Spring 2014 Watercolor Class

Watercolor Class Project: From My Garden

Final Week

This final step I took with my paintings is not one you need to take to yours or if you do want to try it, you don’t have to be as aggressive with your color as I usually am. This will take some bravery on your part, just keep in mind this is a classroom situation and experimentation is not only shown, it is encouraged. You won’t know until you try it whether you will like it or not but it does add another element to the dynamic of your painting so grab a brush and give it a try.

What is this terrible/wonderful thing I am going to do? Add shadows.

Seemed like a bit of a come down after such a buildup but adding dark shadows to your work after spending all the time and effort to get it to a point where you don’t hate it as much can be a scary thing. Even my little voice in my head will question do I need to put the shadows in? Yes, I do.

Shadows can be everything you painting will need to finish it up. Shadows make the light areas seem lighter and more vibrant, they give a sense of direction and intensity of light, and they give form and interest. The darker your shadows are the more intense you light becomes and the more dramatic your finished painting will look. I can’t tell you how many times a student will ask me “Why does my painting look so flat?” and it all has to do with the shadows and their intensity.

I like dramatic light, if you want a lighter look to you painting or want to put in some other kind of background, you do not have to make your background with as much contrast as I have in mine but now is the time to be sure that your background is where you need it because from here out we will be finishing up the veggies and putting their shadows in.

When you are working on the shadows on your veggies, the light is coming from the front upper right as if there is a window opposite the veggies and the sun is coming in. The things with the brightest highlights will be the yellow zucchini, peppers, big tomato, to a lesser extent the tops of the melon, pumpkin and the tops of the garlic. Everything else will have highlights but they won’t be as intense as the aforementioned veggies or they will fall into less intense light.

I can write pages and pages on how the light is falling on each thing in our painting but unless

you can see this for yourself, my words will be wasted. If you can set something up in your own house, find a window that has light  coming through it, put some things on a table where you have a “sun spot”, it doesn’t even need to be veggies, just things with different shapes, turn off the interior lights and look at how the light plays on the objects. Find the brightest highlights, the darkest shadows, note the colors in the light and away from the light but not necessarily in the darkest shadows. Take a photo of the scene for reference so you can try to understand this play of light: Where does it come from? Where does it fall? Where are my shadows? You will find sun spots everywhere if you just look. As I have said in the past, the more observant you become the better an artist you will become.

These are the things I am thinking about when I get to the shadow part of my painting. First where is my light coming from and how intense do I want it? Where are my shadows and what do they fall on/across? Then I get started, I usually have to take a deep breath like jumping into a pool of unknown temperature, then start painting.

There are 2 kinds of shadows: From shadows that give things their shape and are usually lighter and Cast shadows that are created because something is blocking the light source and they are usually darker than a form shadow.

I use a bigger brush usually not smaller than my ½ inch and I use a mix or ultramarine blue, purple and a touch of burnt sienna not much sienna, I just want to gray it a bit, then I start in the place where it will be darkest which will be where something is sitting on the table or between objects and lighten as I move away from the thing that is casting the shadow. Be sure that your shadows follow the shape of what they are falling on, be observant because shadows will start and stop then pick up in a slightly different place as they follow the lumps and bumps and surface changes they fall on. This is something you have to see to understand, with practice it will become second nature, but you have to see it or my words mean nothing.

I will also go over the shadowed side of things in my painting to slightly blur them into the shadows. This is called “lost and found” and it adds a bit of mystery to your painting. Or I look to find light areas where I can put a very dark, dark to increase the contrast and therefore the intensity of my light. Be brave and give it a try.

I also took off my masking fluid to expose the white highlights. To tone down areas I thought were too big or too light I used either just water on my brush or a little color to decrease the white, the choice is yours.

We are now done with this project for the most part, if you still feel you want to work on it there is still plenty of time in class to get it done, if you think you are done with it please find something you want to work on and I will help you along the way. I will see you all in class.

SPRING 2014 WATERCOLOR CLASS

Watercolor Project: From My Garden

Week 3

I am hoping that all of you have the background in and the first light washes on your veggies, in the last class we worked on increasing the intensity of the color (the brightness or depth of a color) and to establish the shadow areas of by increasing their values (lightness or darkness of an area). Shadows create form and some of these vegetables have bumps or ribs on them that will have darker areas at the bottom of the bumps and lighter at the top. This is just another layer of wash and not the finishing touches, that may come next week, for now, try to keep your whole painting at the same level by working around your painting and NOT finishing as you go.

Again, I don’t have the time to go for a stroke by stroke narrative of each element of this project, basically the technique is the same throughout, you just need to change color depending on what you are working on or if it is light or dark. All of the veggies have a base color such as orange or yellow or green, this will be where you start with your color and to that you will add color to darken and slightly gray the colors for now, like I said, this is not the finished painting, we still have some work to do to establish our values.

To gray a color or to create a shadow or form shadow color, you will need to add a form of the colors complimentary color. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the color wheel there are 3 primary colors: Blue, yellow and red and they are on the thirds of the wheel. If you mix equal

parts midway between each of the primary colors you get secondary colors: Green, orange and purple. Green is between blue and yellow, orange is between red and yellow and purple is between blue and red, these secondary colors are directly across from a primary color: Red – Green, Blue – Orange, Yellow – Purple. This is the simple version, there are whole courses on color and color theory and volumes of books if you want to know more, but for our purposes this is what you need to remember. So when I say to create a shadow color or a grayed color, what I mean is to add its compliment or some form of its compliment.

Most of you don’t have any trouble mixing mud, it is very easy to do your color just needs to have all 3 primary colors present and they cancel each other out creating a muddy gray color, usually not the color we want. The way to create a softer grayer color is to start out with the color you want – say green – to gray the color you will need to add red or something with red in it like sienna or purple, depending on what you need. The red or sienna, which is in the orange family, or orange these will gray the color but not change its value too much (values is the lightness or darkness of a color), purple will not only change the color but can change the value to a darker form of green. Conversely, if you are working with red, you will add some form of green to gray the color.

The key to color mixing, especially when you are learning, is to sneak up on the color you want. Some colors like sienna, purple, pthalo blue or pthalo green are very potent colors and little amounts go a very long way, for instance if you were trying to add purple to gray the yellow for the zucchini you would NOT want to mix them in equal amounts or you would get a grayed purple, even 10 yellow to 1 purple may be too much but it is a much better place to start than 1:1.

 

You may also want to build up layers of color the create the intensity of the color and the values, trying to go from “a” right to “z” can create more of a problem than adding a few more steps. Watercolor needs patience especially when you are learning, as you build on your skills and knowledge, working faster will come automatically because you will know just how much you can do without causing yourself more problems. Be patient.

I did increase the values in my background by starting in the corners with a darker version of the color that was there and adding water as I got closer to the area of light and at PV I did start adding in some of my shadows and started working on the wood table both which I will show Torrance on Monday. Get your painting as far along as you can and I will see you next class.

Spring 2014 Watercolor class

Watercolor Class Project – From My Garden

Week 2

 

Previous week Torrance

In our last class we filled in the colors of the veggies by intensifying the colors. It is always a good practice to not finish as you go because what can happen is you will overwork one area and not work another enough then your painting looks unbalanced. Work in, around and through you painting at each stage to keep it all at the same level and you stand a better chance of not overworking areas.

Keep in mind that in watercolor we work from light to dark, so at this stage of the game we are just bring up our values (our darks) and intensifying our colors. Watercolor always dries a bit lighter so it usually takes several washes of color to get the intensity you want, be patient with the process.

The colors will be more or less the same as before but this time you need to be aware of the light and dark area of each shape, I showed how to put down someintense color, then rinse you brush and use the damp brush to move the paint up to the light area. This will create a graded color that is dark where it needs to be dark and lighter where it needs to be lighter.

You can also create a shadow color by adding a form of the colors compliment: green/red; yellow/purple; blue/orange. Just be very cautious when adding complimentary colors add little bits at a time to sneak up on a color. You can also add blue and purples to most shadow colors but again be careful not to add too much at a time.

I also showed how to use your angle brushes to also create a shaded effect by first loading paint on to the tip area then placing the ENTIRE END OF THE BRUSH on the paper with the tip where you want it to be darker and the heel where it should be lighter then make your stroke. This is very fun to do and comes in very handy. It can also be done using a regular flat brush but the end needs to come to a nice sharp edge.

Torrance

If you are working on this at home and have gotten your veggies up to the intensity of color you want, you might want to wait to finish your painting until I get to the shadow stage of mine and I still have to finish the table and the background. I may get to this stage next class but more than likely the following week, I just don’t want to get ahead of those who are still trying to figure out what I’m talking about. You might want to bring something else to work on so you don’t “fiddle” your project into a place from where it can’t be saved.

PV

See you all in class.

SPRING 2014 WATERCOLOR CLASS

Week 1: Project – From My Garden

 

My original painting.

The project we will be working on in class is based on a watercolor painting I did 20 years ago, I did change it up a bit but it is basically the same arrangement. If you want to do something of your own, please feel free to do so, the techniques will be very much the same, just be sure that you have good reference material to work from.

New version class project

I did not have time to get my drawing onto my paper before class so I had to approach my project a bit different than I had planned. I know just how much my students panic when colors run into other colors so I had originally planned to mask out the veggies with masking fluid before I got to class but with all kinds of chaos happening in my life, I just didn’t get the chance so I used a different approach, which in some ways might be better because it will show you that watercolor is a lot more versatile than most of you think. You don’t need to have a drawing on your paper to start with but it is helpful.

I did manage to get my drawing on and mask out the highlights for the demo. The masking fluid takes about 15 – 20 minutes to dry completely depending on how thick you put it on. If you are going to mask out the fruit you only need to go around the outside edges and put down about a half to an inch stripe all along the outside and let it dry, the rest will be exactly what I am going to do except you do not paint in the veggie area while the masking will let you paint the background right up to the edges and not worry about “ruining” your veggies.

In the PV class I didn’t put any masking on until I had painted my under painting. The reason for this is I had several people ask how they were going to get color into the highlight thinking that the highlight should have some of the color of the veggie it is on. Well, yes and no. a lot of the time it will depend on the fruit or veggie in question, if it has a matte surface like a melon or

Torrance background.

squash, the highlight may have a bit of color. On the other hand, if it is something shinny like an apple or tomato or even peppers, the highlight can look very white as it bounces off the surface. But what it really boils down to is: What do you as an artist want? Remember this is art so the choice is yours, since it doesn’t matter to me and I think it would be good to see what the difference really is, on the Torrance painting my highlights will be the paper white on the PV project they will be slightly tinted from the first under painting I do, then you can see the difference and make your own choice.

The background color choice is also up to you. If you think you might want to put this up in a certain room when you are done and a different color would make the décor better please feel free to change it, I have done green in Torrance and reds in PV but the technique is the same no matter the color.

 

PV version

I have always liked dramatic light and this first step will be the foundation for that light. The idea here is you have brought in the bounty of your garden (there were actual veggies from my own garden at the time) and they are sitting on the table when light from the window shines down on them maybe from a crack in the curtains but it acts like a spotlight on the bounty.

I start by wetting the whole paper with my large 2” wash brush. Remember, I am not worried about getting color into my veggies, if you have masked out your veggies, just put water on the background area for now, but it needs to be wet. I then pick up some yellow on the same brush and starting in the area behind the yellow zucchini and pumpkin I create my sunlight area (you will just make an arch in that area with your color), then I pick up some green and just outside the yellow area I apply the green to get the color on the paper, then rinse my brush, wipe it dry and blend the green into the yellow or lighter color. Don’t go all the way into the lighter color, just enough to create a graded blend of the two. This takes practice but it is easier in watercolor than other mediums. Pick up some more green or whatever color you are using but add some darker color like blue and/or purple to it, start in the corners and blend to the lighter green and repeat what you did before to blend the colors.

It is very easy to over blend and get one solid color, the trick is to stop before you go too far into the previous color. This take practice but it is a wonderful background for all sorts of subjects and a great way to start many different kinds of paintings where you want a dramatic light.

Where the veggies are sitting on the table if you want them on a table cloth instead of wood that is fine but you will still need to create the light and dark even if it is a solid color or patterned. I was painting over my veggies for this but I did have a paper towel in my hand to wipe off paint if I didn’t want it as dark but you will probably need to wet the bottom part of your paper and the process is very similar to the above just with different colors. For me it was still yellow in the sunlit area then sienna with a touch of orange just outside the light area then sienna, purple and blue in the corners (see the pict to get a better idea of my washes).

Then this has to dry completely especially if you used masking fluid to protect the edges. Be sure to feel in places where water may have pooled around the masking fluid such as dips or “V” shaped areas because if there is any moisture when you go to peal the masking off, you run the risk of tearing your paper. Just to be on the safe side pull towards an area that you know is dry or in other words, away for what was a wet area. Be sure that you put masking on any highlights before you start the next step and that it is dry before you begin.

Everything under painted

When your highlight masking is dry, we will now under paint the veggies. Most will be some form of yellow or yellow with orange or sienna, the two that have a bit different color in my painting are the peppers and the garlic. The garlic is a yellow base but has a touch of purple in it to gray the color, the peppers were a very watery purple with just a touch of blue.

Because there are so many pieces to this puzzle, you can work around your painting so you are always working in a dry area with dry areas around it but you need to choose wisely. If you start with the big yellow zucchini, you will want to avoid a lot of things like the peppers, garlic, tomato, melon, squash and pumpkin because they all touch the yellow, however, if you start with the pumpkin you can then do the peppers, then the tomatoes (big and cherry), the squash, the onion, back to the melon, then to the green zucchs and finally the yellow zucch.

The reason for all the yellow at this point is because it is the under color for almost all of the veggies on the table, including the green zucchs and the almost black acorn squash so it needs to be there. The only thing that is almost purely yellow is the one zucch, the pumpkin and acorn squash have a bit of orange in it, the melon has orange and green, the onion has a bit of sienna, the tomatoes have a touch of orange and red, the green zucchs have yellow and green but they are all very light at this point so be sure to add enough water to your paint.

This is your underpainting, do not take off the masking for the highlights just yet, but please be sure that you do not leave your painting in a hot car or where the sun will shine on it and bake the masking into the paper, if you can avoid that, you can leave the masking on for a few weeks and there should be no problem.

I hope you can all get your painting to this point by the next class because we will be moving forward. See you soon.

WINTER 2014 WATERCOLOR CLASSES

WatercolorWet into Wet Demo

Torrance students the previous posts will give you the information that was covered in class and what will be covered in the next sessions.

PV Class, even though we have basically finished with our class project, one of my Torrance students asked why she couldn’t paint the tree color in first. A good question and the answer is “Yes, you can.” It isn’t going to get you out of having to negative paint the dark background in but if you want to intensify the yellow and oranges of the trees and make a rough shape of the tree first it is perfectly okay to do so, just remember to let the tree dry before adding the dark next to it or you will get bleeds and back runs into your light area. You can use the dark to shape your tree better, just be careful it can get to feeling so good, next thing you know there are no leaves left on your tree.

Since we have finished the project, I like to do request demos so I can address specific needs of students as they start their own projects and they experiment with different techniques. This past class was a question about a rose that was done on the cover of a Cheap Joe’s catalog. To a novice when looking at someone else’s painting it can look very confusing and overwhelming, however, as you learn more and more about watercolor you will be able to look at paintings and figure out just how they accomplished their work.

The rose in question was done very wet into wet but it was done in sections. If you want to be a good watercolorist, you will need to brush up on your drawing skills because a good painting comes from a good drawing and in this case it was a fairly detailed line drawing. You need the detail to know where each element (petal) is on the flower. This is the same for the rose, which is a complicated flower, or a poppy or daisies, which are simpler flowers because you need to know where you are going to paint.

You paint in sections and you skip around so that you aren’t painting next to a wet section. You can start out by painting the area with water first, in this case a single petal. While the area is still wet, you add in your colors and you let the watercolor do its thing. Add two or more colors into an area and let them blend naturally, you can guide the color by putting it in one part of the area or another but let the mixing happen when the 2 colors meet on the pre-wet paper. Find a new space away from the one you just painted and repeat the process on each petal and stem until you have worked your way around the rose.

This is a very loose and free way to paint and one of the things I love about watercolor, if you don’t fight it watercolor will do some amazing things on its own, but remember, if you fight the watercolor, the watercolor will win. See you all in class.

Watercolor Class Project: Arizona Color

Week 3

Torrance class

Torrance students you will need to go back a couple of posts to the start of this project. Everything is basically the same to everything we did in class so you shouldn’t have any problems getting started.

In our last class I put the finishing touches on my painting, depending on how far along you are with your painting you may or may not be to the finishing point on yours yet but feel free to continue working on it in class if you want, there is no rush.

One thing I do want to say, and I say it in almost every semester, is if you tell yourself you can’t do something, you have already set up a road block in your mind and chances are you will have a self-fulfilling prophecy. You won’t be able to do it because you have already told yourself you can’t, then you will set out to prove your point. You weren’t born with this knowledge or skill it is something you have to learn, these classes are here for you to learn and every class you are learning a lot more than you realize for every stroke you put down on your paper there are a hundred things going through you head, you are not painting, you are thinking and it is going to take time and patience with yourself to get past that point of thinking about every move you make to just worrying about what you will paint next. Think of each new technique you learn in class as a challenge or a puzzle you need to figure out and you will see improvement each time you paint and look for the things in your painting you like, you may not like all of it but you probably find something you do like. Concentrate your mind on those areas and congratulate yourself on getting something you like, celebrate the small victories and ignore the rest, it will get there you just need to cut yourself some slack. Most artists are their own worst critic but chances are other people will be impressed with your efforts, they know watercolor is a challenging medium and applaud you for your efforts; you need to do the same.

I started the finishing process by adding some color to the bank along the river and to the sandbars out in the water using burnt sienna and putting a wash of color over the areas. A wash is a weak mixture of pigment and water and can be used to build up the value and/or the intensity of a color using the transparent nature of watercolor to do the job. There were some gray strokes along the bank, when I put the wash over them they become shadows in the texture of the dirt.

Next I started the reflections in the water. A “rule of thumb” when it comes to reflections is you measure from the top to the bottom of an object – I usually just measure with my finger and thumb making a space between – moving that measurement so the top point is now at the bottom and the bottom point should be somewhere in the water, that point is where your reflection will end so some things in the distance may not show up in your water at all. Reflections in the water are not like a mirror reflection, they are reflecting what is directly above them as if the mirror was on the floor.

The strokes you use for reflections can be basically simple: straight down andstraight across (vertical and horizontal), as you grow as an artist you will want to see how other artists handle reflections because there are other techniques out there but this one is simple and effective.

I started with my yellow and orange finding where my tree will reflect in the water then pulling the color down, this is almost a dry brush technique using more pigment and less water on my brush, be sure to dry your brush before you start your stroke. When I have done some of the color on my paper, I lightly go across the color, your stroke should be parallel to the top and bottom of your paper (straight down, straight across). Repeat until you have a basic shape for your tree. Next, I mixed a dark green color using my Hooker’s green and/or sap green, blue a touch of purple whatever is on my palette to make the dark green then I did the same strokes with the green as I did with the yellow: Straight down and straight across. When I got to the places where the green and the yellow touched, I rinsed and dried my brush and lightly went over the yellow using a horizontal stroke to drag some of the yellow into the green, then reversed the process to drag some of the green into the yellow. Because the water is moving you will see this happen in real life so recreating this in you painting is a good thing. Practice this before you try it because it can start to feel good and the next thing you know you have mud.

I wanted to have a couple of large rocks down in the corner but I had painted over where they were supposed to go. No problem, I just lifted the color out of the area using a damp brush, clean water and a paper towel and lifted off enough color to create the highlight on the rocks. It won’t get back to paper white, but that is okay, just be sure not to scrub too much or too hard so you don’t damage the paper.

While the rocks were drying, I added the trunks and branches to my trees with myliner brush. The liner is a challenging little brush but once you get the hang of it you will be able to create all kinds of things from trees to grasses to fence lines to hair to boat rigging… not to mention detail, please take the time to practice with this brush before you get to your painting, you will have a lot more success if you do.

The first thing you need to do with this brush is get the paint mixture correct, it should be like ink in consistency, enough water to flow off your brush but enough pigment so your lines aren’t too light. The color for the tree trunks is sienna, blue and purple which will create a very dark, almost black, color, test it on some scrap paper to be sure it is dark and not light enough to see which color is dominant. Load the brush by rolling the entire length of the bristles in the color, then lift and roll your brush as you take it off you palette. Then holding the brush by the end of the handle and starting at the bottom of the tree or branch, press, pull up and lift the brush until you are on the end of the bristles. A little shake is a good thing when you are doing branches and trees so don’t worry about the little glitches along the stroke, with your next stroke you can use those to “branch off” another branch but start the new branch by starting your stroke within what is there then change directions. Be sure to skip areas in the trees because the branches go being clumps of leaves, they aren’t all in the front. Please practice this.

The shadows on my rocks were basically a watered down version of the tree color, leaving some of the lifted area as the highlight on the rocks. I did several washes to get deeper shadows. I also used some of the dark tree trunk color to suggest some reflections in the water, wiggling my brush as I went.

The last couple things I did was I used pure color straight from my palette so it was fairly thick to add some leaf and leaf clumps to my trees. Yellow, orange even touches of red or green will work here just don’t do dot, dot, dot it is more like dot-dot-dot-dot dot-dot dot-dot-dot-dot dot with lots of over lapping dots. Leave some of the lighter color around the edges because those are your highlights in your trees.

Finally, just using a light mix of green and orange I suggest a distant cactus to act as an eye stopper, it could also be another tree or something to keep the eye from wandering out of the painting. This is where I stopped, I may or may not work on it some more to refine things but that becomes an individual choice, for teaching purposes it is done, you will have to decide for yourself just how much detail you want to put in or move on to something else, which brings me to the point where I am turning you lose to start on your own projects, I will be doing demos that will help not only you, but also your classmates, so bring something you want to work on to class or you can finish up the class project if you want to. I will see you all in class.

Watercolor Project: Az. Fall

Week 2

Most of what we did in class this week was to continue negative painting around our trees. When you are doing something you are new to doing or unsure of you naturally go slower and that is fine, speed will come in time and practice. It is better to slow down and think about what you are doing than to rush ahead and end up with big problems. However, if you do run across a problem or you want to change things, all is not lost. Regardless of what some might think, you can make changes in watercolor, it might be a bit more challenging than in other mediums but it can be done and you should know how to fix problems because as a painter – watercolor or otherwise – there is always something you see that you want to fix or change in almost every painting you do. Do not be afraid to make these changes, because they happen and they will continue to happen as long as you paint.

Where we stopped in class.

A couple of the students made the mistake of positive painting the trees with the hillside color. Negative painting is not a natural way of doing things so when you are learning it is easy enough to switch from the negative to the positive – painting the “thing” and not the space around the thing. We all do it at some point or another no matter how experienced we are, what experience give you is the knowledge on how to fix a problem so you don’t panic and make it worse.

There are several ways to fix a problem like the above and I covered 2 ways to fix the problem. The first way was to “lift” the color off the paper. Lifting is a fun thing to do in watercolor, in can add texture, highlights, leaf veins and countless other things to make you painting interesting and it can also take enough color off an area that you either mistakenly painted over or want to change. You just need a brush, water, a clean paper towel and a bit of time.

First you wet your brush and lightly dry it with your paper towel so that it isn’t dripping, it can still be on the wet-side, then paint the area with the water lightly going over the area to reactivate the pigment on the paper. Blot your brush on the towel frequently, rinse it out to get off any color that came up and repeat the process. You can also blot the paper to lift up even more color, the one thing you do need to be careful of is damaging the paper. If you go over an area too much and it gets too wet or if you scrub too hard with your brush or both, you run the risk of damaging the surface of the paper. If you do damage the paper, it will not take the color the same way and you may get dark blotchy areas when you tried to lift. It is best if you do a little lifting, then let the paper dry and try again if it needs it. Remember that when the pigment and the paper are wet they will be darker than when they are dry so once it dries, it might be light enough for you to go ahead with whatever changes you wanted to do.

The other method I showed was a fairly recent addition to our watercolor tool box, and that is the use of the “Magic Eraser” by Mr. Clean. It is a soft sponge which is filled with a cleaner that doesn’t seem to harm the paper. It comes in a box with 2 sponges and I just cut mine into 1” or so squares that are easy to throw in my art box and it is easier to use than a big sponge. There are times when you have a bigger area you need to take the color off of or you have used a staining color that won’t lift easily, it is those times that the Magic Eraser does work its magic. It might not get the paper back down to paper white, but it will get enough of it out that unless you point it out to people, they will never know so don’t tell them! You don’t need to use them dripping with water, just a bit damp and, again, be careful not to work the area too long or too hard because you could damage the surface of the paper.

The other thing we did in class is to start working on the water’s edge. The thing to keep in

mind here is the edge is not a straight line. Because the water follows over and around rocks and other obstacles the (geology is another class) the edge of most natural bodies of water will meander in and out, to make your river bank look natural you need to create the same type of meandering. Study the reference photo of the water I included for this painting, note all the edges and how they wander, also note that the water looks flat even though the photo was taken from an elevated angle. The reason it looks flat is because as the water goes away from my camera lens those meandering edges become “foreshortened”. What that means is the camera is seeing it from

an edge the further away it is and not seeing the entire surface. You can experience this yourself with a round lid: If you look at the top of the lid straight on, the lid will look round, now tilt the lid so that the back edge if further away from you than the front. Is it still round? No, it has become an “ellipse”, this is called “foreshortening” in art terms and it is a very common occurrence when you want to create distance. What this means is when you are sketching in the edge of your water those meanders need to stay flat and you do this using flatter lines and shallow angles especially as they move away from you or when making the parts that stick out or the inlets, keep them flat and narrower when they are in the distance. Again, this will come with practice and observation, this has been very hard to describe. Practice or do some drawings before you get to your paper, these rules apply to all the 2D art.

Once you get your sketch on your paper we are now going to add the start ofreflections down into the water. There is usually a dark edge and it is probably best if you do this in sections. I used my ½” angle brush and the color I used was a mix of blue with a touch of sienna and a tiny touch of purple to create a shadow color which I loaded onto the tip of my brush. If you use a round brush just load the tip and if you use a flat brush, just load a corner, be sure to rinse your brush before you load it. Putting the tip of my brush where I want to start the edge and the rest of the brush on the paper, I pulled the color along the edge of my water. I just did a few inches, then I rinsed and dried my brush then with the damp, clean brush, I pulled that color I just put

down, straight down and faded it out. Then I did another section and repeated the process. Be sure to pull the color STRAIGHT down because of the nature of reflections the images from the reflections in water will have a combination of vertical and horizontal components, the horizontal coming from the movement of the water, so after you pull straight down, wipe out your brush and lightly pull straight ACROSS, you brush should be parallel to the top and bottom of your paper. We will be using this technique as we work on the water so again, you might want to practice before you get to your painting.

I also used that color was on my brush to create the shadows in the dirt alongthe shoreline. Again, my strokes were fairly flat because the dirt was flat. We will work more on the dirt and the water in our next class. Try to get your painting to this point, remember the more you do something the easier it becomes the next time so get some card or divide a practice paper up into sections and practice your techniques, also become more observant of your surroundings, don’t just “look” at things, really try to “see” the world around you, it will make you a better artist. See you next time.