Tribute

This wet-in-wet is drawn from imagination and inspiration by the Dutch watercolorist Edo Hannema. I just love his mastery of water and color and wet paper! There is a peaceful quality to his paintings of the Dutch landscape.

Painting like this demands thought and deliberation and patience. Timing is also critical. Painting wet-in-wet requires risks and experience. Too wet, everything just blurs. Paint wet paint which is wetter than the still damp colors result in blooms which can destroy a painting in now time. The rule is drier paint into wet paint – that on your brush must be drier than the stuff on the paper. Blot your brush if in doubt.

Oops! Just noticed that the horizon is dead center . . . compositional error! And that big green blob is also a mistake – tried to fix it – but since this is time for true confessions, I may as well own up. 😉

This is one of my more successful wet-in-wet paintings. Usually there is a big cauliflower bloom somewhere – sometimes I can hide it, but it feels really good not to have one this time! Remembering the trick of drier onto wetter was a good thing.

For the first time, I am painting on 300# paper. This is Kilimanjaro CP from Cheap Joe’s. With such a heavy paper, lots of water can be used. 140# warps but this stayed virtually flat. I like this paper a lot – certainly will be getting more of it.

Across the Dunes

I enjoy gouache a lot because you can rework places and easily blur edges to soften them. That is a lot harder in acrylics. I decided to give it a shot. It worked rather well for the sky, but like gouache, the whites in the clouds darkened more than I thought they would. On the other hand, I did work on the sand a bit, using very thin water glazes for the shadows. That worked out pretty well.

I realize the key to “getting” acrylic painting is to just keep doing it, experimenting, trying. Each painting, successful or not, is a lesson.

Acrylic paint on unprimed Arches 140# CP. 9×12.

From Below

What is it about old German folding cameras? I have a number of them and, while they can feel clunky compared to point-and-shoot cameras, or DSLRs (or mirrorless), there is something just so wonderful about using a film camera.

This is a cropped 6×9 image from my Zeiss Ikon Ercona, ca. 1950 and serviced by Jurgen Kreckel. His cameras are well worth their costs, high or low.

I have problems figuring out how to go up or down with a camera-top viewfinder. My brain doesn’t seem to “get it” but maybe I’ll get the other half to logically explain it to me. He’s good at that.

So, out for a walk to check out the camera – I bought it last July – and trying to become familiar with the camera, and guestimating exposures. Some good pictures resulted, and some dogs. I’m better at guessing exposure factors for 100 speed film. I used a roll of 120 Portra 400 film as my test roll.

Whenever I get film back, I am always so pleased. I really do prefer it to digital, hands down, but digital has its place, too. This Ercona was fun to use, a bit of a pain, too, but whenever you have something new in hand, or something old, there is always a bit of a trial-and-error period. This happens even if you have shot with the camera before.

A rose by any other name, and shot with any camera, is pretty sweet – even better when you like your photo!