Tulips

Here's a nice wet-in-wet technique for painting flowers. I'm stepping aside from my usual glazed layers to work in adjacent segments of feathered colour.

Begin with a simple sketch, just one or two blossoms, with the separate petals defined:

Prepare two puddles of colour, a yellow and a red. I used Winsor Yellow and Cadmium Red with a bit of Quinacridone Magenta for variety of hue. Pre-wet one single petal with a wash of yellow.

While the yellow is glistening and wet, load up your brush with red (pigment-rich rather than watered down), and dab colour into the base and up the centre of the yellow. The wet yellow wash will start to take up the red, dragging it into natural-looking veining.


While that petal is drying move over to a new one, staying away from the first. Start with the yellow as before and add the red, observing the natural shifts of colour and leaving a yellow edge to the petal.
And repeat, again leaving the still-wet petals alone while starting a new one.
Fill in between the petals once they have dried, using the same yellow to red technique, and move on to the next flower.I added a little blue-green, a mystery mix left over on my palette, for some pockets of shading in the yellow.
Mixing Sap Green with the yellow, lay in the stems and a few leaves. Careful brushwork will keep the the red edges from bleeding into the green. And then go to town with an assortment of wet in wet green shades for background.


And that wraps up another two-hours-or-less painting. The studio cat, below, stepped between me and the tulips a few times, just in case I needed his input. Very decorative, if not helpful.

“The smallest feline is a masterpiece” – Leonardo Da Vinci

Apples

Two versions of a still life with apples, both done in my little watercolour sketch pad from Curry's.
For watercolour sketches and studies these little books are very handy, not as expensive as Arches' supreme papers, and a step above the many flimsy "student grade" pads.

Painting with the intent to only sketch somehow frees one's hand for greater ease in both the sketching and painting, and curiously so does using truly inferior non-watercolour paper. For example, the flip chart paper on which I sketched another apple composition in class, using watercolour pencils:

(bond paper in poor light, crinkled from the moisture of earlier paintings
on the pages that preceded it),

On nicer paper I would have drawn more slowly and cautiously in order to preserve the delicate surface fibres. But on the flip-chart bond paper I quickly laid in a sketch with lots of pencil lines, which were then pared back to the essentials with a soft eraser. The first layer of colours was applied in cross-hatched strokes with Faber Castell watercolour pencils. Cadmium yellow made a unifying undercoat for all the apples . . .
. . . and the individual colours were built up from there - Golden Delicious, Honey Crisp and Granny Smith.
There are cupcakes in the background too, something sweet for Valentine's Day.
Not a bad outcome for plain old bond paper. The next step is to brush the watercolour pencil layers with water, just enough to brighten the colours. But it is not obligatory and would certainly crinkle this non-watercolour surface. I'm going to leave them alone for now, crisp and glossy.

Post-script, Feb 16: A final touch of water, just the least bit on a barely damp brush, brings up the rich hues hidden in the watercolour pencil pigments. Now that's glossy!

Sand and Shore

This week's in-class painting is a simple waterfront scene derived from photos taken on my morning dog-walk, with the waves rolling in from Lake Ontario and a single file of ducks strolling up the beach ahead of us. At 8 x 10 this was doable in two hours, with not much sketching required at all.
I made only a few pencil lines before painting, roughing in the ducks and their reflections as 4 separate ovals . The glistening sand colours are faint enough that masking fluid was not needed to save the bands of white in the ducks' plummage.

I began with an overall wash of clear water to prepare the paper for three separate bands of texture, to be painted wet-in-wet for softly blurred edges: Neutral Tint was mixed with Burnt Sienna for the near sand, Antwerp Blue defined the glistening wet sand, and Neutral Tint shaped the waves. Once the background was quite dry I shaped the ducks and their reflections, taking time to build up the dark colours in layers.
To get increasingly darker colours one must load the brush with less water in ratio to more pigment, almost dry-brush in the final strokes. All this building up requires some drying time between layers, which is when one goes back to other elements that also need touching up - textures in the nearest sand, more shaping in the far waves. These layers and touch-ups take time but also heighten the realism of the final picture, a nice way to remember a walk on the beach.

Welcome 2012

This snowy scene with birch trees took just a few hours. The white tree trunks and branches were masked with Pebeo Drawing Gum, which was allowed to dry before I began painting the sky. After pre-wetting the sky area with a clear wash I used Cobalt Blue in sweeping diagonal strokes, leaving the clouds as negative space. While the resulting sky was drying I worked on the snow first with Cerulean Blue then with a bit of Winsor Violet and Neutral Tint. Back to the horizon with Neutral Tint, I shaped the far-away trees, letting them advance and get darker in the woods on the right. The final step was to remove the masking fluid and get to work on the birch trunks and branches, which is where the more fiddly time-consuming work comes in! I try to make these in-class paintings do-able in the time available.

Pebeo Drawing Gum is my preferred masking fluid and the one that I recommend to students. The blue tint keeps the mask clearly visible while you are painting, it stays put until you want to peel it off and then it lifts off readily without damaging the paper.

Merry Christmas

BAC Watercolours, Skies continued

It is a simple thing in watercolour painting to set some flowers in front of a shaded sky and clouds. A pot of slender daffodils or budding tulips from the grocery store (so tempting at this grey time of year) will provide the model.

Make a light drawing, with the stems and leaves breaking the lower boundary of the picture, then coat the flowers, stems and leaves with removable masking fluid. When the masking fluid is quite dry (shiny and firm) proceed with the steps for lifted clouds from Lesson 2: a wash of yellow, when dry followed with a wash of blue and the clouds immediately lifted with tissue. Tint and shade the clouds and let the whole thing dry. (Always, always let the painting dry before attempting to remove the masking fluid) Gently rub off the masking fluid to reveal crisp flower shapes standing against the sky. Much will depend on your choice of flower, but for these daffodils I unified the leaves, stems and flowers with an undercoat of lemon yellow before proceeding to more differentiated colours.

"And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils"
William Wordsworth, 1770-1850

BAC Watercolours, Lesson 2 - Skies and Clouds

Cerulean Blue and Ultramarine are provided in most ready-made painting kits. Cerulean is such a satisfying and convincing sky-blue that new painters tend to go through tubes of it. An experienced painter can make a single tube last much longer, even years, and still achieve rich tones and glowing transparency. Antwerp Blue is a sweet light blue, like Cerulean, but more intense and better for glazing over pastel tones. Cobalt Blue is another excellent sky colour. Payne’s Gray is a blue that shades to gray tones and makes good stormy skies.

The analytical approach to clouds is to draw their shapes first then paint cautiously, nudging sky colour toward the cloud edges. This lesson’s approach is freer and more immediately gratifying, and is only an introduction to the possibilities of sky-scapes.

LIFTING CLOUDS

1. We know this works better with 100% cotton paper! Have ready a good supply of paper towel or tissues. Prepare three separate washes in the palette: A yellow (Yellow Ochre or Cadmium Yellow), a blue (Cobalt Blue, Ultramarine or Antwerp Blue) and a gray (Payne's Gray or Neutral Tint).

2. On pre-stretched paper (optional, but so much better to work with) apply a light wash of yellow to the sky area. Let it dry.

3. Again pre-wetting the sky area, apply a wash of blue. Have your tissue ready and while the blue wash is still wet and fresh, "lift" the paint by dabbing, turning the tissue frequently to produce clean, fluffy clouds.

4. While the paper is still damp, you can apply a yellow or some Cadmium Red to to the tops of the clouds and gray or neutral tint for shadows along the lower edges, leaving a little white at the bottom.

Another approach is "negative thinking”, or laying down sky colours on thoroughly wetted paper while leaving open spaces for the clouds. The moisture on the page will drag the sky colour into the open spaces and create produce soft cirrus-cloud effects. Tissue can be used here too, to correct or redefine cloud shapes if desired.

For a rosy sky, the first wash of colour could be Cadmium Red. The possibilities exceed the scope of one lesson, and there is so much to cover. We have begun with skies and backgrounds as the logical starting point, the backdrops to the stage set of any painting or landscape, and will shortly move on to still lifes and perceived depth of field. But for now, back to those skies.....

“Up, up the long delirious burning blue

I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace…"

(John Gillespie Magee, 1922-41, High Flight )