Summer 2015 Watercolor Week 2

Watercolor Project: TJ'sBouquet Week 2

PV students your class the previous week so please refer to it before moving on to this one we will get there probably next week do the best you can to get caught up to where we left off in class and we will proceed from there you should have your flowers in your basket under painted.

To continue with the watercolor project and the Torrance class, I started working on the basket and then I after that I started putting in the detail for the flowers and leaves.

You should all have your reference photos in front of you when you are painting your project, it has all the information you need to paint this painting, I'm constantly looking back at my photo as I am painting and you should get into this same habit. There is an area of

dark rust at the bottom of the basket and where the paint has chipped off, that color was a deep dark brown a mix of burnt sienna, ultramarine blue and a touch of purple, you want to keep your color to the warm side or the brown side, and if you have to you need to draw a line - more specifically an irregular shape - to indicate where the paint stops and the rusted metal begins before you start to paint, do it before you start to paint. Remember that you have ferns that come down in front of the pot and you will need to paint in between the branches of the fern (negative painting).

Next I started working on the sunflowers by intensifying the color and adding the shading for the sunflowers. Yellow is a bit tricky because the shadows aren't necessarily or traditional blues and purples, they are more in the reds and oranges so those are the colors I was using in the sunflower shadows. I used my cad yellow with a little touch of orange to go over some of the deeper colored pedals to intensify the color as well as adding in the shadows

and contours. You don't need to paint everything you just need to suggest pedals and the depth between pedals and curves. All I did was just suggest some shapes with my colors, but I was constantly going back to my reference photo and looking to see where I needed to put the reds and oranges and their general shapes. The reds will be your deepest colors in the sunflowers you will also shape your flowers a bit with these colors more shaping will come later as we work into darker colors.

For the roses you are going to need to add dark reds for the flower detail and shadows, the color that you painted before will be your highlight color. You will be using alizarin crimson for the medium dark and alizarin crimson with a touch of blue in it for you darkest colors. Be sure that you are looking at your photograph before you start painting so that you can see where and what you are painting. Remember, the roses look in all directions. as do the sunflowers. and this is what you want to try and create in your painting you want to get the darkest colors in interesting shapes in your roses to suggest the inside pedals, they are all folded up from the inside and the petals open from the outside, so look at the photograph and see where your darkest colors are and paint your shapes accordingly, that's the best advice I can give you, remember to save your light under painting for your highlights.

I also worked on the leaves. These leaves need to have some medium and dark greens put into them. The medium colors I used SAP green with a touch of orange to dull it and maybe the occasional touch of blue for a deeper color. For the darker green I used Hooker's green with ultramarine blue to darken it, again look at your photograph and see where the dark colors are, these dark colors are how you're going to shape your flowers look at them between the smaller yellow and red flowers and put the darks in to shape your flowers in the sunflowers you'll see in several of them there are some darker green that go in between and behind the petals use the darker color to shape the outside edges of the petals this is what we do in watercolor you can also use the medium color much the same way but don't lose all of your lightest lights we will get to those probably next week.

On the little yellow and red flowers I was using my little angle brush to create the red fringed edges of these flowers. First I rinsed my brush well then when I loaded my brush I only loaded the tip of my brush. I then placed the whole end of the brush on my paper with the loaded tip at the end of the flowers where the reds are and pulled down and around to create that lacey blended look. This takes practice but it is worth it.

This is where I stopped for the day so try to get your paintings as far along to this point as you can, we are going to start working on the background next week - yes we are that far along - so keep painting and I will see you in class.

Summer 2015 Watercolor

Watercolor Project: TJ’s Bouquet Week 1

I started out showing the new students how to transfer a design onto my paper using graphite transfer paper. There are many ways to get a design on your paper, this was just one of them.

I wanted my design on the paper so I knew where to start my under painting. The lightest area is coming from behind and above to “back light” the arrangementso my lightest area will be slightly above center and to the right.

First I wet my entire paper with clean water. I do this so my paint will spread and it will also lighten it a bit. With a big brush – I used my 2” wash brush – so I could cover a lot of ground in a few strokes and so the paper will still be wet as I change colors. You should all have at least a 2” – 3” wash or hake brush for big areas, it will save you a lot of extra work.

Still using my wash brush, I picked up some of my cad yellow light and mixed in a lot of water, I just want a light yellow tint, and I painted a ring around the center of my bright spot. I rinsed my brush and lightly guided the yellow into the center of the ring and blotted with a paper towel so it didn’t get too much color. Moving quickly, to the yellow on my palette I added a little orange then on the outside of the yellow ring, I added an orange ring. You want the colors to blend where they meet so be sure that your paper is still wet. Keep moving and add some red or crimson to the orange color on you palette and add a red ring to the outside of the orange ring and finally, with either a touch of blue or purple and water, add another ring that covers the corners and goes across the top and bottom of your paper. Let this dry completely before starting the next step.

When the paper was dry I started adding the next layer of color. Remember that in watercolor you work from light to dark so again, I do not want to get too dark with these next colors I want to be able to have some “wiggle room” when bringing up the values, I don’t want to get there too quick.

I started with the metal basket and while it looks “white”, it isn’t, it is a cool, sienna color so the colors I used were sienna, a little blue, a little purple, this is my base color for the basket. When I applied this color I was using my ½” shader and started in the middle of the basket and I did leave some areas unpainted for the leaves and ferns that hang over. Look at the photo. You will notice that to the left side of the basket it gets a bit darker and to the right it gets a bit lighter and warmer, keep that in mind as you paint. On the left side add a little bit more blue and/or purple and to the right side use a bit more water to thin the color and add touches of orange to warm it. Rust has some very orange undertones rather than red so use orange and sienna for your rust. The lighter warmer version of this color is used to under paint the handle just don’t make the color a continuous line because the handle goes in and out of the flowers and leaves, look at your reference photo if you have a question on where it might show.

The rest of the class I spent under painting the flowers and the leaves. The sunflowers and smaller flowers I used my cad yellow light with a touch of orange in it, keep it thin you don’t want too much color too soon, the roses I used my napthal red with water to thin it to base the colors in. I DID NOT do any detail color on the small flowers that have red edges, which will come later.

The leaves I did pay a bit more attention to because as they go in and out of light, their color changes from a blue green to almost yellow so please look at the photo as you are painting and be aware of where you are painting so you change your color as you paint. Again, keep it light in value for now so for the darker green areas I used sap green and a touch of blue with water and the lighter greens were sap with yellow and water or just yellow with water. LOOK AT YOUR REFERENCE PHOTO and fill in these lighter colors we will do more detail as we progress.

Keep painting and I will see you in class.

Watercolor Garden Fantasy Week 5

I have a couple of weeks to catch up on as far as my notes for this class are concerned and I will try to give you all the information so that you can get caught up because we finished the project in class this past week. Mainly what I did the previous week was to start working on my rocks and creating different shapes of my rocks. You want to start with a shadow color which will be your blue, purple, and little touch of burnt sienna to create a dark cool shadow color and to lighten it you use water. Before you start painting the rocks look at the photograph so that you have or better yet, go out and look at rocks so that you have an idea of what a pile of rocks is going to look like looking at their highlights and their shadows and the texture in the shape of your rocks.

Getting your rocks to look like rocks comes with practice I've been doing this for a long time and rocks happen to be one of my favorite subjects so I do them well but I didn't when I first started. I had to really study rocks so I could see how the light hit them and how to get the texture on them, most of the time I am patting the color on rather than brushing it on. The patting motion creates texture as the dark and light areas of the brush leave the paint they have and the strokes are overlapping which create layers of color that create the texture. Like I said it's going to take you practice and observation to start to get your rocks looking like a pile of rocks rather than a stone wall.

I also continued putting in the shadows and deepening the color of the ground cover and the plants around the stream again you need your shadow color which is the blue and purple this time add some green to it for the green shadows of your of your plants as you work into the sunny area add sap green and yellow.

I created the bark on the pine tree by mixing a dark brown color that would be my burnt sienna with purple and blue to create a very dark color, then I used my quarter inch angle brush on its edge and just by tapping with the edge and overlapping the strokes, I created a bark like texture. You don't want to lose all the gray color that you had on the trunk but you do want to give the suggestion of bark. Remember that as the bark goes off onto the branches it goes in a different direction so be sure that your strokes follow the direction of the part of the tree you are painting.

You should have removed all the masking fluid from your painting by now, now we need to make those white areas in the water look like they belong to the stream. You will need to mix a darker color it can be either blue or green or both but you will use this to make the suggestion of the water flowing over the rocks please look at your photo and look the detail of the water that's going over the Little Falls there you will see that there are many values of color there it isn't just one bright white area it has white streaks it has some dark streaks it has several in between value streaks and a lot of those streaks are in the shape of a “v”: either with the point pointing down or an upward “V” depending on what is underneath the water. What your job is, is to create that representation of that waterfall remember that there are areas of foam at the bottom of each of those falls so you will have to negative paint around that foam or you’ll lose it.

Koi melting into drips.

Also be sure that you get enough dark in your water so that it looks like it has some depth to it. There needs to be some place for the fish to swim and that is shown by putting dark blues and greens into the pools to create those deeper areas. To put fish in your pond, with just a damp brush, paint fishy shapes with your small brush and clean water, then lift it out with a paper towel, while it is still wet add little touches of yellow or orange or red or any of those combinations keep your fish near the Falls you don't want them too far out to the edge of your painting keeping them close into your subject which is the pagoda and will suggest a pond full of fish.

 

Added some drips coming from the tree.

Torrance version

PV version

Last but not least we come to the pagoda itself you will need to mix up a shadow color (see above for the colors) and you will use water to dilute it. Look at your photo see where your shadows are, see where your highlights are, look for any detail that you want to put in and have all of that in your mind as your painting. The darkest area is going to be the inside of the pagoda that color is almost black so you will use your mixture without diluting it everything else will have water added to it to lighten it. Start in a shadow area with your color, rinse your brush and then drag the color out to form the shape of the pagoda. You can do as much detail as you want or as little that will be up to you but you do need to create the shapes so pay particular attention to what you’re painting and its shape. Don't forget to put a very dark shadow at the very base of the pagoda where it sits on the rock and the shadow it's casting on the rock and that about does everything I did in class for the past two weeks finish this up the way you want to and be sure to have something ready to work on in class when we meet again so keep painting and I'll see you in class.

Watercolor Garden Fantasy Week 3

My goal in the last class was to get as much of the painting in the background behind pagoda done as possible because from here we will start finishing up are paintings and we will need to remove the masking that we have put on the pagoda and the white areas in the stream that were covered with the masking.

Have your reference photo of the Botanical Garden pagoda and the stream where you can see it because these are going to give you all the information you're going to need for this part of the painting. They will show you where your shadows are, where the highlights are on the plants in the rocks, it will show you the darks and the lights in the water and it is your best guide when you are painting so have those photographs handy.

Remember when you are under painting an area you want to start light and then add dark with layers, if you get too dark too quickly it will be very difficult to bring back the light so it is better to do this in layers then it is to try and finish it in one fell swoop.

When you are painting the stream remember to follow the water. If the water is in one of the pools it will lay flat so your brush strokes need to be flat if it is falling over one of the many falls your brush strokes will also fall over to look like the water is falling, this will clue your viewer that the water is flowing down over rocks into another pool this is very important.

When you are as far as you can go with your bushes, trees, ground cover and stream without removing the masking, let your painting dry completely before you remove the masking.

Once you have removed the masking from the pagoda you will want under painted in a warm color, I used my cadmium yellow light with a touch of burnt sienna and a little tiny touch of purple and a lot of water to under paint the pagoda.

 

In the streams I went in with various values of green and blue to break up some of the white area that make up falls look at the stream photo and you will see that where the waterfalls over the rocks it has various different colors and values this is what you're trying to recreate you don't want to lose all of the white that you saved but you do want to make it look more natural.

Try to get your painting up to this point as best he can we could possibly finish this painting this next week so you might want to start looking for the next thing that you want to paint and I will help you get started. Keep painting and I will see you in class.

Watercolor Garden Fantasy week 2

This week I started painting in the rocks the waterfall and some of the plants around the pagoda and beginnings of detailing the pine tree and other bushes.

The first thing I did was a quick demo on how to under paint the waterfall. I made a larger full page drawing of a similar waterfall and showed how I under paint for the rocks and also for the water. Remember when you were painting watercolor you work from the lightest area to the darkest area so when you under paint something you don't want to get too dark too soon.

There are a couple of ways that you can do this: you can wet the rocks area of first and then start adding some light colors like grey - which is a combination of your blue, burnt sienna, and purple with lots of water – and to that you can add more blue or you could have little touches of orange or red or yellow even green because a lot of these rocks will have moss on them so green is the perfect color, just keep everything light in value at this point.  Be sure to have your reference photo in front of you so that you can refer to it often I keep my reference photo right there where I can look up to it and I do as I'm painting, it’s called a reference photo for a reason because you need to refer to it.

The water also starts out very light. The water in the reference photo is a greenish color probably because of algae for one and also the greenery above it, so if you want to make your water more green that's perfectly OK, I chose at this time to use a light blue and if you have other colors besides the ultramarine blue such as cobalt blue or cerulean blue, you can use those, just be sure you have enough water in them that they are very light in value.

When you paint your water remember that water finds its own level, that means when it is sitting in a pool area it is going to be very flat so your strokes need to be very horizontal, when they fall over the rocks they become more vertical your brush strokes will tell your viewer that the water is falling over rocks or lying flat in a pool, brushstrokes matter.

I also want it made very clear I have not removed the masking fluid from any of my painting it is still on there because I'm still painting around things and as soon as I feel it is safe I will remove the masking fluid but not at this time. You do have some time before it becomes a problem.

I under painted theneedles of the pine tree. They're formed in clumps because they are cut and train that way but they still have a bit of irregularity to the edges, be sure when you are painting that you create interesting shapes. I used the very edge of my angle brush to create the illusion of the pine needles so that the point was to the outside, I overlapped my strokes in the body of the clump but when I got to the edge I make sure that it looked very spiky like

Torrance Version

needles, when I change color to create the next value I did the same thing and again with a darker value it's all the same kind of brush strokes. For the lighter colors of the pine tree I used my sap green with some of my yellow. l under painted the whole area of the pine needles. The mid-tone color I added in more of the sap green and painted in the mid-values and for the very shadows I added in blue and some Hooker’s green for my shadows I also use this dark shadow color as the underneath shadow for the little tree on the right hand side of the pagoda, also it becomes the shadows in its variations for the ground covers adding more blue, purple or sienna to change the color a bit.

On the right hand side I used some of my medium greens to create some detail in the green background trees. I also use that color to negative paint into the orange in front of it to suggest clumps of leaves and branches in the tree in front but in the orange tree behind the green tree I used my red with a touch of orange to create shadows so that the green tree will stand out. Remember, you are negative painting the lighter trees in front when you are paint the shadows of the tree behind. I also added some red leaves coming in from the right hand side, I just like the shape and color so I added them you do not need to put them in but if you want to, you can they are just stuff.

PV Version

I also under painted the tree trunk and branches on the pine tree using a light gray color slightly on the bluish side. I need this color so that when I want to make the tree bark this color will show through. For the little tree behind the pagoda I mixed a dark brown using my burnt Sienna with blue and a touch of purple you want it to be on the Siena side.

Do as much as you can and as much as you feel confident that you can do, I won't miss anything for those who need more instructions, however, if you feel you can you can work into the painting a bit feel free, I will continue from here in class I will not leave anyone behind. By now you should be able to start seeing how this is going to work out I know it's been a bit confusing but splattering can be fun so keep painting and I will see you in class.

Watercolor: Garden Fantasy Week 1

I wanted to start out this painting in a little bit different way from what we have been doing lately just to show that there is so much you can do and have fun while you're painting so I wanted to start this painting by splattering.

I am working on a half sheet of watercolor paper so it is 15 by 22. I wanted to have it a little bit bigger so that I had room for my splatters to show around the edges of my design. I get my design on my paper by transferring it with graphite transfer paper and then went over some of those lines with a number 2 pencil.

Before you start splattering be sure you have water on of your pants so that they are in pools of water because that is what you'll be using to splatter with and you want your pigments to be ready to go for this step.

PV Version

I started with my light colors such as my yellow and I mixed it on my palate with lots of water. Be sure your palate is clean when you do this so you don’t muddy your colors. I mix my yellow with enough water so that it was a very runny mixture. I was using a round brush and a half inch flat brush. I filled the brush well with this mixture - you want it to be dripping off the end of your brush - and then splatter on your paper. If you want to you can take your spray bottle and lightly spritz your paper so that there will be spots of water on your paper when the color hits the spots of water it will spread out and give a different look from where it hits dry paper you can also spritz the paper after you have splattered just don't do it too often otherwise your paper will be too wet and your colors will start bleeding into each other.

After the yellow I went to orange than to red, I have a color called (p)thalo yellow green, another color which is a cheap Joe's color called Andrews turquoise, along with my ultramarine blue and my dioxazine purple. The trick to splattering is to know when to stop, you want enough splattering to make it look interesting and fun like confetti on paper but you don't want so much that the colors start bleeding into each other creating muddied brown colors you can also do more splattering after it dries and add more color just know when to stop so that you don't get muddied colors. Keep a paper towel handy to sop up any unwanted color combinations.

Once my splattering had dried I needed to protect the areas that I wanted to leave unpainted at this point, which would be the pagoda in the foreground and the foam in the water from the waterfalls so I will need to protect them making the rest easier to paint. You will need your masking fluid an old paint brush and some soap: you first rinse your brush in water, rub it around in the soap to cover all the bristles down to the metal ferrule, wipe off the excess foam and then load the brush with the masking fluid and paint out the pagoda. Once that is completely painted out then add touches around where the foam will be and in the fall themselves add some streaks of masking so later when we are finishing up the water we will have lighter areas that will look like shining in the water to give them movement. This has to dry completely before starting the next step if you are in the PV class this was as far as we got so we will cover the following next time we meet.

 

Torrance class, I started under painting for my trees and bushes and ground cover around the stream and around the pagoda. Mostly I used greens but I also use some orange/reds for the under painting for some of the other plants that will be in there I am NOT specifically painting any particular plant at this point I'm just under painting and that is where we stopped in class so please try to have your paintings to this point for next class and we will continue on from there. Keep painting and I will see you in class

Watercolor Safe Harbor Week 4

 

Finished project

This was the final week for this project what I did was to go through and make sure that everything was the way I wanted it to be, that I had things dark enough or that I had enough detail or that I had finished everything. This is the finishing up stages and how you finish yours is going to be a personal choice for you as an artist, you can make this as detailed as you want or as undetailed as you want this is totally up to you.

One of the things I needed to finish up was the dock in the front which had the crab pots, the ropes and the pilings. On the crab pots, I did not take a ruler or any other straight object to create the sides or the netting, I just took the straight edge of my brush and created a series of little lines with a dark, gray color to form the framework of the pots. The grey I used was a color I got from mixing all the colors on the dark part of my palate together to come up with a palette gray, if it needed to be darker I added more blue and a touch of sienna but if you need to mix the color it was blue, sienna and purple. When I was putting in the railings on the pots I left some of the white that was there after I removed the masking. Very little of the white was left but it was enough to suggest highlights.

For the netting in thepots I just added some more water to lighten the color and then just scribbled diagonal lines across the sections of the pots this cuts down the white that was there to create highlights in the netting. Again I did not get out a straight edge I did not worry about if it was perfect or not I just scribbled lines in. There is netting all the way around these pots so there will be a lot of overlapping lines. If you are trying to make the perfect netting on the pots you will 1, get them too wide and the crabs will escape, and 2, it will look like there's only netting on one side and again your crabs will escape, so just scribble this on and it will look a lot more realistic.

The pier pilings and the rope are pretty simple to do you just have to trust me on this. To create a round, textured piling I took my quarter inch flat angled brush mixed a dark color that will be to the warm side (remember the dark is burnt sienna, blue, touch of purple but this time it will be more to the sienna side) and with just the edge of my brush I made a series of vertical overlapping strokes starting in the shadowed area and working towards the sunny area. About a third of the way from the shadow to the light I rinsed my brush, picked up some sienna then starting just inside the dark area made some more vertical strokes about another third around the piling, I rinsed my brush again, picked up some sienna with orange as well to finished off the piling with the vertical strokes into the sunlit area and there you have your piling. It should look round you might want to practice on another piece of paper but this creates wonderful texture especially for old wood or tree bark, this makes great tree bark, and it is something you need to learn.

 

The rope I took some color from the dark side of my palette and added to the golden color I had already mixed on the lighter side (this was a little burnt sienna, a little orange and a little yellow if you need to mix the color again) you should have a bit of the dark left over from the pots or boat, to create a shadow color for the rope. Remember that the rope is round so your strokes should be curved. Some of you have gone to great lengths to create the spiral texture of the rope when you don't need to do that much detail, you just need to suggest it that's all, the viewer will fill in the rest otherwise it looks too cartoony. When it was dry I came back in with a little bit darker color into the coils of the rope and suggested the coils I did not make a complete spiral I just suggested spiral, I also came back when it was dry with a blue gray color and put a shadow from the pots over parts of the rope.

The boards on the dock can be made with the same brush the same dark color as we've been using and just suggest cracks and crevices in the boards. Remember if you want this to look flat your lines have to be parallel to the top and bottom or mostly parallel and as they go back they become closer together and less intense in color to create the idea that it is going away from you also use this dark color to create shadows under the ropes on the dock and under the pots to settle them down on the dock. On some of the boards you can even put some of that dark color to suggest holes and cracks o into the pilings to suggest bigger holes, have fun with this and see what happens, nothing's going to get hurt, this is where you can learn.

Finish up your painting the way you want to finish it up if you don't want to put in any more detail don't put it in if you want to have more detail get out that reference photo of the boat and go for it, this is your painting so finish it up the way you want to finish it, however, we are done with this project so the next time we meet please have something that you want to work on with you and I will help you get started I will do spot demos as is needed and will help you with anything that you are having trouble with. Keep painting and I will see you in class.