Another lesson in wet-in-wet technique with Peter Sheeler. This one really worked well for me! I like the results below. My weeds in the foreground on the left were not as dry-brush as they should have been to get the crispy qualities – the right side was more successful. I’ll be doing another of Peter’s exercises later today!
I used six of Peter Sheeler’s videos to create cards for my sister-in-law’s Christmas present, along with using them for practice. Doing all of these has proven to be more thought-provoking than I realized. Copying by watching a video is really informative.
In many ways, this was perhaps the most deceptively simple in appearance, but in reality the most complex. The reason for this is the stream. Water is never easy to express (at least for me). There are ripples, reflections, shifting colors to reflect the sky and scenery above. Besides all this, there is the snow. It also reflects along the banks of the stream, which you can see in Peter’s video, but which never made it into mine – this is on the center left of the stream.
Mine below has some good areas – certainly there is white! – but bits of it are a tad overworked. The scan is not as subtle as the painting, either, but I am not really sure how to deal with that. I decrease some areas of saturation in the image using Lightroom . . . and I am not sure if I am going to include this card in the set because of the smudges and such.
Night is always mysterious and exciting. The moon overhead – clouds – wind- the creaking of branches – the rustles in the undergrowth. This is what I decided to try, using an old sycamore tree as the subject, and a bit of my imagination.
First step was to decide on colors, and approach. I decided warm undertones for the tree and the sky. I used a bit of Quinacridone gold and Yellow Ochre for a thin wash. From there, successive glazes in Ultramarine Blue, Indrathene Blue, and Carbazole Violet. As things progressed, some Burnt Sienna. You can see the different layers below.
At times I used a hair dryer to dry the layers . . . other times I painted as I held the hair dryer. I used rounds, flats, and finally a rigger brush (for the very first time!) It was okay to use the rigger in the background, but crossing it along the bottom of the tree – I don’t know – I think it detracts from the rest of the tree – hard to say at the moment.
One thing I have always loved is the countryside. Open spaces. Wild flowers. Weeds. Where I live, you can find them, but they are the dry places of the West. I have a longing for the plains and grasses, green trees and rain. Peter Sheeler’s video catches a glimpse of this.
Here is my version below. Part of me wants to paint the flowers, but thought it best to stop here. I like the feeling that you have just climbed a hill, and there this scene is at the top, and you look way beyond . . .
Another practice study from Peter Sheeler. Here he uses masking tape – painters tape – to create a frisket. He tore pieces of tape and pressed them into the paper, as a resist to the dry brush technique he used to create the sense of a very windy laundry day. As a kid, I remember those days, pegging the clothes and sheets. It was a lot of fun, a lot of work, but always worth the smell of fresh air on your sheets when you went to bed.
First, here is the picture with the “laundry” masked with randomly torn bits of painter’s tape.
And here is the final picture. To frame the picture, I used more tape around the edges of the picture. If you watch the video, you’ll see why!
Ink, Yarn & Beer 