Summer 2014 Watercolor Class

Watercolor Class – Color Mixing 101

As humans we are a curious species and we like to analyze everything and that includes the whys and wherefores of art. The Ancient Greeks set up committees to better understand why we like some things better than other even when the quality was equal and came up with what they called “The Golden Mean” we call it the Rule of Thirds today but that was just the beginning into how to create the perfect art masterpiece. We still do it today and there are volumes and volumes written on every aspect of art and while some of it might be helpful to the everyday artist sometimes there is just too much information and proves to be more confusing than helpful, Color mixing and Color Theory are no excepting to the rule. I don’t want you to discourage you from learning more on the subject but sometimes having a basic understanding of the subject is helpful when you want to learn more because it will make more sense to you. This is going to be a VERY basic introduction to color mixing but it should be helpful to you in your efforts to create your own masterpiece.

There are 3 Primary colors and their 3 Complimentary Or Secondary colors, these colors and their combinations should be burned into your brains if you are going to paint in color. The PRIMARY COLORS are: RED, YELLOW and BLUE. What that means is there is no way to mix any other colors together to get any of the three primary colors, you must have a source of red, yellow or blue to get these colors. SECONDARY colors on the other hand, are the combination of two primary colors. The 3 Complimentary colors are: ORANGE, GREEN and PURPLE.

You can buy a color wheel at the art store or better yet, make your own so you can learn about the primary and complimentary colors. You can make a circle on your paper or a canvas and then in the 12, 4 and 8 positions put a patch of your primary color (R,Y,B). Midway between the red and the yellow, apply a patch of orange. Midway between the yellow and the blue apply a patch of green and midway between the red and the blue apply a patch of purple. While it is good practice to mix these complimentary colors for your wheel, if you have premixed tube colors, that is okay too, the goal here is to create your color wheel.

Now look at your wheel and memorize these colors and what is directly across from it on the color wheel. The colors directly across from each other on the color wheel are COMPLIMENTARY COLORS. If you have these colors together in a painting they will complement each other giving a pleasant visual balance to the painting. For instance, if you are painting something with a lot of red in it adding green will enhance your painting more than adding say orange.

Most beginning artists do not have a problem when it comes to mixing mud, the problem comes from how NOT to mix mud or how to control the amount of mud you mix. The way you get mud is when ALL 3 PRIMARY COLORS ARE PRESENT. Mixing a primary and its complement together will get you some form of brown or gray. For instance, if you take the primary color blue and you mix it with orange (yellow with red) you will get a steel gray color if it is more to the blue side and a rich brown color if it is more to the orange side. Yellow and purple (blue with red) makes a great sand color. Red and green (blue with yellow) make rich browns and grays. There are some artists who only use the 3 primary colors with white (oils, acrylics or other opaque medium) and maybe black and that is it for their palette and they can mix any color they need but it takes years of practice to get the subtle differences in color and most of us aren’t that patient so getting pre-mixed colors saves us some time but we still need to understand the reasons behind what we are doing on the palette or our canvas.

By-the-way, all of this applies no matter what medium you are using. It doesn’t matter if it is acrylic, oil, watercolor, pastel, colored inks, anytime you are using color, these guidelines apply. If you ever want to try pastels, you really need to know more or less what you are going to get because you mix the color on your paper by putting 2 or more colors down then blending them with your finger or a blending tool.

Now why, you might ask, do I need to know what makes gray or mud? The answer is so you know how to correct or adjust you colors.

Most modern colors that you buy premixed at the store are usually too intense in color to use straight out of the tube and you need to know how to “tone them down”, greens can be particularly challenging out of the tube and need to be quieted to look more natural. For example, knowing that by adding some form of red to your green, be it red, orange, burnt sienna (which is in the orange family) or purple for shadow greens, will go a long way to improving your overall painting. This goes for all your colors.

Before I close this, I want to touch on a trend in the manufactured paint of ever expanding palette of colors, you now have many choices for a similar color. Blues, for instance, may say red hue or green hue or variation. All this means is instead of being a true blue color it has more red or yellow (respectively) and this will affect the color depending on what other color you have mixed into it. Bottom line is “Do you like the color?” if the answer is yes, then you may have to do some testing just to see how it mixes with your other colors or maybe you have to save it for special circumstances when you don’t have to mix it too much to use it. Art is all about you, if you like it, that is what matters sometimes it can take years of experimenting with color to find the combinations of color that work best for you needs, just never be afraid to try something new or to test your new color because they are all different even between the different manufacturers.

No pictures for this blog because your results will be different from mine and that is okay, we will be working on perspective and atmospheric perspective next class so practice those grays!

Watercolor Class – Values: Black, White and Shades of Gray

Acrylic example

Simply put, value is the light and the dark in you painting and all the shades of gray in between. Value and Composition are the two most important aspects of a painting especially when you are trying to create realistic and/or dramatic paintings. This holds true no matter what form of 2 dimensional art you do and whether you are working in color or black and white, painting, drawing or even photography, if you can get dark darks and light highlights with at least 5 shades of gray in your art, you will see how much more exciting your finished piece will be then if you only have middle tones. It isn’t as easy as that sounds and some of us really have to work at getting the darks in our art.

One of the main reasons we have trouble getting to very dark darks is because our eyes lie to us. When we are learning to draw or paint, for some reason we are afraid of the paper or canvas and many times when I go around looking at students’ work I will hear that they know that something is wrong but they keep fixing things that are okay and ignoring the elephant in the room which is usually they need to get some darker darks. This is why I had us create a value scale.

The first thing we needed to do is learn how to make a dark, almost black color. The reason I don’t use black is because it can kill other colors when you add black but by using a very dark color that we mix, if we use it with other colors the colors will still be lively though grayed in value.

Please burn these three colors into your head because they make my go to, universal dark color: Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Sienna and Dioxizine Purple. More of the blue than the sienna with just a touch of the purple make a deep rich, dark, gray color. A variation of this combination is to substitute Burnt Umber for the Burnt Sienna but in the same combination. If you want to see what the true color is take a little bit and add a touch of water to it, you want a neutral gray color (optimal) or a cool gray color (to the blue side). If the color looks too brown, add more blue and a tiny amount of purple and test it again. It is worth the time to get your mix right before you start so you don’t have to stop and start over again, you will also want to mix a enough paint so you don’t have to keep remixing, we used this dark color for the entire class.

You can use a strip of paper to make your value scale. You will need enough room for at least 10 squares using the white of the paper as your white. If you need to, mark them off, I just used the width of my brush for each square.

Take the black color that you mixed and add lots of water to it, you want a very light gray, remember to skip a space for the paper white then paint THE ENTIRE REST OF THE STRIP

Use a similar value to the above for the entire strip.

with the light gray color, that is step one. Watercolor is transparent, which means that when you put one color on top of another, the color underneath will influence the color you just put down. The white of the paper is making the color you just put down look gray because it is so thin, pay attention to what happens each time you put down a new strip of color. Let the paper dry completely before skipping a section next to the white paper, WITH THE SAME LIGHT GRAY, PAINT THE REMAING STRIP WITH THE SAME VALUE. Let this dry completely (use a hairdryer if you are impatient), skip a new segment and paint the same value down what is left of the strip. Do this until you get to the last segment, if you have to get a very dark value, you may have to mix the colors again to get a dark, just don’t add a lot of water. We use water to change the value of watercolors, we don’t use white. You should be able to see a distinct difference between the values when the strip has dried going from black on one end to white on the other, you can punch holes in each segment if you want when it is dried.

 

Many artists will do a value study of a project before they start a major project, even plein air painters will try to capture the values of a scene so they can see where the light and shadows were when they started their painting because light changes when you are outside. A value study can be a quick painting sketch with little detail, or a pencil or charcoal drawing just to get the “feel” of the scene you want to paint, while it is not an absolute necessity, it is good practice and habit if you want to improve your painting.

With that in mind the rest of the class was devoted to doing quick studies of things around you using only the dark color you mixed and white to change the value.

We will be going over basic color mixing in our next class so be sure to have all your colors with you next time. See you in class.

SUMMER 2014 WATERCOLOR CLASS

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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.