shadow

Lines, Shapes, Shadows

I had to take a day off from painting as my head was swirling. This seems to happen whenever I do a lot of any one thing. My brain feels overloaded and I need to do something to break out of it. Then it settles down with sometimes clarity or a nagging little sense of something different, good but not completed, if that makes any sense.

Today’s focus – this morning in poor light – I decided to look at white space and dark space. Neither results are spectacular but what I do see is shapes in this pictures. Corners outlines, curves, straight edges. I also like the merging and blending and granulations I see. Other than that?

Holiday Cards: Fallen Leaf

Once again, a demonstration from Peter Sheeler which I used for a card for my sister-in-law.

Peter’s is far more masterful than mine! Who’d have thought a simple leaf could be so difficult? I went in afterwards and inked in some extra lines and put a frame around the picture – the leaf looks like it is floating in space.

White = Snow

If you have been reading along, you know: I make mud, I need lines, and I cannot get white space at all. Well, in a moment of mad inspiration, I realized snow is white. Let’s paint snow! In my part of the world (California), we are in the midst of a hideous wildfire, which fortunately bypassed our neighborhood, but which could be visited by a fire any time. Crazy winds and no rain make for dry and dangerous conditions, and certainly the last place where you will expect to find snow.

Thus, snow. I went to my favorite place (YouTube) and searched for “watercolor snow” and there we were! Lot of them. In particular, I found Peter Sheeler, whose videos are simple to follow, and quite lovely. He uses a minimal palette, and just paints. Subtitles let you know the colors and the technique. Pleasant music moves you along. Here is my version of his painting.

Peter Sheeler has another video that I used as well. It was a bit more complex, but not only was it great for shadows on snow, he has very strong light – dark colors, another problem I struggle with.

And here is my version of it. I was really intimidated by the dark trees and the rocks. Besides using only Ultramarine, Yellow Ochre, and Burnt Sienna (even though Sap Green is in his video’s palette), Peter uses a 1/2 inch flat brush. I have some flat brushes, and they scare the hell out of me. I think people who love flat brushes are nuts. No more: I bit the bullet and pulled out my flats and did the entire painting in a flat brush, varying sizes as necessary. And I used micron pens, too, as did Peter.

I am feeling a lot more confident now about colors, white space, limited palettes, and flat paint brushes. I think I will continue to follow along with Peter Sheeler’s videos – he is a really good painter, I like his style, and am confident I will get a lot out of his videos. And Peter, if you should come across this, let me tell you, “Thanks!”

Round Things: Highlights & Shadows

Painting light and dark – contrast – values – is a hard one for me in watercolor. I want to do it wet-in-wet, but maybe layering will work better. I just don’t know. So, when in doubt, look to YouTube!

Here is one video I found that I think does a very good job on both highlights and shadow, discussing reflected light and so on.

Another video which is also good, with a look at only the shadows on a spherical object, discusses the use of analogous colors to create the shadow on the surface opposite the light source. This video can be seen below.

Because I was having problems with making grapes believable (see here), I decided to research highlights, shadows, and round things. These two videos proved very helpful. Rather than describing them in detail, they are definitely worthwhile watching. The top one addresses shape and shadows on the object, as well as the cast shadow. The lower one uses analogous colors to deepen the shadow on the sphere itself, which keeps the color of the sphere rich, rather than neutralized by a complementary color or an added grey, such as Payne’s or Davy’s.

That said, I spent a bit of time on these old spheres today and yesterday. Here are some of the results of my practice.

The image above is based on the exercises in the first video. The ones with the red and blue spheres are the most believable, I think. The spheres and shadows are essentially wet-in-wet, with the final thin lines of darkest shadow done with a finely pointed brush on a dried image.

Here is another round of studies, trying slightly different techniques, such as wetting the paper first, then applying color. The techniques followed were the same as in the first video, with greater success.

Here, the spheres were made as in the first video, but then I went in to darken the shadows using analogous colors. The blue spheres were done in ultramarine blue, and the deeper shadows were a glaze of indanthrene blue. Below the 4 spheres is a bunch of spheres, sort of like grapes. The spheres were done with quinacridone rose and ultramarine blue, with analogous layers in the shadows to include carbazole violet and then Payne’s grey (see note on lower right of image). The shadows were done wet, and linked to the grapes to bleed color in. I deliberately left areas of white, even if they didn’t make sense, just to create areas of white between grape and grape, and grape and shadow.

Finally, the above image. I have a bunch of oranges I want to paint, so I thought it was now time to incorporate all my lessons into one little orange. The one on the left is the example, with, I think, the best orange colors. These were hansa yellow, pyrrol orange, and organic vermillion – all three are colors new to my palette. The ink is carbon ink from Sailor on the left, and just a fountain pen with regular black ink on the right, just if you are curious.

My orange is my favorite of all the exercises as it pleases me the most. The grapes are OK, but they are glazed, which I am not too excited about. It could be that I am just not adept at glazing. Anyway, there we have it: Thanksgiving morning exercises.