Watercolor – Page 44 – Ink, Yarn & Beer

Negative Painting: Pink Daisies Gone Mad

Today has been a day of frustrations. Nothing seems to be going right. Everyone has those days, yeah, I know, but I rather other people have them, not me! But, they do serve a purpose in that they do make you realize … something.

That said, let’s get on to the negative painting scene. It is not easy. I think to create a painting like this, practice and experience play an important part. Practice is what I keep doing. And then I reach a point where I am just irritated beyond measure, and need to break loose. I’ll come back to practice, but by nature, I am a gaudy color lover, and having a monochrome study makes me feel trapped. I wonder if others feel the same way. So, pink daisies, a la the hydrangea, and I am ready to go nuts. Here they are – the first round.

And then the second one from this morning . . .

Some success. And then I did the third layer . . . and had to just mess with it as I was ready to scream. Part of it was just frustration in that I didn’t really like this process at all. Maybe it’s not for me. In the end, just playing with some colors on my palette, some which I just recently got. It was a total color mess – so lines were added. It’s sort of cheery, but it also reminds me of what I cannot do.

The good news, no mud. It’s kind of fun. But I also know what I want to accomplish, and doing this stuff is not going to get me there. The colors are fun, and good practice, but I also know that my impatience and scatterbrained-ness don’t help me, either. Ongoing practice will improve my skills, I hope. So, I keep playing.

A part of me wonders if / when I reach my desired “look” if I will become extremely boring to myself.

Negative Painting & Glazing

This morning I decided to do a few things I haven’t been too fond of in the past. One is negative painting. The other is using glazes. That’s what I did here. The first layer was a warm yellowish wash, very thin. From there, about 3 or 4 consecutive layers of blues and violets around the main trunks, and then over the ones to the sides, making them bluish. I then used a rigger brush (for the first time) to create branches.

Overall, the picture works, but the areas I can say shouldn’t have happened are the branches in front of the central trunk. The other thing I need to do is to create better contrast on the branches, in particular it seems on the right. I would like to see more blue in there, in narrow strips using a flat brush. I may do that later.

The idea behind this painting a sycamore tree in moonlight, with the above exercises to accomplish it. I thought ahead more than I usually do, considering colors and such, as well as the approach to creating what I desired as an end product.

What is a “Personal Style”?

In painting, it is really possible to look at a picture and say, “Oh, that is by so-and-so.” If you are familiar with a painter, you become familiar with his / her style. You can tell by the light, by the brushwork, by the colors, by the subject. It’s like your face in the mirror – you know it instinctively. This knowledge of what someone’s style “looks like” makes me question myself: What is my style?

The fact is, I don’t have a style, unless I were to call it messy and scribbly. This occurs when I don’t think about a composition or what I want to do, but just do. I cannot say this produces much which I like. Once I am involved in working on a piece, I do seem to be able to deal with compositional elements, and can say when to finish, and say, oops! shouldn’t have done that!

So, when does one’s own style emerge? Is it a conscious choice? Is it something which develops slowly?

This question came to me last night when I was putzing around, following another Peter Sheeler video and practicing his exercises. There is an ethical question here: is it acceptable to do this? I think it is, as he is posting his videos online for people to learn from – and I have been learning, most certainly! The lack of ethics would be to pass them off as my own.

The lesson from last night was using wet-in-wet to paint trees. Mine are not as successful, mostly because my paper is not the same as he uses. The lesson was good, though, as the focus was on the trees and the bloom of the colors on a wet surface. The rest of the lesson was good as I watched him put in shadows which, left to my own imagination, would not have shown up. The lesson there is to think about where the sun is coming from, imagine it, see it in the mind’s eye, and then paint it. That’s a valuable lesson.

Thus: Peter Sheeler’s video on wet-in-wet.

And my own painting.

I found it interesting to see myself adding the spatters and the shingles on the roof, which weren’t in Peter’s original drawing. Is this the beginning of my own style?

Peaceful Morning

Today is Christmas morning. It is easy to forget what truly lies behind Christmas – thoughts of peace and hope, the turning of the year as the solstice brings back the light of longer days, and the values that are at the core of most of us. Community. Family. The world around us.

For me, much of what I truly love in this world is ephemeral. My family, my friends – we all will vanish at some point. How many of us will be remembered in 100 years? There is one thing, though, that never ceases to amaze me, and that is the natural beauty of the world, its diversity of life (human, animal, plant), and the fact that it is even here at all.

With this in mind, I wandered through some of the myriad photos I took on our trip last summer. Here, a view out of the car window on the way from Mesa Verde, Colorado, to the state of Wyoming. Here, the American West – sparse, grand, barren, and filled with life. Merry Christmas!

Sky, Interrupted

This morning I sat down to practice skies. If I were to do the ones in my neighborhood, they would be blue. That’s all. Just blue. Clouds are not a common sight where I live!

Anyway, so I scooted around YouTube and found some videos that had some good ideas. One showed how to do lifting with tissue, advising not to scrub too hard on lightweight paper. Important to know – I scrubbed a bit of the paper off. Others used some rather wild color combinations, or certainly ones I haven’t thought about using. Add to that, I wasn’t trying to accomplish anything more than playing, so it was altogether a fun way to start the morning.

This first one is a combination of Sodalite Genuine, by Daniel Smith, Ultramarine Blue, and Quinacridone Gold. The Sodalite is a color I picked up on a whim, put in my palette, but had never used until this morning. It granulates wonderfully, and is a good charcoal grey. I think I will be using it again.

Then I started another one, wetting the paper once, letting it soak in a second time, and then wetting it again. I am using Canson XL watercolor paper, which has a nice texture, is about 90#, and is a student grade paper. I like it because it is working out really well for my needs.

After wetting the paper, I decided to start with a gradated wash, using the reverse side of another painting (to save paper, eh?). The brush I used was a flat with rather stiff bristles, and the result was lines throughout the wash. Oh, well. Then I simply lifted the color off. Then I began adding Carbazole Violet and Quinacridone Gold.

And then the phone rang! My brother and his wife in Wisconsin calling, to wish us well for the holidays . . . . the painting was forgotten for the next several minutes, and this is the result.

Regardless as to whether or not this last looks like clouds, the colors have a lot of potential for a dramatic sky some day. I really like the colors! I like both, actually.

White space. No mud. I must be doing something right!