Tag: landscape

Landscape Quickie with One Brush

In keeping with yesterday’s quickies, today I present you with another timed study. This time I used only one brush to do everything. It was a 3/4 inch flat brush, rather stiff, and not able to hold a lot of water. It’s always a challenge to do a timed study, but also more challenging when one brush is used for everything.

Oops! I did you a fine line brush for some things, like the trees in the middle left, the windows in the buildings, and some of the grasses in the foreground. However, the flat brush did produce everything else, even the tree trunks. Practice like this is a lot of fun.

37 Minute Painting

Another timed painting. This time the requirement was 37 minutes. I set my phone alarm and was shocked to hear it go off! I was checking it off and on, but suddenly it just rang, and here is the result.

This time I used Uart 600 grit paper, which is like a fine sand paper. It pulls the color of the pastels really easily so a lighter touch is required when painting than with the unsanded Mi-Teintes paper. I used a combination of photos for this one as I needed a creek, but I wanted some oaks and hills from around here. Not especially successful as far as I am concerned; the exercise was the point. I did get into the zone of painting even through I knew that timer would go off at some point.

About Dionysos’ Pond

Another painting done primarily with a hake brush.

This painting was done on the reverse of a previously painted piece of Arches 16×20 CP 140#. I wet the paper initially, taping it only in the corners, and was rather pleased to see how the paper relaxed once wet. I moved the tape as needed to keep the paper flat.

Anyway, the work here was themed on wet-in-wet, use of an excessively large brush (for me!), and standing up, rather than seated. The results were interesting – standing up allowed for more freedom of brush stroke. Getting the paper wet and letting it set a bit before starting the washes also helped.

Compositionally, I think it is a bit bland – really very little to lead the eye. However, this was not my focus here; rather, I wanted to use the hake brush to create sky and foliage as well as broader swaths of color. The nature of the soft brush allows for thin lines, rough splotches of color with white or underlying colors to show through, as well as washes of subtle beauty. From there I used a rigger to create branches, trunks, and some more calligraphic and suggestive lines.

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.