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 Demo – Studies
I know that both of my
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 –
The
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
WATERCOLOR CLASS – "
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.
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.
Watercolor Project –
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.
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 Class Project – "
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.
