landscape – Page 27 – Ink, Yarn & Beer

A Study from Vernon Nye

I decided to use a study by the watercolorist Vernon Nye. He caught the back country of California perfectly – the hills and trees in particular. It was a fun study and I liked it because it pointed out to me how deceptively simple the hills can seem, but they really are not. The road, too, was another eye-catcher. I have driven along a number of back-road highways throughout the state, and you feel like you are the only person in the world. The perspective was a great challenge, too. Altogether, a good study of something in my own back yard, and I can take what I learned into future paintings.

A Tale of Three Paintings

Over the last week I have been painting the same image three times, each time in a different media. I began with gouache, moved to pastels, and did the final painting in watercolor. Doing such an exercise was really educational as well as pleasurable.

As you can see in the gouache, the perspective is totally off! I didn’t do much of an underdrawing, just a few quick lines, but I didn’t really check this point against that, as well as compare it to the photo. The result was an uphill beach, and a total lack of realistic perspective. I suppose it would look like htat if my head were on its side, lying in the sand or something! Anyway, it was a good lesson as I realized most of my perspective issues are simply the result of poor drawing techniques.

This next one is my favorite. Maybe it’s because I am just learning pastels and totally in love with them. Here, the perspective problem is solved. The cliffs look quite sandy in the picture, and in reality, they are. Along the coast where I live in California, cliffs tend to be friable, made of highly compacted but still fragile sand. They easily collapse, and it is really foolish to sit under them on the beach or to walk along there edges. After rains it can be especially dangerous, and one year a major landslide occurred and several people died. It was not good. So, I think these cliffs are pretty accurate representations of what our cliffs look like here.

Finally, watercolor. Perspective issues remain resolved, but a sense of distance prevails along the strand of beach on the opposite shore. Rather than overwork it, I left it as it was, still pondering how I could make a sense of distance as the beach veered off to the left and background. More blue? Less detail? I’m still befuddled on that one.

Altogether, using three different mediums to paint the same image was rewarding. Problems occurred in all paintings, many of which could be applied to others. Perspective is always an issue for me, so I really need to focus on it probably more than anything in landscapes. I know the rules, but need to find methods to implement them. Gouache and pastels are more forgiving as you can paint over what is underneath to a reasonable degree; watercolors are pretty much a one-shot deal. I think I will continue the 3 painting studies in the future as I learned far more than if I had only done one study in a single medium.

Northern Marsh

Still working in pastel. I cleaned up the pastels I was using yesterday by putting them in a container of corn meal and shaking them gently. It did the job. I also took a different approach to today’s painting, and the difference is evident to me (cuz I did it!).

I decided to use a piece of 7×11 Uart 800 sanded pastel paper, which is the finest grit in the Uart series. I bought a sample pack a while back, and now that I think I get how to use pastels fairly well, I thought it was time to begin. Having cleaner pastels also helped. I also decided to work from light to dark this time, like a watercolor, and it seems to have been a bit more successful. My colors were getting rather muddy in the last one. I also did not apply any fixative to the painting until it was done. In the others I had used workable fixative between layers.

Overall, rather a bit more pleased with this pastel painting than yesterday’s. It was more pleasant to do, probably in part because I simplified my approach. Working light to dark – putting in the sky and water first – may also have helped. The Uart 800 sanded pastel paper was really nice, too, and gave a nice smooth finish as the paper has a very fine tooth to it. I used a final fixative on it, but I am still unsure how many layers of final fixative are to be used.

Now, time to attach sleeves to the sweater I am knitting!

Anacapa Island

The Channel Islands off the coast of California are amazing to visit. Only recently (don’t remember when) they became a national park, to protect both the islands and their flora and fauna, as well as to protect the waters surrounding them. Anacapa is a very distinctive island. It has an arch on one end, and zig-zags, snakelike, as it emerges from the water. I have visited this island, both on the land, and in a boat sailing around. It’s a truly lovely place, one worth visiting, painting, exploring, and photographing.

Here, I finished up using the available paints on my muddy palette. The final painting with that mess! As with yesterday’s painting, I have added white to the palette for colors, but for the most part, these are colors salvaged from the mess on the palette.

Truth be told, I really did not expect this painting to turn out at all. My colors were just such a mess. I simplified everything as much as I could. I managed to get some sense of depth, which also surprised me!

Rain Country

This time a sky and land study from a Pixabay image. I did this on the reverse side of another painting, so the paper, 140# Arches cold press, was warped. I thought about ironing it, but decided to just tape it to the board, and use the warps to my advantage with the sky. Overall, it worked pretty well, but where there were dribbles, I snagged them with a tissue. It was rather fun.

Altogether, I like the way this painting turned out. I was rather stumped about the foreground, so I just made some leafy, grassy strokes. The water along the roadway came out fairly good, as did the road itself. Perspective on a flat land is a challenge but it seems to have worked out, too.

Some days a painting works, and you are in the moment with paint, brush, and paper. A lot of the painting was like that. Then, at the end, I stepped back and thought about contrast, and added a bit here and there as blobs or lines or dots. And finally it was done.