worry about the stripes on the sail for right now, just worry about the shadow that runs the length of the sail. You will notice it is a graded shadow: Darker on one side then fades to light on the other, this is where your practice comes in. Mix a bluish gray with blue, a touch of sienna to gray it, even a tiny touch of purple but keep it on the blue side, then do your shadow using one of the techniques I mentioned above. If you use the wet into wet method, do not wet the whole sail ONLY the pars of the sail that have shadows, this will give you a harder line on that one edge and keep the sunny areas bright.

You can use this color in the shadow areas of the boat. If you mix it darker, you can use it to create the canopies over the man piloting the boat and for the portholes and other dark detail.

The stripes can be any color you want them to be I will tell you my reasoning for my choices but the choice is yours. I didn't much care for the navy blue stripe in the photo but decided to have a blue stripe at the top part of the sail because it was the compliment to the colors in the sky (orange and yellow), but it was not solid blue. I wet the stripe (wet into wet) put blue at the top and bottom of the upper stripe and put a bit of sap green in the center and with a clean damp brush worked the edges of those colors together. This creates a sense of light coming through the sail.

On the bottom stripe, I needed a color that would stand out against the blue of the ocean, again I went with the complimentary colors of red with a touch of yellow at the center of the stripe, just like I did on the top. The stripes on the boat are optional but again you choose.

To finish this up I outlined some of the boat with my Sharpie pen to give it some detail and definition to areas. The rigging (rope/cables for the sail) I did using my ruler and a sharp, pointed knife to score the paper. this was another reason to have that area intense enough in color so the ropes would show up when the paper was scored. The important thing to remember here is this has to be the last thing you are going to do to the sky because once you have damaged the surface of the paper, it will take the paint differently, usually a lot darker so be sure you want to do this before you start.

We will be starting a new project on Monday so be sure that you download the photo and the drawing if you need it. See you soon.

Spring 2011 Watercolor

2011-04-06T09:53:00.001-07:00

WATERCOLOR CLASS DEMO Week 2 – FantaSea

Because Blogger has taken away my ability to create paragraphs, why, I am unsure, I will separate thoughts with --- sorry I know it makes it hard to read but they keep messing with my format.

--------- Please read the last post for last week to get started, I do want to emphasize that you do not need to do your drawing until after you have done your first splatter, not do you need to have your boat masked out, however, if you have don't both before you started to splatter it is okay, I just like to see some of the splatter in the subject I am painting, it is neither right or wrong, it is personal preference.

--- Another thing I need to mention is there was method to my madness when I splattered, this is where a drawing or at least the horizon line will come in handy, I wanted to keep my warmer brighter colors up in the sky area behind the sail of the boat and the cooler, darker colors in the water area. Keep your paint pure as you splatter and let them mix on the paper, remember to stop before you start mixing mud.

--- I also want to mention again that it will help your painting, not just this painting but when ever you paint, if you raise the top end of your painting so it is on a slight angle. This will let gravity work for you and your paint won't sit in stagnant pool on your paper but will do what watercolor does best and mingle together with the other paints. You don't need much to start, maybe an inch or two but you may find that the angle helps you a lot. I usually work at an angle of about 4" at home though I am now pretty comfortable working almost vertically since teaching the classes. All it takes is a roll of tape or you purse or a brush box, just something to prop the top up.

---- Once you have finished your first splatter and your paper is completely dry, if you haven't done so get your drawing on and put masking on the entire boat and sail. The paper need to be completely dry before you add the masking or you will have problems when you go to take it off.

--- When the masking is dry, it should take about 20 minutes or so, you can do your next splatter, this time use more paint and less water so the colors are brighter. You want to increase the color intensity and also its value nearest the boat both in the sky and in the water, just don't try to do it all at once. It may take t or more times of splattering with drying time in between to get the depth of color and value you need, just remember to let it dry between sessions.

--- When you have the background the way you want, make sure that your paper has completely dried before trying to take off the masking. The moisture likes to pool up along the edge of the mask, especially if there is a corner, if you take it off while there is any dampness near the mask you run the risk of tearing the paper. If you use a hair drier, be sure to use the cool setting and hold it back at least a foot from the paper so you don't melt the masking into the paper. You may have to reestablish your drawing before you start because the mask will put up some of the pencil and paint with it.

--- From here I painted the boat just like I would in a traditional setting. At the top of the sail, there are some shadows and creases, I mixed my blue with a tiny touch of purple and sienna, I wanted a bluish gray. Starting right next to the mast I painted my darkest color using my ½" angle brush, I rinsed my brush, and at the edge away from the mast I blended the color out to get a graded look to the color. Next, using this same color, I painted the shadow on the sail. If you need to draw a line to show you where the shadow is, please do so. There is a harder, darker edge to parts of it but you do need to soften the back edge going towards the sail, so after you rinse your brush, with just a damp brush, tease that strip of color you just put down so that it fades back towards the mast. Next, rinse your brush, and draw the damp brush down the outer edge of that shadow just to soften it a bit, it will make the sail look rounded.

--- The stripes on the sails had two colors, you may want to wet the stripe first, then put blue at the top and bottom and hooker's green in the middle. On the bottom stripe I did a similar thing with red and orange, orange being in the middle. I did add some shadow to the side of the boat with the blue-gray color, but we will finish this up next class.

--- We are going to practice doing some graded washes so have some extra paper with you to practice on.

Watercolor Week 1

2011-03-30T12:54:00.000-07:00

I need to apologize, apparently Blogger is letting sponsors put their links in my blogs without even bothering to ask! The hyperlinks that appear orange are not my doing ......also Blogger keeps screwing with this program and now it won't let me insert a blank line to separate paragraphs so I will have to separate thoughts with..... Watercolor - Sailboat .... This time Torrance gets the head start on the project so if you are a PV student, you will be using this blog for information from our class project. There isn't a lot to tell at this point because I have to do an orientation on the first day but we did get started so we can jump right in at our next class. Be sure to go to the picture page and download the reference picture and, if you need it, the drawing to have for class when we meet again on Monday..... . I am hoping that most of you will be able to at least get your drawing on your paper and even better if you can get your first round of splattering on. I know that some of my returning students masked out their boat before they started to splatter and that is okay, there is no right or wrong what to do this, I just like to have a bit of the color from the splatters in the things I am painting but I have done it both ways so don't panic, no one dies just because you started by masking the boat out. ...... For my new students, if you can get the drawing on for the next class, I will show you the splattering and also how to apply the masking. If you do the splattering be careful not to go too far with it. It can feel way too good and before you know it, it looks more like mud splatters so stop and let it dry, you will be doing more...... . Generally, when I splattered my paper, I kept the warm colors like the yellow, orange and red up in the sky area and the cool colors like green, blue and purple in the water area though I did put some blue in the sky area and I didn't care if the splatters didn't end up where I hoped they would. This is not rocket science, it is controlled chaos. Just have fun and don't mix mud. Be ready to go on Monday, if you have questions let me know. See you soon.

Spring 2011

2011-03-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone

I posted the photo and drawing for our first project on the picture page. We have done it before I think but this time I think we will do it with a twist to loosen up.

Please feel free to download and print the photo for class and I have a drawing posted if you need help with the drawing.

See you soon. - LP

Winter 2011 Watercolor Classes

2011-03-11T12:05:00.000-08:00

WINTER 2011 WATERCOLOR – More Rocks

Torrance class: I didn't do anything different to the rocks in your class than I did at PV so the blog I wrote for them should be just about the same for your rocks. Just be patient and take your time.

Before I start the narration on the rocks, I want to talk a bit about "getting in the mood" to paint. Painting should be almost meditative. If you are in "the zone" when you are painting you should be startled when you look up and see the time and realize an hour or two has passed. As I look around the class most of you look dismayed that only a few minutes have passed since you last looked at the clock. This is not the mind set you should be in when you are trying to create.

I have mentioned before the Betty Edward's book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" it is a wonderful book for many reasons, the best being explaining to you how your mind works. The two side of your brain have different functions. The left side is concerned with Time, logic, math, language to name a few, the things you use in your everyday-get-through-life state of being. The right side of your brain of you brain is more concerned with spatial things, face recognition, esthetics, emotions sort of the background program that lets you walk through a room without watching every step – everything the left side is not. Together, they make up who we are and how we see the world around us.

One of the key things she talks about is how the left brain relates to the world. It has its own short hand for everything so that anything that looks like a chair no matter how ornate, it names it as a chair and moves on to the next thing, it is very impatient, it doesn't care. Your right side is the side that can tell the difference from a garage sale folding chair and a $1000 gilded antique, it does care.

There is another important fact she discovered and that is when ever you stopped learning art such as drawing, whether it was in grade school or college or whenever, that is where you start your journey again. This is a hard concept for adults, I think we assume that because we are adults that we have absorbed this knowledge or have access to it just by living and experiencing art. Well, I've flown on planes and watched countless movies and TV of pilots working all the controls, but I don't think you'd want me flying any plane you were on. You need to have not only the knowledge but also the skill and that comes through practice and patience.

Most of you are coming from this combination of being an adult and assuming you should be able to do this, plus, for a lot of you, you are in your instant gratification, left brain. Not a real good combination for learning. You will find you have trouble getting things to look like the pictures in your mind, they will tend to be more child-like (this would be more your left brain's shorthand version) or you get frustrated and start mixing mud. You need to slow down, picture the subject in your mind, sketch the subject either on your watercolor paper or on sketch pad and concentrate more on the process than the end result. You will hear that little voice in your head saying "Are we done yet?!" Ignore it and see how much detail you can see in your subject. Whether it is clouds, rocks or whatever, look for shapes, colors, lights, darks and patterns. You will start seeing things you never noticed before and the more you practice this, the easier shifting into that state of mind will become, you just need to ignore that voice when it switches to "This is stupid! Let's move on!"

I can't teach you this, I have tried. This is something you will need to find on your own before you will believe me, I know this from personal experience. The ironic thing about the left brain is it is also your own worst critic. It can see the picture you have in your mind and if what is on your canvas or paper doesn't match, it is quick to point out those "faults". Again, don't listen to it because it will drag you down until you finally give up which is what it wanted all along. Find something in your painting or drawing that you like and concentrate on the positive. I have had my "SHUT UP!" moment when I got so tired of the self criticism I about had myself in tears. It felt like I was being attacked by an internal pack of wolves and I didn't deserve it because I was still learning and art was a part of me I wasn't about ready to give up. It was my epiphany. From that point, my art took a dramatic turn and I've never looked back. Cut yourself some slack and enjoy the process, it will come with time, patience and practice.

::::She gets off her soapbox and puts it away::::

Rocks Part 2 – This week we worked on the river rocks, the individual rounded rocks that could easily be part of a cobble stone road or wall or house as laying on the bottom of a decorative pond. It is all the same, rocks are rocks.

You can start out by doing your drawing before you start or you might want to wait until after the first step because the graphite will tend to wash out and you will have to come back over with your pencil to reestablish the lines. It is up to you, I did my drawing first and went back over the lines when the first step was dry.

The first thing I did before I started painting was to totally wet my paper. I want the paper to be wet so the paint will spread and blend and create some really lovely blends and textures. I also had this on about a 4" slant when I was redoing it at home. Very seldom do I ever work totally flat on the table.

To that wet paper, I splattered, touched and dripped different colors of paint. Anything I've got on my palette is fair game the only caution here is to stop before you create mud. Let the colors flow together by tilting your paper other directions or by using water and no paint to splatter. Also, be sure that you use a lot of water in your paint so it isn't too dark when it dries.

When I was satisfied with my splattering I let it dry until the sheen was just off the paper and I added salt to create even more texture then I let the whole thing air dry to give the salt time to work. When it was dry, I went back over the lines of my drawing.

I am always asked about controlling the watercolor, I have to laugh because even if you get out the little brushes there will always be an element of chaos with watercolors. It is like skiing: At first you feel like you are flying out of control as gravity works against you and those trees come up real fast! But the more you ski the more control you have of your body and your equipment until gravity becomes your friend - or partner in crime – then those trees really are coming up a lot faster but you know what to do to avoid disaster. Same with watercolor though the consequences are only mud and not broken bones, the element of chaos is still there, you just have more control over it. Be patient.

The next thing I did when the paper was dry was I mixed a dirt color for between the rocks. This was mostly sienna though I did throw in some blue and/or purple and while I was painting it on, I picked up touches of red, orange and green just to change the flavor of the color. I painted around all the rocks, this is called negative painting because I wasn't painting the rocks, just the dirt around them. This could be mud, or cement or what ever is between them depending on what situation the rocks are in - road, wall, house etc.

Each rock was painted individually. Some I wet the rock before I added color others I did wet on dry paper, it depended on whether I wanted the paint to spread or I needed to control it. With something like this, you can work on another rock while one dries so you can keep painting for a long time, just be careful not to paint next to a wet area or you will get blooms though in this case that might not be a bad thing.

I used my sponge to create some of the speckles on a rock and then went back in with my brush to soften and shape the marks left by the sponge to make them look more natural.

Rocks have dents and chips on them that are subtle and require a gentle hand. For dents I might wet the area first then drop in a bit of darker color making sure that the edges stay soft with just a damp brush. For the chips, I just put paint on the point of my angle brush (this can be done with a flat or round as well), placed the whole edges of the brush on the paper and painted the shadow of the chipped area. I rinsed my brush and softened the color so that it would blend in on the ends. Sometimes just a little bit of paint can make a big difference, these chips and dips don't need to be dark but they do need to be there.

I finished my rocks by getting in the darkest shadows around each rock. I even pulled out smaller rocks in the dirt area just by painting around with a shadow color or lifting color first then adding shadows around it. While your rocks don't have to be exactly like the ones in the photo, follow the photo enough to give you ideas how to finish each rock. Take your time, you can learn a lot about controlling your paint and how your brushes work doing a project like this.

This week will be our last class in both places so please bring in something for critique it doesn't have to be something you have done in class it can be anything you would like help with or a second opinion. Remember that registration is now open if you want to sign up at either Torrance or PVAC.

Winter 2011 - Rocks

2011-03-03T17:34:00.001-08:00

Winter 2011 Watercolor – Rock Demo

All classes we only have 2 more weeks of class and classes will start up again at the end of the month. Registration is now open at Torrance and pending at PV if you want to get signed up for any classes it is best to do it ASAP especially at Torrance where they close under enrolled classes the week before classes start.

The thing to keep in mind about most rocks is they are rough plus they have chips, dents, ridges and cracks. They also are not a solid color. While these rocks look gray at first glance if you look closer you will see all kinds of color in them. There are blues and greens, purples and reds, yellow, orange and sienna are also there so get those colors in you under painting.

I sketched in my rock shapes before I started painting so I knew where I needed to paint and I was using the photo of the big rocks, I will finish the small rocks next week.

With the excepting of a few tops of rocks I wanted to leave white, I wet the entire rock area with clear water and went over it a couple times to be sure that my paper was very wet. I painted around the areas I wanted to protect so they were dry. Into that wet I added all different kinds of color but I made sure that they were very watered down, I don't want the colors to be over powering. If they look too vibrant, quickly add more water and lift with your paper towel. These colors should be very pastel, I even splattered some color. Other options are adding salt or using the plastic wrap but it takes too long to dry in class.

These next steps are layers of subtle washes. Watercolor is transparent so each time you add a wash the colors will become deeper in value (light vs dark) and more intense in color (pale vs vibrant) it is a very important thing to remember when you are painting in watercolor because we have to work from light to dark so we need to save our lighter areas as we go. It is better to be too light than too dark because it is easier to add more washes to get the look you want but more difficult to remove unwanted color.

I mixed up a gray this time using yellow, a touch of purple and a touch of blue and lots of water, this should just be a tint but it should look gray, watch the purple because it is a strong color. On my DRY rocks, I added this color to everything EXCEPT to those few areas I left white at the beginning. Those will be the sunlit tops of the rocks so I want to keep them white by painting around them. Also note that I am not painting individual rocks just yet that will come next. If you want, you can splatter or drop more colors into the wet rocks just be sure that they are rather dilute still at this point. Let this step dry completely.

Each of the next steps you are going to need to really look at the reference photo so you can see the different shadows and colors on the rocks. I was still using the same gray color I just made it a bit darker by adding more color than water. I identified the NEXT BRIGHTEST areas and painted this color on everything else avoiding the bright sunlit and the next brightest areas. Just look for the shapes of the shadows and colors in the rocks don't worry about the rocks you should start to see rocks emerge from your paper with each new wash as the layers build and add value and color. When this paint dried I used virtually the same value of color and went over the next darkest areas now avoiding yet other areas. Build up your values and your colors – yes, you can add other colors to your gray mix – gradually to create the shape and texture of the rocks.

In the dark shadows I mixed my standard shadow color of blue, purple and a touch of sienna with only a little water, this should be very dark. This goes where you see cast shadows and the spaces between the rocks and the cracks, I used a liner for the cracks. You can also splatter more color onto the rocks or lift out some shapes in the shadow areas, just have fun finishing up the detail.

If you didn't do the underwater rocks under painting, you might want to have that ready for class on Tuesday. These smaller rounder rocks are a good exercise for not only river rocks but also for cobble stone roads, walls or any other place where people might use rocks as a building material.

Watercolor 2011 Winter Classes

2011-02-27T12:16:00.001-08:00

Winter 2011 Watercolor Class – Apple Demo

All classes: I am just going back to putting the link to the picture page by adding hyperlinks throughout the text, it more than doubles the time I spend writing the blog to add the pictures in where they should go. I'll keep looking to see if Google improves how blogs are edited but for now I will go back to the tried and true hyperlink, sorry. Just hit the back arrow in your browser to get back to the blog.

I do want to state again that when you are designing your painting whether it is something alone or a very complicated scene, you must decide what is important in your painting so when you place it, it is not only in a prominent point on your canvas or paper but that it is also large enough to show its importance. This is especially true when you only have one or two objects, make them big enough so they don't get lost in the background. As I walked around the room many of you made the apple very small on your paper so that most of your painting was just the background, if I was enough of a math genius and could figure out how much space my apple takes up on my paper, I would say that it is close to a third of the space, maybe a bit more. The apple is my subject NOT the background.

I did draw my apple in, if you want you can also indicate where shadows and highlights are as well. I could have used masking to protect some of the bright highlight but instead I lifted back to an almost white while I was painting the area and also at the end, it is up to you.

I do want to mention that you might want to paint with the top of your painting raised up a bit. I have to work vertically for class but that doesn't mean that I work flat at home, I usually work from 2 – 4" off the table so that gravity will work for me. Working flat can cause the paint to pool up or just sit there and not do anything. Put a roll of tape or you pencil box under the top of your support to give a bit of angle while you are painting and I think you will find it does help.

To start off, I wet the entire paper with water, almost to the point of soaking it. This will let the paint do a lot of the work and will let it gently blend with other colors so there are no hard lines. Starting inside the apple, I worked out in circles with my colors first with yellow, on the outside of that next with sap green (sgreen) then sgreen and Hooker's green (hgreen), the hgreen and ultramarine blue (blue) getting darker in the corners. While the yellow was still wet, I lifted out some color where I want my highlight to be. The trick here is to start the next color just outside the previous color and let the two mix naturally. This is where the wet paper will come in handy and do most of the work. If the paint isn't moving or you were too far away you can used just water or water and a bit of one of the colors to coax it along. Don't worry if you get blooms here, it adds interest to your background.

Let this dry completely before moving on.

I started painting the shadows on my apple. Because of the yellow I used, I made a gray color with yellow and purple for the shadows. This will be the first wash of color but it is important to start the shaping process of your apple. Look at the real apple when you are trying to decide where these shadows go. There is the obvious one behind the apple but there are also shadows around the stem and along the top. Start out with a dark color then rinse your brush and with a DAMP brush, tease the color out so you have a nice graded value for your shadows.

While the shadow areas are drying, you can intensify the background colors and suggest that the apple is sitting on a table. I started with a light wash of sgreen and a touch of yellow and using "criss cross" strokes I did much the same thing I did with the first rings of wash but this time I want to intensify the colors a bit keeping it light behind the apple (see photo page). As I get into the darker areas there is less water and more paint on my brush, I want it pretty dark in the corners. Let everything dry before proceeding.

This next step might need some practice on your part because most of you are so heavy handed with your brushes and this take subtlety and trusting your paints to do what you need them to do, so consider a few practice runs before trying it out on your paper.

Starting at the back edge of the top of the apple, I wet the area with water avoiding the area where the stem will be. This is very similar to how I started the painting but this time I am localizing the wet paper to just the area I want to paint at the moment which is the back of the apple. Using my angle brush, I pick up Napthol red (nred) with very little water and just LIGHTLY TOUCH along the top edge of the apple occasionally pulling a line down towards the place where the stem connects to the apple. Remember that your brush strokes must follow the curve of the apple and angle down towards the center, these are not straight lines. I also picked up orange and yellow and did a few similar strokes in that same area but closer to the stem and mindful of the curve of the apple.

This next step I would wet parts of the apple and added paint as I went, the reason for this is the paper will dry and you will need to rewet it anyway so I wet about a third of the apple, dropped in color then wet the next third and so on. I started on the lighter side of the apple with cad red and napthol touching in bits of orange and yellow and wiping back the highlight area to keep it lighter. As I moved over to the shadowed side it was napthol and alizarin with touches of sap green. While the shadow area was still wet I dropped a mix or purple and blue into the wet paint for the reflected highlight.

The cast shadow from the apple was made with Hooker's green, blue and alizarin and very little water, it should be very dark. You might want to wait until your apple is dry before adding the shadow so you don't get a bloom into your apple. I started with this very dark color right under the apple where it sits on the towel, it stays very dark around the side, I even painted over the edge of the apple to create a lost and found look in the shadow. As the shadow moves away from the apple it will get a bit lighter but should remain mostly dark. Be sure that you rinse your brush and soften the edges of the shadow.

The stem was sap green and while it was wet I touched in alizarin to the shadowed side and yellow in the sunlit side. Lastly I splattered some red and orange on the apple to give it a few small spots and I took a Q-Tip with water to lift the highlight back starting in the lightest area and with small circles and rinsing the Q-tip lifted out what I wanted.

You may need to adjust the colors and the shadows to finish this the way you want just remember to let an area dry completely before rewetting and adding more color. If you do rewet an area, minimize how many times you go over the area or you will smear what you did before and could cause mud.

PV, we will be doing rocks in the next class so please download and print the rock photos on the picture page. Torrance we will be doing the apple have the reference photo for class. See you all soon.

Winter 2011 - Brushstrokes

2011-02-20T11:17:00.001-08:00

Watercolor Class Winter 2011

Torrance class – The instructions for the poppy are the same the only thing I did different was instead of negative painting with random colors, I used colors that would make the flower appear as if against the plant. Color doesn't matter but where you want to go with it does. Have fun.

PV class – I am going to write up the different strokes we covered in class for the blog I am also going to create a page so you don't have to go through all the archives if you need to review (I tried to find the last time I did this demo and couldn't so I know you would have problems). I repainted the strokes so I could photograph them easier but they are still the same. Hope this will come in handy, the link is on the side bar.

Also Note: Blogger does not make it easy for me to insert pictures, this has taken me days and I still didn't have much success with all the images I had to post. If you want to se examples of the strokes just click on the slide show in the side bar and it will take you to the picture page. Sorry this has taken so long but I keep hitting deand ends.

Some basics before we get into techniques: A brush is NOT a pen or a pencil, you hold it in your hand so you can get the job done sometimes that means being able to roll it in your fingers or scrub away. We also use all surfaces of the brush not just the tip or end of the brush, this goes for all brushes whether they are flat or round. It is also good practice to hole the brush back at least mid way and better yet to hold it at the end not up by the metal ferrule, this will give you brush more action and your painting won't look as tight. Save that for the final details.

Also, keep your brush relatively dry. If you rinse it, wipe it out with a paper towel to get rid of any excess water which can flow down off your brush and thin your paint so that it won't cover the way you thought it would.

Brush strokes matter. They can tell your viewer a lot about the texture or the terrain even the direction or the shape of something, think about what you are painting and what you can do to make it look more authentic.

Dry Brush –Key things to remember are: Dry Brush means DRY BRUSH! If you rinse your brush be sure you have dried the brush so there is no water visible when you squeeze the bristles, water will hide up near the metal ferrule so be sure to dry the whole bristle area. It also means that there is little paint on those dry bristles so after you load your brush be sure that there are no globs of paint on the ends or sides, wipe it on a paper towel if you have to, to avoid having too much paint or water.

The other thing to keep in mind is pressure. If you press down hard on your brush, more paint will come off and fill in the area, the lighter you press down, the brush will only hit the high spots on the paper leaving little "holes" so you can see the under painting or the paper showing through.

Depending on what you are painting at the time dry brush can be used to add in some color such as mist or dust or when you are making waterfalls or the glimmer on the ocean or palm fronds.

Stippling – This is a good stroke when you are leafing out trees or creating bushes or distant flowers or even adding some texture, the pressure rule applies here as well but you can have more paint on your brush.

I usually use a flat brush for this technique but a round one will work. When I pick up paint I take my brush, on my palette I tap the end of my brush straight down on the mixing area, not so much to mix the paint if I have more than one color but more to "fuzz up" the end of the brush so it spreads out and looks all twisted, this is great for trees and bushes because it creates a random look to the area. I apply the paint by touching the end of the brush straight on to create the tree or bush or texture I need. Remember that the amount of pressure you use on your brush will determine how much paint comes off your brush. If the area is too congested with paint, you are too heavy handed. I have literally had the brush fall out of my hand because I was holding it so lightly when doing this technique.

The Liner Brush – This little brush makes great trees, branches, weeds, grass, fence wire, boat rigging…Any where you need a nice thin line the liner is the brush to use. It does take practice to master and mixing the right consistency of your paint is half the battle. The paint needs to be very ink-like. If you tip your palette it should run. Next you need to load it fully, really work the paint into your brush and as you lift it off your palette, roll it in your fingers.

Hold this brush as far back on the handle as you can and hold the tip slightly down so the paint will flow. If you are doing trees or branches, the harder you press the thicker the line, lift as you come up to get a thinner line and wiggle your brush a little to give the tree/branch/weed some character.

When doing grass, get your hand and brush moving in a circular motion before you get to the canvas, when you get the rhythm, touch the canvas on the upstroke. Big circles = tall grass, little circles – short grass.

Flat or Round Sable brush - You can create leaf shapes by loading your brush with a good amount of paint but it should be worked into the bristles then start by touching the edge (flat brush) or the end (round brush) then as you move the brush press and twist then twist and lift to finish. You can create all shapes of leaves and grasses using this stroke but it does take some practice.

Wet into Wet – The area to be painted is first painted with water to make the paper wet, when you add paint to this area the paint will spread on its own and will create soft edges and blends with other colors.

Wet on Dry – the paper is dry so when you apply the paint you will get hard edges.

Using a flat or an angle brush if you load the paint on the tip or a corner and work it into the brush you can get a nice graded stroke.

With a round brush to get a graded color working wet on dry, apply the color, rinse your brush and dry it and with a damp brush run it along the edge you want to soften.

These are just a few of the ways you can use your brushes and the watercolor but it isn't by any stretch of the imagination the complete list. Watercolor is a very versatile medium it is up to you as the artist to find the ways it works best for you.

PV class, We will be working on the apple please download and print so you have it in class.

Watercolor Class Winter 2011

2011-02-12T11:56:00.001-08:00

WATERCOLOR CLASS – Week 5

Torrance class, we finished up the snow picture so please be ready to do the poppy on Monday. Download and print the reference picture NOT my painting of it, for reference.

PVAC class – We started a water picture using a photo I took along the PV cliffs near Lanada Bay. The water was clear and calm so you could see to the bottom close to shore. Each situation – calm or choppy, few waves or big crashers – poses it's own set of problems but the first one may seem like a no-brainer but you would be surprised at how easy it is to do (I saw it in class even after I explained it) and that is to have a horizontal horizon line. That means that it needs to be parallel to the top and the bottom of the paper. Use a ruler if you have to but please, make the horizon line straight when there is water involved. This holds true for oceans, lakes, ponds, fish tanks or glasses of wine, anytime you have a liquid involved it is going to be level otherwise it will look like it is spilling and we don't want that especially when large bodies of water are concerned.

Since this was a demo on water, I will focus on the water aspect more so than the rest of the painting but will do some brief descriptions of what I did in those areas.

The first thing I did was to mask out any areas that I need to be white at the end, it has to dry completely before you can put wet next to it but you can do the sky. The sky area was first painted in just clear water, this will help the paint to move on its own. Next I picked up a little blue and a touch of sienna (if you have cerulean blue that is a good sky color on its own) and water to make a light gray/blue on my palette then I just touched this color along the top part of the sky and a few places lower and let the wet paper and paint work their magic. This will work better if you work at a slight angle so gravity can help out, if you are working flat, you may have to coax the paint along thru this whole process. The water will be painted exactly like this – wet into wet – so the elevation of your paper will only help you.

You might want to let the sky dry before you start on the water so you don't get any "blooms" into your sky though they could look like clouds later on.

Starting at the horizon, I wet the water area with clean water, again to help the paint move on my paper. With that same gray/blue color I just used in the sky, I touched my brush along the horizon. I want to keep my strokes horizontal just touching the paper as I go back and forth. As I come forward, I pick up more blue but I need to keep it light so add water if you need to. Just past the point of the bluff I finished wetting the paper then started adding touches of Hooker's green into my blue mix, touching this color along the base of the bluffs and along the sides of the paper leaving that sandy area getting greener as I came closer to shore. In the sandy area I picked up sienna and water and added it into a corner of the green color on my palette, just enough of the green to slightly gray the color. I touched this warm color to the wet paper and let the tow colors blend together on the paper by themselves. If your paper has dried, you may need to re-wet before you do this, or use some water on your brush and touch the areas between the green water and the sand. Do not worry about the blooms if they happen, they add texture to the under painting.

Please keep this step very light. These are just tints, if you get too dark too soon it could be hard to get the highlights you will need later.

While the water is drying, if you want to paint the cliffs and the shore sand, now is a good time. On the cliffs I used sienna with touches of orange for the dirt areas, please note that the dirt is sliding down at different angles so make your strokes follow the angles. Leave spaces for the trees and bushes which I painted in first with a mix of sap green and yellow very lightly and detailed them darker later.

The sand on the shore is a mix of yellow, a tiny touch of purple to gray the color (purple is the compliment to yellow) and a lot of water, this too is just a tint.

When the water is dry, again starting at the horizon with the flat edge of my angle brush (a flat brush or round will work, practice with it first) and using a slightly darker version of the gray/blue (blue with a touch sienna and water), I touch the end of my brush to the dry paper keeping my brush parallel to the top and bottom of the paper, this will keep my strokes horizontal. As I touch the paper, I will leave some areas the show the under painting, this is good, it acts like sparkles on the water.

Just like I did in the first step, I add blue as I come forward, still using the same technique of touching though I was tilting it a bit so I could use more of the side of the brush switching to the Hooker's green in the foreground. Also, my strokes got further apart as I came forward as well as longer – think wave swells.

Rule of thumb for distance: Things that are closer to you are larger, further apart, more detailed and more intense in color, as things go off into the distance they become smaller, closer together, less detailed and softer and grayer in color. This works for everything.

There is some reflection and shadows in the water, I do want you to notice that the reflection has a broken edge caused by the action of the waves so when you paint these colors onto your paper, paint them just the same way as you have been painting the swells with the blues and greens just use a darker green/blue and sienna with a touch of blue where the dirt reflects.

I should state at this point that if you want more intense colors and darker values, you will need to repeat this step several times. I only did this once through so you can get an idea of how to paint water because of time constraints. If I was to do this for myself – and I might finish this at home – I would definitely intensify the values and the colors. That doesn't mean that I would cover up everything I did, it would mean that I would add more color and more detail especially to the foreground, leaving some of the existing color to indicate waves of different sizes and shapes, it could take a couple more hours to finish this the way I feel it should be finished.

Along the shore where I have my masking fluid saving the foam, I want to be sure that I get some darker color around the masked off areas whether you are using the blue or the green, be sure that you get that color in so your waves will show up when we take the mask off. There are also some rocks along the shore that will help define the foam along the shore, the rocks are a mix of sienna and blue to make a dark color and when you add the rocks to the point of the bluff they should be lighter (see Rule of Thumb above), smaller less detailed than the ones near the foreground. This same color with a bit more blue and water can be used for the dark shapes in the water just remember to rinse your brush and use the damp brush to soften the edges of these shapes. When the paper is totally dry you can remove the masking.

The cliffs and trees can be finished by adding more washes of color, remember that the light colors are your highlights so don't paint them all out. You can add shadows, intensify the color, how ever you want to finish it. Enjoy the process, don't be in such a hurry to get a painting done as you gain experience you will also gain speed but really it is the journey you take when painting that should be the most enjoyable aspect, the rest is frosting.

The next class I will be going over brush strokes so there is no photo to down load just have some paper to work on.

Winter 2011 Watercolor class

2011-02-05T11:31:00.001-08:00

WATERCOLOR – Week 4

Torrance students: The instructions for this week's class are pretty much the same as for the PV class a couple of weeks ago so check the archives for that lesson. The only thing I did that was different, I added more masking to protect the foreground trees and some of the branches before adding the middle ground trees and another wash on the snow.

PV – Poppy

To save time, I had already drawn the sketch of my poppy on my paper before class, that said, it really doesn't make a difference if you have your design on before or do it after this first step, so if you don't have your design on, you can wait until the paper is dry then add the design.

I do want to point out a vital issue when you are organizing your design, that is you main subject should be important on the page. If you are working from a photo – either your own or out of a magazine – you are not bound by what you see in that photo. Your priority is your paper. Make the subject big enough to show its importance. This is especially true when you only have one subject, fill the paper with the subject. My poppy takes up almost 3/4^th of the paper because I what everyone to know it is important. I kept most of it out of the middle, just off center and I even have part of it going off the page. When you do take part of something off the page be sure that it looks like you intended to do it, don't take the tips of your petal, for instance, to the edge of your paper because if you mat it, it will visually look like it is stuck on the mat, so if it is going off the paper, make it definite.

To start this first step – and this is what a lot of you missed – I wet the paper first, first by spraying it with my spray bottle then with my big brush to get it well coated with water. Next, using my 1" angle brush i.e. the biggest brush you have, I picked up color on my palette that had enough water in it so it was drippy and splattered color on my paper. I used most of my colors except my browns and while it was wet I tilted my paper, threw on some salt and added some plastic wrap before I was all through.

A word of caution: Throwing paint can start to feel too good and you can very quickly go from interesting to mud in a blink of an eye so it is better to stop sooner rather than later and let it dry, you can always add more if you want later. Let it dry completely before starting the next step especially if you added plastic it will take longer for the paper to dry under the plastic.

The first area I painted was the center of the poppy. I used yellow and made a ragged top edge to suggest the fuzzy form of the center, along the bottom of that yellow I added touches of orange and sienna for shadow.

Now the color for the background is not important, I could have – and have in other things I have painted – used black ink for the entire background but for this demo I picked up my red, blue, purple and hooker's green to paint in the area behind the flower and leaves, this is called "negative painting" and it is something that as a watercolorist you will use quite often. Basically, I started with my most concentrated color – more pigment, less water – in the lowest part of the spaces between the petals keeping the color more vivid until I got past the end of the petal then I rinsed my brush and with clear water along the outside edge of that color while it was still wet, I bled it into the background. You may have to rinse your brush often to get it to fade out, just be sure you do not have excess color on your brush before you start this process. When I changed colors, I would blend the new color into the old so there was hardly a noticeable transition from one color to the next. I continued this process until I had all of the flower and the leaves outlined with the color.

Have your reference photo at the ready so you can see where the shadows are on the flower. The color I used for the shadows on my flower will always be blue with a touch of purple, no sienna this time, but lots of water. You want a thin wash for most of the shadows and by letting the area dry before you go over parts with the next wash, the wash doesn't even need to be darker because with water as you add layers, you also add density. Remember to take a damp brush and soften the edges of the color as you put it down.

In the center next to the yellow, you may need to mix a darker value of the blue and purple (less water) to get a dark enough color to carve out the fuzzy top, this is again negative painting because you are painting around the thing, not the thing its self.

The leaves were under painted with yellow then with sap and hooker's green depending on whether the area was light or darker, I negative painted in the veins of the leaves.

While I was doing my demo, people were asking whether I ever used white or pen and ink – yes to both. While I try not to make a habit of using white because it can make a color look chalky, I do occasionally need to use it, this was a good case in point. The splattered soft background tinted all of my paper so I didn't have any white and the edges of my flower looked a bit dingy so I borrowed some white and brightened a few of my lightest areas.

To finish my painting off, I took a permanent, fine tipped marker and added lines and detail around the edges of my flower, leaves and center. Remember, this is art, there are no hard and fast rules. If you want to use white or black, ink washes, collage or what ever strikes your fancy, feel free to do so, that is the only way you are going to know what it is you enjoy about art.

Next week I will be doing a water demo, maybe some rocks or…I'll find something to help you on your journey. See you soon.

Winter 2011 Watercolor Class

2011-01-28T10:45:00.001-08:00

WATERCOLOR Week 3 - Snow Demo

Torrance students please go back to the blog from a couple of weeks ago for the instructions. I will post a picture of the one I am doing in your class but all the techniques are basically the same. If I think of anything I didn't cover in class, I will mention it, right now you need to get your drawing finished, get your masking fluid on, get the sky and the distant trees in along the horizon.

This was the final week for our snow/white painting, the main point to this exercise is no matter what the subject is if it is white you need to have dark to show it off. It doesn't matter whether it is snow, lace, fur or whatever, if you want it to have depth and texture you need to have the contrast in values to show the white off. You can see this in the everyday things around you and in the works of other artists, the more you look for these things the more you will understand them.

I know that some of you were worried about leaving the masking fluid on for more than a couple days and took it off, that's okay but I have found that I can leave it on for a couple weeks with no problem. Part of that is the paper the other is how you store your painting between working on it. If the paper has a soft surface (you may want to test on a scrape piece of the paper you are working on), the masking can be absorbed from the start and even if you took it off within minutes of it drying, it will tear the paper. I've only had that happen a couple of times, just test your paper to be sure, each manufacture does things a bit different from the next.

The other way you might have problems with the masking tearing you paper is if it has been around heat. If you use a hair dryer it must be one with a cool setting and hold it back from the paper at least a foot. The other source of heat could be your car or if it is in a room that gets heated by the sun coming thru the windows like a back porch (my problem). If you are stopping on the way home and have your painting in the car, don't throw it in the trunk if you can, put it on the floor – front or back – and place a blanket or coat over it. This will insulate it for a while but best not to make an afternoon of your stop, get it home and into a cool, dry area.

Using your liner brush for those mid-ground trees make sure that not only do you have big dark ones but also lighter ones, smaller ones, some in front, some in back. That patch of trees may be 20 or more feet across so not all of the trees will be right along the front some will be in the middle or back and you suggest that by where you start you trunks. If you start them in front of the bushes in mid-ground plus if they are darker, they will look closer. If you start them in the middle of that color for the undergrowth, they will look like they are in the middle. If you make them lighter and start at the top of that undergrowth color, they will look like they are at the back. Also, don't be afraid to overlap or make groups of 3 or more. The one thing you do need to watch out for is lining them up in a nice, neat row, this isn't an orchard it is a woodland grove, nothing neat about it.

Once you have those mid-ground trees and branches in, it is time to move up to the foreground trees and their branches. Still using your liner brush mix a dark color (blue, sienna, touch of purple) and really congest the branches in the foreground. If you look at the sky area in particular, you will see tons of little branches and twigs, also note that there is a tree off the paper that has branches coming in from off the page. This will give you a lot of practice with your liner brush, remember if you want a thicker branch you press down on your brush and thinner ones you lift your brush. Another thing to keep in mind is that the branches will start on all sides of the tree, don't just have them coming off the side, start some in front and don't be afraid to overlap, it's what Nature does.

At this point we need to get some of the shadows behind the mounds of snow at the bottom of our trees otherwise they won't show up. I mixed my blue and purple – mostly blue – and a lot of water to make a light wash then painted in on behind the drifts around the bases of the trees. Once I put it down, I rinsed my brush and ran a damp brush along the edge of the color to soften the edges. I also used this light wash in other areas around the base of the trees to suggest texture but each time I softened the color around the edges. To make the cast shadows from the trees, I added a bit more blue and purple to that color and when I applied it I kept in mind that the shadows will follow the terrain, the snow is not flat and your shadows need to follow the snow. Again, once I had placed my shadows, I rinsed my brush, dried it a bit then took the damp brush and ran in on the edges of the shadow to soften them.

Now I removed the masking fluid from my trees. Make sure that the paper is completely dry before you take it off or you could tear you paper. use a damp brush to soften the edges where you had masking.

The detail in the trees was done using my ¼" angle brush and adding a touch of sienna to the blue and purple, created a dark color. The key thing to remember here is that the trunks are rounded so any stroke you pull across the trunk needs to be a "u" shape, other than that all the marks on the trunks are just shapes – dashes and dots as I heard one artist call them – nothing that takes any serious thought, just simple, quick marks with your brush.

At this point you need to finish it how you see fit. There were some grasses in the front that are done with the liner, notice that I did them in a gray/brown color not green. Why? Because there is no green anywhere else in my picture and I don't what to have what is called a "unique color", it would be distracting. If you need more shadows in places to make the trunks stand out, that is fine, just remember that a little color can go a long way so don't start out dark just use light washes, you can add more to build up the dark if you need to just let it dry before between washes so you can see how it will look.

Next week I will be doing another "white" demo using the poppy I posted on the picture page. If you want to follow along please print the picture out at home and have it for class, you can have it drawn on your paper before class if you want to save time. See you soon.

Winter 2011 Watercolor Classes

2011-01-21T14:30:00.001-08:00

Watercolor Week 2 – Snow Demo

(Click on the Slide Show in the side bar to go to picture page)

In this weeks class we started the snow project. If you are using your own show picture you will have to adjust what I do in my demo to your subject but the basics of painting snow are all the same, we all need to start out with a reasonable drawing on our paper. While you don't need to draw every stick in the pictures, you do need to have a good enough drawing to know where you are going with it and also so you know where you will need to put your masking fluid. When you are painting something that will have a lot of white or tiny detail it is always a good idea to have masking fluid handy.

When you are drawing your guide lines onto your paper remember, you are not obligated to draw it exactly as you see it. More often than not, when you are working from a photo or even in real life (plein aire), things aren't always either in the best position of are the right size of there is something that just doesn't help your composition, as an artist you are the ultimate PhotoShop! You can move mountains if you have to in order to make a more pleasing painting. The photos I am working from are good examples, the photographer had to take the picture before the snow melted or got all messed up even though the lighting wasn't the best and it may have been hard to get into the best position to take the picture because of the snow but she took the photo and now as artists we can move things into positions where they will work for us and not against us. We can assign importance to things or move them to a supporting role, we, as artists, have a lot of power over that piece of paper.

Aside from alight source which is virtually non-existent in the photos, the main trees are rather small and in a fairly straight line which is visually rather stagnant. When I drew my trees, I mad them a bit lager then they were in the photo and put them on a slight angle, this gives them more importance in the picture and it gives the whole painting a much better eye flow we want to keep our viewers in our paintings so we need to make them interesting.

I also had to make a decision on where the sun is coming from so I choose the upper right side a bit behind the trees. This way I will know where my shadows and highlights will be.

The yellow you see is the masking fluid.

Once I had my drawing the way I liked it, I got out my masking fluid and painted a few areas where I think the sun will be the brightest, I need to mask them so I don't have to worry about painting around them because I will forget. I put the masking on the sunny side of the trees and the snow around their bases and also in where the bushes and brambles of the undergrowth are in the middle ground trees. The masking has to dry before you can proceed. A word of caution: You can use a hair dryer on the masking fluid ONLY IF is has a NO HEAT setting. If you use heat you run the risk of melting it into your paper, then you are in a world of hurt when you go to peel it off.

Another thing I will mention is I am using a very limited palette. What that means is I am only using a few colors, they are: Orange, burnt sienna, ultra marine blue and dioxizine purple. I may also use a bit of a red but I haven't gotten to that point yet. Mostly, for the gray colors it will be a mix of blue and sienna with the occasional touch of purple and water to thin it down. That's it. I may vary it from warm to cool by adding more sienna or blue or purple but I won't be using any other colors for this entire painting.

I started in the sky area, you may want to paint with just water to wet the area first so your paint will spread easily, on my palette I mixed blue with a little touch of sienna and lots of water to create a blue/gray color and painted it into the sky, it should be pretty light. Paint the sky all the way across the page don't worry about painting over the trees they aren't white anyway so will eventually get painted.

While the sky is still a little damp (the shine should be off the paper), into that same color on your palette, add a little more blue and sienna to slightly darken the color and right along the horizon into the wet area, make some tree shapes to suggest the very distant trees. The color may start to "bloom" into the wet sky but that is okay, it is why I said to add it to the damp sky so the shapes will soften and look more distant. Let this dry.

Watercolor can be a waiting game and you can't rush it too much. Yes you can use a hair dryer, just remember to use the cool setting because of the masking fluid but if you paint near a wet area you can get blooms where you really don't want them.

Next, in that same color you've been working in, add more blue and sienna, you want a darker gray for the middle ground trees though this is really for all the small branches and leaves and things at the tops of the trees also for the undergrowth. This time you will need to paint around the foreground trees using negative painting. If you get color where you don't want it, rinse your brush and dry it slightly and "lift" out the color. I had to do that several times myself. Just paint shapes that look like the tops of the trees. This color should be a couple shades darker than the distant trees so it stands out from the background.

You can also use this color to suggest some of the shadows and the terrain the key here is to work wet on dry by putting the color down, then rinsing your brush and with just water go on either side of the color you just put down and soften the edges. Places where this is important is where the middle trees end, there is a slight depression between the background hill and the foreground area, also around the foreground trees.

For the foreground trees I just added water to my gray on the palette so it was very pale and just painted the entire tree and branches. This is where I left off. We may get finished next week, I will have to see how the class is going. Start looking for something you would like to paint, I will do demos that I hope will help you with your own projects.

See you in class.

Winter 2011 Week 1

2011-01-14T11:26:00.001-08:00

Watercolor Snow Demo

This project is really an exercise in how to paint white. It won't make any difference whether it is snow, a white cat, a table cloth, a wedding dress or any other thing that is basically white, everything we will be painting for the snow is applicable to any other white subject you might paint so even if you really aren't interested in snow – and with it being so cold lately I don't blame you – these demos and projects are designed to give you information and practice painting a variety of things so that when you go to paint your "masterpiece" you will have the knowledge and the skill to accomplish your goal.

A basic mistake that a lot of beginners make, is not understanding that white isn't necessarily white. A blank piece of watercolor paper could be titled "Polar Bear in a Snow Storm" because that is about as much success as you will have if you don't understand how to paint to suggest white. A key thing to remember in all your paintings is: You must have dark to show light. This is part of the value system and values are the lightness or the darkness of a color.

Some colors like yellow will never get very dark on a scale of 1 – 10, 1 being the lightest; yellow might get to a 4 if the color is straight out of the tube. On-the-other-hand, blue can get all the way to a 10 depending how much water you have put into it and the hue or color of blue. I will show how to do a value scale next week so you can see what I'm talking about. Again, not the most exciting thing in the world but value is so important for you as beginners to understand and for any one who is trying to be a better artist. Value lets you create depth in your painting, it can also creates excitement in your so it shouldn't be overlooked.

The first thing I did was sketch on a simple tree trunk with some snow piled around it. In watercolor you need to have a good idea of where you are going with your painting so having a sketch at least is a good thing, the more detailed your painting is going to be the more detailed your sketch should be, this is different from other media because it can be difficult to change a color once you have it down in watercolor. I use at least a #2B pencil to do my sketching because it is soft enough that I can get a dark enough line to see on my paper without pressing too hard which could damage the paper plus it will erase without too much pressure for the same reason. I also decided where my sun was coming from, this is important so we know where our lightest colors will be and where our shadows will fall. I chose from the above right side.

The first painting I need to do is create a dark background. Remember, you need to have dark to show light. I used my ¾" angle brush and a mix of ultramarine blue, a touch of burnt sienna, and purple to create a blue/gray color and I painted on either side of the tree. If you are working on a flatter angle than I have to paint, you can wet the area with water first to help the paint move that is perfectly fine. There are times I don't wet an area first because I have gravity working against me in class and may forget to mention that you can/should wet the area. My bad.

While the paint was still wet, I showed how to lift out some distant trees using the edge of my brush. I rinsed it out and dried it then made tree shapes in the wet paint, cleaning and wiping my brush often. It you get mutant trees that look like they have exploded it is most likely that you had too much water in your brush that flowed out at an inopportune time creating a "bloom", make sure you squeeze the bristles near the metal ferrule where water likes to hide.

Next I painted the tree trunk. I switched to my ½" angled brush and starting on the sunlit side with orange and using the edge of my brush in a vertical position, I made short, choppy strokes to start my tree. When I got about a quarter of the way around I picked up some sienna on the brush (no need to rinse), same stroke to continue around to about the ¾ mark, then pick up some purple and sienna to finish the trunk. If you have white paper showing through, don't worry about it, it will look like show that is sticking to the trunk.

Next we need to start on the snow. For new students and a reminder for returning students, in watercolor we work from light to dark. That means we use the paper white and using a series of layers or washes, we create darker values. This is important so that you don't get too dark too fast. We make lighter colors by adding more water than paint, darker colors by using less water. This first wash will be blue with a little sienna in it to gray the color and LOTS of water. This should be less than a shade darker than the paper.

Because this is just a made up picture we don't have a reference photo to work from but it is good practice for you to be able to imagine how light travels because not all photos have a good light source, the ones we will be using for instance were taken on an overcast day so we are free to choose the direction of the light. I chose for this demo, to have the light come from the upper right which means that things on the right will be light and the shadows will be on the left of things. That said, the top of the pile of snow will be white so I started painting my first wash a bit down from the top and I tried to imaging what was going on under the snow such as tree roots and rocks. There will be depressions between the roots where it will be in shadow, the opposite side of the tree the snow will be in shadow, you can suggest rocks with a simple shadow, use your imagination to see these things and paint accordingly.

When you have put this color down, rinse your brush and slightly dry it then run the brush along the edges of the color you just put down to soften the edge. Snow will not have a hard edge and this will keep it soft.

This paint doesn't need to be totally dry to add the next wash, but if you fee more comfortable working wet on dry, that is okay, just remember to soften the edges. You can add a bit more of the same colors to what you were using to slightly intensify the color, this time when you add the wash, you will start inside the first wash and you won't go out to its edge either. You can add as many washes as you want but each time you leave a bit of the previous wash to give a gradual change to create a sense of roundness to the snow.

There are some cast shadows we need to deal with the first is the shadow that is cast on the tree from the snow itself. Anytime an object blocks the light source, it creates a cast shadow. Right behind the snow there will be a dark shadow, this is a mix of blue and purple with maybe a touch of sienna, it goes down the length of the trunk where the snow is touching it. After you have added this color, rinse your brush and on the edge of this color on the tree side, soften the edge.

You can use this same color for the cast shadow from the tree on the snow, the important thing to remember here is a shadow follows the terrain it is falling on. There is snow piled up around the bottom of the tree and this shadow will follow the lumps and dips in the snow.

This was something I had to do that you may have to do as well: If you didn't get your background dark enough you may need to add another wash or two to darken it enough so your snow will stand out. Use a similar color and just wash over the area again, you may need to redo the lifted trees, but it is good practice.

The other thing I would like you to practice is using your liner brush. This little brush makes really great trees and branches but it does take a bit of practice in getting it loaded with paint and getting the feel of it.

When you load the brush you will need to use enough water so that the paint is no thicker than ink, it needs to be able to flow off the brush. Roll it around in the paint to get it well loaded then as you lift it off your palette, twist it in your fingers to form a nice point. Hold the brush at the far end from the bristles and slightly down. To create a heavier line you press down on the brush, to create a thinner line you lift up and barely touch the surface. Don't worry if your hand shakes a bit for trees this is a good thing.

If you are trying to make grasses, load and hold your brush same as above but this time rotate your hand at the wrist in a circular motion then touch the paper on the up stroke. Big circles make tall grass, small circles make short grass. Like I said, this will take practice.

We will start on the project at our next class, please be sure to have a reference photo with you it can be the one I will be working form or it can be one of your own photos. It doesn't need to be snow if you don't want but please try to fins something white. Also, we will need masking fluid for this painting be sure to get the kind without color in it. See you soon.

Winter 2011

2011-01-09T09:43:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone

If you have been in my classes before you may be checking this blog so I thought I'd post the link to the pictures I will be using in class for the demo. I had a request to do snow and snow isn't just white so this should be a good learning project.

http://picasaweb.google.com/artistlgp/Winter2011#

If you don't want to paint the picts I have posted or have a different snow photo you want to work from, please feel free to do so. Everything I will cover in my demo about snow can be applied to any snow or white you have in your own painting.

Also - I can't ever remember saying this before - both my classes are pretty full, 13 at Torrance and 16 at PV so you might want to come early to get a good seat. I was amazed that my classes did so well, I want to thank everyone for signing up and for your support, you are awesome!

See you soon.

Homework Count.

2010-12-11T13:31:00.000-08:00

Making Things Glow – The Power of Value

It is really hard to turn off the teacher mode when we have time off so I am keeping myself busy trying to keep you busy.

When all you have is black, white and shades of gray, value is all you have to convey to your viewer not only the shape of something but the mood of your subject so this is where the ability to see the subtle changes in value is critical.

I decided to draw the oranges rather than paint them to see if I could create a sense of light or a "glow" that these oranges had and I kept my value scale handy and checked my reference photo often so I stayed on track. Drawing is good for my painting – if I decided to do this particular subject of any other - because it is forcing me to use value to create the subject, no using tricks of color give me the glow, just value.

I really hope that you are all trying to do some drawing and/or painting during this break, it will keep you at your best.

Winter Break Assignemnt 2010

2010-12-04T11:33:00.001-08:00

Homework

I don't know how many of you check this blog while on break, but for those who do, I have a bit of a homework assignment for you. I found a book given to me by a friend and it had a lot of great information I wanted to pass along, I will cover more in class but this will get you started. This assignment is one that can be done anywhere and every where and you do it every time you open your eyes and that is to "see".

I know that may sound silly but it really isn't from a teaching perspective. If you are going to improve as an artist you need to be able to look at your subject and see all the elements that make that subject appealing to you. Those things include shapes, color, light, arrangement (composition), texture, shadows and reflected light. There's probably something I'm missing but those are the important things that come to mind.

In the past, you have heard me harp on drawing and many of you have taken me to heart and have been working on improving your drawing skills (YEAH!) continue what you are doing because that will help you with this next task, looking for the light, shadows and reflected light in your subject. They all have shape and their shapes helps define your subject.

These oranges are a good example (I'm experimenting here posting picts to the blog). Yes, you see the oranges and the bright light and the shadows but do you see the reflected light? Do you see the change in color on the front orange under the leaf? Do you see the difference between the reflected light in the shadows of the front orange compared to the one behind?

Because of our atmosphere, light scatters. It will hit an object then bounce back and reflect a bit of the color from the thing it has bounced off from. In the front orange the reflected highlight is cooler than the reflected light on the one behind because the light is bouncing off the leaves on the front one whereas the light on the one behind is coming from the orange in front. There is also some orange color reflected into the leaves around the oranges. Yes, it is subtle but it is there and you need to see it.

There is also light coming thru the leaf and changing the color on the orange to a cool green color. It is more evident on the front orange but it also happens on the top of the behind orange.

Now look at the shape of the shadows themselves. Because they are falling on a round orange, they must follow the shape of the object they are falling on. This goes for all surfaces. Pay close attention to the way shadows fall and how the follow the contours of they fall on be it flat, round, bumpy, shiny, dull – what ever it falls on it will follow the shape.

Now look at the highlights. I want you to start at the brightest spot and follow the change of color around the orange. If you have your value scale get it out and note the change from the lightest area into the shadows. Not counting the cast shadows (shadows which are blocking the light) from the brightest highlight to the reflected light should be about 4 steps down or 40% darker than the highlight. Cast shadows are darker still and it depends on how much light is being blocked, some of the cast shadows may be from 50 - 80% darker or more.

On this next picture, I want you to find these things. I do want you to note the difference in the temperature of the color between the back orange between the two front oranges. Color temperature is the difference between the colors that we associate with warm – red thru yellow – to those we associate with coolness – purple thru green.

Well, that is your assignment. It is all around you in every room in your house. It is outside in every sunlit patio or shaded woodland. We will be covering more of this in class but this should get you started.

Have a great holiday season, see you in the New Year.

Fall 2010 Watercolor Class

2010-10-31T10:57:00.001-07:00

Fall 2010 Watercolor Demo

This week at PV I finished the bucket I started the previous week, Torrance, the procedure is the same for the barrel and I am using the same colors as I used for the bucket.

The first thing I did was to dry brush in some wood grain into the sides of the bucket. I demoed with 3 different brushes to show that you can use what you have available in your own equipment without getting a specialized brush for the job, with the round and the angled brush, after I loaded the brush with paint, I squished the bristles to spread them apart and repeated as necessary or when I re-loaded paint on the brush, the grass brush I used is designed to have gaps so I didn't need to spread the bristles.

I mixed a dark color of sienna, blue and purple keeping it on the warm side and making sure that when I loaded my brush I didn't have a lot of water in my brush. Then I started at the top of the bucket on the shadow side and worked my way down but you may find it easier to start from the bottom and work up, with very little pressure on my brush and with a nervous, jerky motion, pulled the brush down the height of the bucket. The nervous, jerky motion along with the dry brush effect makes it look like old rough hewn wood. I repeated until I got about half way around then added in some orange to my color to lighten it and as I got into the sunlit side, used mostly orange. I did the same on the inside.

For the two metal bands on the top and bottom, I used that same warm dark color adding orange as I went into the light area. The highlights on the top edge of the bands, I lifted out with a damp brush.

Finally, using my liner brush and a very dark color of mostly blue and purple, I added lines and cracks and holes, all the little detail things that can make something look very old and worn out. Just be sure that the lines on the top of the wood stays change direction not only as they go across the top but also where they are placed on the bucket, kind of like spokes on a wheel, the top lines will point to the center of the bucket.

Next week I have a request for sky and water so we shall see what we can do along those lines. As I have said before, I can do these things all day every day but unless you do them your self, you aren't going to understand what it takes to get the effects you want. Keep painting and I'll see you in class.

Fall 2010 Watercolor Class

2010-10-21T15:22:00.001-07:00

Fall 2010 Watercolor – Demo: Rocks

(Sorry, I just saw I hadn't posted this from last week!)

Like last week, looking at the picture is probably more informative than a written explanation so you might want to flip back and forth between the two to see what I'm talking about. You will notice that the rocks are a lot more detailed than when you saw them in class, the reason for that is when I'm doing a demo it is a challenge for me to get the general basics of something across to my students without confusing them and often times I stop my demo long before I would if I were working on something of my own. Detail is just more of the same but can get boring or confusing when you have to watch from a distance. I decided to take it a bit further so you can see just how real rocks can look using watercolor.

The first thing I did was to draw some shapes of rocks. I've painted rocks for many years and I kinda know how they look and how to get the look I want, also, rocks are sort of like clouds in that they come in all shapes and sizes so unless you line them up and make them all the same size pretty much anything you put down will work as long as it fits the place you are putting them.

My first wash was very light as usual for a first wash. I used sienna really watered down and if I were working on a flatter angle, I probably would have wet the area first and dropped the color into it. Along with the sienna I dropped green and blue, you can add salt (again working vertical slat was out for me, but I like salt when doing rocks), or any color you want because rocks come in all colors and combination. I left some of the white of the paper for bright highlights. Take pictures or clip out pictures of rocks for reference and have them handy when you want to paint rocks.

When my paint dried, I mixed a shadow color of sienna, blue and purple but with a lot of water, this is also a thin wash that goes over the shadowed side of the rocks. My light was coming from the right so that meant I added this color between the rocks and on the sides to darken the color. When I got near the sunny areas, I just used water on my brush to give me a graded color (no hard lines).

Each time I used a bit thicker mix of the shadow color and each time I would start in the darkest area which is usually between or under a rock and faded it up ward. I repeated this until I was satisfied with the basic shapes of the rocks then using the same colors and smaller brushes – my ¼" angle and my liner brush – added detail. This take time, practice, patience and a knowledge of your subject but once you have mastered rocks, they are no longer a mystery and easy to include into you landscapes.

I did start a wooden bucket and I will finish it next week. I do get on a roll and may be giving you more info than you can absorb at one time, we have 3 more weeks so we have the time. See you in class.

Fall 2010 Watercolor Class

2010-10-15T10:49:00.000-07:00

I am not going to do a regular blog this time because I think you can see better by checking out the picture page http://picasaweb.google.com/artistlgp/Fall2010AcrylicAndWatercolorClasses#

I will say that when you do something to damage the paper or add something like ink or wax, you better be sure that is what you want to do because once done it can't be reversed or changed.

Each of you might want to make up your own booklets on textures by cutting up squares of paper and trying to duplicate what I showed you in class, this will give you a reference when you need it and it will also give you some practice doing the different textures.

At PV, I will go thru some color blending. If you have any particular problems and want to see a demo on it, let me know. See you in class.

Fall 2010 Watercolor Class

2010-10-09T09:34:00.000-07:00

Watercolor – Basic Brush Strokes

When I went to photograph the sheet of paper with my demo strokes on it, I realized that I really need to do some that were a bit more organized but this demo will have to do for now and I will have to make up and "official" catalog later. I will try my best to describe what I did but you will learn better by doing.

While there are a lot of brushes on the market having a few well-made brushes in various sizes will leave you better off in the long run because you become familiar with these brushes and you don't have to think about how you will use them, you just will and that will come with practice. The more you paint, the more familiar you become with your brushes, your paints and your paper, they are your tools just like a carpenter or plumber or mechanic has their own unique set of tools of their trade, so does the artist. Each has a job to do and your goal as an artist is to not have to think about the tools you use but to think about the job – your painting – and how you are going to accomplish that goal. That comes with practice, the more you practice the sooner you won't be thinking of your tools and you will start looking for more challenging subjects to conquer.

The first notion you need to forget about your brush is it is not a pencil or pen, nor is it a brush you paint walls with, it can and should move in your hand so you can use all parts of the bristles whether it is a flat, a round or an angle brush, learn to twist and move the brush around in your hand and to use your whole arm and wrist to get the effect you want.

Here are some basic moves for the different brushes:

Round Brushes – They should come to a nice sharp point when wet. You can make fine lines with the tip of the brush, thick line if you push down on it or a combination will give you thick and thin lines. This combination comes in handy when doing grasses or leaves. If you start at the tip and as you start to draw it across the paper, press and lift, you can create leaves or if you draw in longer it can be grasses or thick leaves like iris leaves. If you start out thick and pull and twist as you go up to the tip, you can create tree trunks. Experiment to see what you can do with each brush.

Flat/Angle brushes – While these brushes are similar, the angle is a bit more versatile than a flat brush you will have to decide which is best suited for your needs.

The angle brush is sometimes called an angled shader because it can give you a very nice graded brush stroke which is good for shading. (Graded means a color goes from dark to almost nothing in value), the key is just to load the tip with color, work the color in just a bit on your palette then place the whole end of the brush on paper, not just the tip with the color and draw it across. This comes n handy when you are doing shadows, or if you want to do some quick little flowers or anywhere where you need the color to fade off.

You can also make thick and thin lines with it just like the round brush, start on the edge of the brush and pull in the direction of the edge then twist the brush as you pull to fatten the line then twist back to make it thin again. Again, this brush is good for leaves and grasses.

I like this brush because I can use the tip or the side or however I need to use it and not have to change brushes all the time. I can do detail work with my 1" brush if I need to, it is because I know how this brush works from years of using them.

Flat brushes work similar but I find them a bit awkward for detail work.

Liner Brushes – I love my liner brush! This little brush can make grasses and trees or do detail that is almost impossible with any other brush. It does take some practice though so you will want to have some scratch paper or cards or something to practice on until you get a feel for this brush.

One important key to this brush is loading it with paint, this is the one time I will encourage you to use a lot of water. The paint should be the consistency of ink so it will flow off the brush. Next important is loading the paint on the brush. You need to roll the entire length of the bristles in the paint and as you lift it up, roll it between your fingers so it comes to a nice point.

You want to hold this brush at the back of the handle not near the metal ferrule, hold it in the center between your thumb, index and middle fingers like you are pinching it not like a pencil. Hold the brush slightly downward at the tip so the paint flow off it.

This brush is called a liner or a rigger or script liner because it is great for making long, consistent lines without reloading too often. The long bristles hold a lot of paint. If you press harder you get a thicker line, if you barely touch you can get long thin lines.

For grasses start by making a circular motion with the brush before you get to your paper then just touch the paper on the upstroke of that circle and lift as soon as you touch. Small circles make short grass, big circles make tall grass.

For trees, bushes and tree limbs – you are still holding like I described above – start at the bottom of the tree/branch, pressing harder creates a thicker line, and with a jerky motion pull up and lift off. You should get an unsmooth line that tapers off. To make more branches start back in where you just painted and as you pull change direction as you make a new branch. Practice will make perfect so give yourself some time to master this little brush.

There are many specialty brushes on the market like fans and rakes and stippling brushes, most of them are just made to sell, you can do the same thing and better with the brushes I've mentioned above so you can spend you money on something you will use. There are some exceptions and you may find you like certain brushes for certain things such as fan brushes, you do need to be aware of some inherent problems with these brushes and that is they usually leave a definite pattern, which is why they were made in the first place.

Fan brushes are popular and if you know what to look for you can see where an artist used a fan especially if they don't know how to disguise it. Fans will leave the image of their shape on everything you do. If you are making pint trees with them, they can look like fish bones, if you are making grass they can leave little fan shaped clumps, be aware of this when you use them.

Rake brushes or grass brushes can be used to create textures for wood or, as the name implies, grass. Again, be aware that they can leave a too consistent pattern so try to break that pattern up.

The one brush I do use occasionally besides my angle brushes is a filbert. It looks like a flat brush with rounded corners. I use this more with my acrylics than my watercolor but I do like it for certain things.

Next class I will be going over creating textures and effects with watercolor and will go over a few things I did cover in class but they are worth repeating. See you in class.

Fall Watercolor class 2010

2010-09-30T14:45:00.001-07:00

Watercolor Project: Eucalyptus Close-up – Final

There isn't much to write up about what we did in class because we are almost done with our shredded bark. What you need to do now to finish up your own painting is to see where you can add some darker darks, add some more color, lift out some highlights or add some detail.

I used my liner brush to add some fine cracks or other small detail. I showed how to create streaks using dry brush first with my angle brush and then with my "grass" brush. This added color as well as detail to the rough bark.

I lifted some light areas out of some areas and darkened cracks and shadows. This becomes a personal choice but it is always good at this point to step back from your painting and look at it from at least 10'. You really can't tell if or where you need to work when you are right on top of your painting so stand back and assess it. You may find it needs little or nothing for you to call it done and if you are looking for things to do, you are definitely done.

Next time – for the PV class – I will be done some mini demos and "special requests" but I would like people to bring in things that they want to paint and I will help you get started.

Fall 2010 Watercolor

2010-09-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

Watercolor – Eucalyptus Up Close

Last week we created our under painting for our eucalyptus and at this point you might wonder where I'm going with this but I start out many paintings with an under painting similar to this because I know that by using the transparent qualities of the watercolor, the under painting will show through and have a subtle effect on the final product giving it much more interest.

As you will get tired of hearing me say, it is best to have your reference material close at hand even when you are doing the drippy under painting. By knowing where you have changes in light and color, you can plan your drips accordingly. I looked to see where my shadows were, where the smooth new bark was where the warm old bark was peeling off and where my light was brightest while I was seemly throwing paint at random. It was more like controlled chaos. Another thing I was aware of was to not make this first wash too intense in color, this is a subtle step and your colors should be in the pastel range, if your colors are too dark or intense, you have no where to go with them. You can lift out some color but it is more time consuming and the results not as satisfying if you start out light. You can – and will – add color where you need it to deepen or intensify the color but it should be at your choosing; watercolor is a subtle dance between the artist and the paint not a WWW smack down.

Once my under painting was dry (this is very important) and I got my drawing on my paper, I looked for my shadows or basically the darker and lighter areas of my reference photo. I noticed that most of that knot and all of the right side (as you are looking at it) had shadow as well as the left upper and lower corners plus some subtle shadows just behind the main knot, this was my first wash area.

I mixed a shadow color using ultra marine Blue, Purple and burnt Sienna (I will just call these blue, purple and sienna from this point and will specify if I use a different blue or raw sienna), this is my primary mix for shadows, I may mix other colors into it but this is what I start out with, the more water I add, the lighter it will become, the more paint (pigment) I use with little water the darker it will become so that it will look almost black. For this step, I wanted it to be a thin wash so I added a lot of water.

Use the biggest brush you can to cover an area quickly, you don't want to spend a lot of time going over and area or you run the risk of stirring up the paint underneath and loosing it as well as the chance you'll mix mud. Get it covered and leave it alone. I was using my 1" angle brush to apply this wash so I could get it on and be done with it. Even if you are working on a smaller size paper, it is best to use a larger brush. Save your tiny brushes for the detail, this step is big areas and you need to get them covered.

While I was waiting for my shadowed areas to dry, I was able to add some color into the bright areas and into some of the peeling bark areas. First, I added some color into the top bright area behind the knot. To do this I used a technique called "dry brush". What this means is I had color on my brush with little or no water. First, I rinsed my brush to clean it then I dried it completely using my paper towel. Next, I picked up some sienna and worked it into my brush on my palette but before I went to my paper, I used my towel and squeezed my brush right at the base to one, get out any more water I may have picked up in my paint and two to help spread the bristles of my brush, this will help to create texture.

When I applied this color, I looked at my reference and saw that the texture of the bark ran more or less up and down so I lightly dragged my brush in this area to create subtle grain for the bark. This takes a very light touch, if you press too hard, you will get more paint off your brush and it will fill in the spaces you need, if your brush is too wet, you will also fill in these spaces, so you need to be dry of brush and light of touch.

With practice, you can work a long time on a watercolor just by avoiding the wet areas until they dry by working in the dry areas, which is what I did and by the time I was finished adding color into the already dried areas, the wash was dry enough I could work into it and not worry about lifting or creating blooms (wet paint moving into a drying area that creates a"bloom"). Using a mix of orange and sienna I added color to the peeling bark areas. Some of this I used the end of my brush in a choppy stroke to create texture, sometimes I used water to soften or blur this color, I was looking at my reference to see where I could put this color and also the direction of the bark's grain so my strokes would follow accordingly. This takes practice which is why this is such a good teaching subject, there is a lot of repetition in this tree but you do need to pay attention. At this point I let it dry completely. I may not be done adding color but I have a good start on it.

Once it was dry, I mixed more of my shadow color but this time I used more paint than water so my mix looked very dark. One note: if your color looks to brown or warm, add more blue to it, if it seems too transparent you need more paint less water.

With this mix, I looked for my dark shadows, I loaded my brush so most of my paint was on the tip (this can be done with flats and round brushes as well) and starting in the darkest part of a shadow or crack laid down my color. If I needed it to lighten as I went, I just picked up a little water on my brush and lightened the edge to blend it out. With this dark color I could start to define the different pieces of the bark or the cracks and I tried to work around and through my painting so I didn't over work one area and neglect another.

We should finish up this painting next week, there is some more shadows and cracks and you should have a liner brush or a round brush to do detail. You might want to start looking for something you want to paint after we are done with this, I will be doing short demos and helping you with your own projects.