Tag: Painting

WWM 2019: Days 20-26

#WorldWatercolorMonth2019 is flying by!  It has been a lot of fun, in the doing, pondering interpreting the prompts, and in the progress made from just daily painting.  I have some really awful paintings, and some of which I am rather proud.  So, with no further ado, the prompts and the paintings!

WWM #20:  Buildings

Here, some old buildings in Paris at sunset.  I am rather pleased about this watercolor for a few reasons.  Perspective works, with decreasing detail, lines, and atmosphere.  The sky is pretty killer, too!

WWM #21:  Patterns

I was pondering this one – I thought of all sorts of patterny things, but in reality, nothing grabbed me.  As my studio – particularly the sewing area – is in total disarray, sewing patterns suddenly seemed perfectly obvious.

WWM #22:  Rain Forest

I always imagine a rain forest as the French primitive painter Henri Rousseau showed it. The above is a rather poor homage to his great imaginings.

Here, from some photos and memories of our trip to the Hoh Rain Forest in Washington State. Paths wander beneath ancient cedar trees covered with moss, a green canopy, and little if any sky visible.

WWM #23:  Beach Fun

Pales, buckets, and surfing at sunset – all great fun at the beach!

WWM #24:  Treats

Cookies!  I really love cookies (but like pie better, I admit), and for elegance and color and delightful flavor, macarons!  Here, lemon, mocha, pistachio, orange, and raspberry.

WWM #25:  Shades of Pink

I have to say, I like these raspberry macarons a lot!

WWM #26:  Natural Wonders

The White Sands National Monument in New Mexico is an amazing place – white sand dunes in the middle of a desert, scant plant life, dramatic skies and mountains all around.  It was also incredibly difficult to paint the whiteness of the sand . . . nothing particular awesome about my paintings.

On the other hand, the Arches National Monument has some amazing things to offer – arches being one.  The sandstone, eroded by wind and rain, has left some amazing geological remnants behind.  This watercolor really pleased me . . . again, perspective and distance issues, as well as my usual problems with conveying depth.  To do so, I simplified the background hills with a few lines of color.  I put more detail into the middle ground, which was the arch and the red sandstone behind the arch, and in front of it.  Plants on the lower corners and border became the foreground.  To aid more in the depth, I did a light blue-grey glaze over the mountains, and applied a warmer glaze a couple of times in different areas of the arch and sandstone.

To be continued!

WWM 2019: Days 13-19

During Days 13 – 19 of #WorldWatercolorMonth2019, I got really busy!  So with no further ado, paintings.

13.  Glassy

I wanted to catch the reflections of the clouds in the smooth water of the lake.  Not sure if it worked – the photo showed perfect sky-clouds in the foreground.

14.  Furry Things

When I was a kid, furry caterpillars were our friends.  Cats, too.  Furry enough for all.

This kitten is from a YouTube study / practice by Maria Raczynska that I followed. It was a lot of fun!

15.  Monochromatic

In the heat of summer, it seemed a monochromatic scene had to be a cold winter’s day in the mountains.

16.  Relaxing

I thought a lot about this prompt.  Many things came to mind that I enjoy, but I realized that the beach, in all forms of weather, is one of my favorite places to relax.  Not being especially good at blending sand colors, I referred to a book by Geoff Kersey called Watercolour Seascapes.  His book is a series of studies that demonstrate specific watercolor techniques and employ a limited palette.  The first painting is from the study I did from his book and the rest are varied places.  The last painting is one I did from a photo I took several years ago of a beach here on the Central Coast of California, either Refugio or El Capitan beach.  Smooth sand and sunny days or a rocky shore and a cold, rainy day – both great ways to relax along the seaside.

17.  Music

Balalaika and Blue Tit.

18.  Clouds

California is an endless blue sky at times.  Other times, the high clouds of the rainy season and the sun are blocked by low-lying coastal fog.  When the two compete, the sky is endlessly changing and fascinating.

19.  Splashes of Color

As we move through #WorldWatercolorMonth2019, I am alternating watercolor with gouache.  Both need different techniques.  Gouache, being opaque, opens a new world as layers of paint can be built up and one color can be covered by another whether it is light or dark.  Mistakes can be hidden!  Watercolor requires more forethought and has more happy – and unhappy! – accidents.  Here, the opacity of gouache allows for splashes of color and a more impasto and impressionistic use of paint.

World Watercolor Month 2019 is proving to be very rewarding.  I am focused on painting, which is one of my retirement goals.  Learning and developing my skills and knowledge of water media is expanding, and though I produce a lot of dreck, I see improvement in many ways.  To me, the biggest one is that I am beginning to anticipate my approaches to varied areas of a painting, thinking ahead as to how I can accomplish what I want to see.  That’s good news.  I know what I want to produce – that is, the kind of paintings I like, and which I think are expressive of my thoughts – and while I am a long way from it, I can also see myself moving forward to accomplishing my “artistic vision” as it were.

First Attempts with Gouache

Goo – osh!  Isn’t that a great word?

Anyway, when we were in San Diego awhile back, we found a genuine art store in the neighborhood.  Of course, I had to wander in there, and I finally was able to find water-based gouache paints.  All the ones I ever seem to find are acrylic, which is not what I want.  Today I got them out for the first time and put them onto a palette, leaving space for other colors, which I am sure I will want to add.

I think I need to add a red along the lines of alizarin and a couple of greens, such as Hookers and sap.  I use them a lot in watercolors.

My first picture was quite tentative, but eventually I got a bit more brave.  Sadly, the scanner did not differentiate very well between the yellows in the flowers.  Rather than just one color, I used both to suggest petals.  The greens are straight out of the tube as well as mixed with blue and black.

This next painting is what made me realize I needed an alizarin or something close to it.  The actual flowers are more pink; cad red does not turn pink with the addition of white, nor is very pretty with purple mixed in.  So, I settled on the violet with the addition of white.  The leaves were painted light to dark, and I tried to let the paint dry thoroughly so I could paint around things, such as the flowers, or on top of other colors.  This is how watercolor is done – light to dark.  The pot was done while the paint was still wet and I mixed other colors in as I went along.  That was really a lot of fun just to see the result.  Finally, the shadow was painting on fairly transparently and loosely, only to be covered with more opaque paint.  I rather like the result.

Finally, I remembered that gouache suggests painting dark to light.  Here I placed a black/blue mixture and let it dry.  From there, I applied moss green, but I should have mixed it and the yellows and reds with white so they would dry brighter.  Still, that is a good lesson for the future:.  Darks in gouache dry lighter, and lights dry darker.  Here I applied paint directly and let it dry, as well as mixing it on the paper.

Because paper is so important in painting, I used some 6×8″ 100% cotton paper.  I’m glad I did as there were times when the paper was wet, as when laying down the black background on the painting above.  I really love the fact that I can put lighter colors on dark.  As a kid in elementary school, poster paints were some of my favorite ones for this same reason.

Old dog, new tricks!  Hooked on gouache, indeed!

Sunday Morning

This morning I awoke to the sounds of birds and the rustle of leaves in the breeze.  The sunlight was dim through the windows, with hints of blue, presaging an incredible day.  Now the sun is up, and all that seemed promised is true.  New leaves are appearing on the tulip tree and the redbud; the birds are still singing.  Robert Browning wrote, “all’s right with the world.”  On mornings such as this, it is best to believe it, and so I shall.

So, what to do?  We are having family over for Sunday dinner, so there are things to be done around the house, a bit of shopping, a bit of cooking.  It is a simple thing to do – marinated lamb roast, salad, bread or rice or potatoes, tzatziki.  The company is to be enjoyed, and hopefully all invited will be able to join.

Life – and time to finally live it – is grand.  No more “return to work” dates; I choose what to do and when.  The Puritan side of me espouses “pain before pleasure,” meaning, get the unpleasant stuff out of the way ASAP!  That means chores, like cleaning.  I like clean things, but the cleaning process is not exciting – I’d rather be outside digging in the dirt or drawing or reading.  The satisfaction of a chore, to me, is when it is done.  Putting it off dulls the joy in other activities, but as I like an orderly and relatively clean house and studio, it makes sense.  Doing the unpleasant first makes the rest of the day move into infinity.

Yesterday I bought some plants -peppers, alyssum, dianthus.  Bulbs were on sale half price since it is past their season.  Potting soil, too.  Before I start the dinner shopping, but after housework, I shall begin work on my little front yard flower bed.  My gardener worked in some soil for me, and now I have some ideas as to what I am going to do with it.  Its a sunny – shady area as it faces west, with the house to the east.  Afternoons find it quite shady, and as summer comes along, I think it gets shady earlier.  Alyssum and dianthus will be along the outer borders of the plot – see below – bulbs sporadically distributed depending on their sun requirements – and the peppers will be placed in their own pots out on the sunny southern patio (aka “the dog-free zone” or the “DFZ”!)

Along with gardening, planning for my next painting is on the way.  I have been following various YouTube painters – as you have seen in earlier posts – but I have also been working my way through a book on perspective and contemplating spartan photography.  (Huh?  Wuzzat?)

And, Josh and I spent 3 days in San Diego, which was something wonderful to do – get away from it all to enjoy coming back to it all!