Tag: water

More Rocks – A Rocky Shore

It is always good to break up your routine. I have been sewing a lot over the last few days, and I am now ready for a change. I am also contemplating modifications to what I was making, namely pockets for a kit car. While I contemplate that, other things prevail! Today, I did all those fun things you have to do – specifically, clean house. A friend is coming in from overseas tomorrow, and I have no idea if he will be coming to visit, so I figured I better get it done. Who wants to welcome a guest to a dusty, dirty mess?

But messes are not really interesting to me. Color is.

So, back to the rocks in a quick sketchbook painting. In the US and elsewhere, some lake shores are not covered with soft sand, but are home to boulders and rocks at the edge of a forest. Trees fall and die, water freezes and thaws, snow and ice and heat and sun all wreak havoc as storms of all sorts come and go. I love the wildness of these places and their lack of order and tidiness imposed by civilization.

Today I wanted to express rocks in a more abstract manner – suggesting boulders and rocks. Fallen trees, too, and the edge of the summer as it moves into autumn. I splashed on some light washes in the trees and on the shoreline after doing the sky, and from there worked with negative painting to create the rocks and boulders.

I rather like the rocks, but in general, the painting is nothing much – I just like to paint some sort of picture when I am practicing things.

Water in Watercolor

Today I spent the morning running errands and doing chores, the afternoon playing with a friend and doing some photography. The day went by delightfully, but there is that need to pick up a brush and some paint. I wasn’t in the mood for trying to make a painting of anything, but the idea of waves and oceans has been going through my mind, and now it is time to get some ideas on paper. So, of course, YouTube comes to the rescue, and I found a nice, simple, easy video by Paul Clark.

Paul Clark’s videos are informative and easy to follow – as well, I like his presentation style and his paintings. In the above video, in 20 minutes, he shows how to paint water in increasingly more complex ways.

Above is just a simple, gradated wash, with the greatest density of value at the bottom of the page. From there, some paint is lifted, and while the paper is still a bit damp, more lines of color are painted into the blue, wider ones at bottom and more narrow at the top to suggest distance.

The next is reflections of trees on a lake. The trees and sky were painted first and allowed to dry. The water was then put in, using a gradated wash, darkest at the bottom. Time was given to put in suggestions of waves or reflections – this required waiting for the paint and paper to dry. The hair dryer is perfect for this. Watch how Clark does it in the video as it get a bit more complex than what I am describing.

The third one is done with one color of paint. I used a bit of what I had mixed on the palette – ultramarine and indanthrene blues. Clark’s painting is far better than mine, and we will leave it at that! I want to return to the video to watch it again as I know I worked really quickly – too quickly – to catch all the fine points.

From the ocean we now move inland, to an old bridge spanning a river. I think was my favorite one, and I was quite happy with my results. The white sparkles of light on the water is done by using a knife point to dig a bit into the paper. Techniques varied here; again, refer to the video.

Now, back to the beach. My painting is quite clumsy in a lot of areas. I rather like the sparkly water on the horizon, and the way my white gouache dry brush adds to sparkles. While my painting is definitely that of an amateur, I have a better sense of what to look for, to see, in a wave. The idea I had initially was to learn a bit about crashing waves, and this one is a good introduction to them.

Altogether, I spent about 30-40 minutes doing these studies. I watched and paused the video for each painting exercise, and then went to work. The goal is to do and practice, not create a beautiful work of art. The act of painting is what teaches me initially, and then I can analyze a bit more to hopefully create more successful whatevers – here, waves and water and reflections.

Practice is something a sketchbook gives room for – a playground to explore. Paul Clark’s videos are really nice and I do suggest them. Meanwhile, it is time to go to bed!

Haystack Rock

More of the northern coast along the Pacific Ocean. Here, Cannon Beach in Oregon, possibly one of the most dramatic beaches I have ever seen. Sea stacks, tide pools, sand, mist and fog. When the fog lifts and the sky brightens, there is a glare that cannot be explained. It’s not a summer day brightness as we have in SoCal, but a brightness that is cold but not like on a snowy day. There is a lot of moisture in the air, from sea and fog, and perhaps that is what magnifies the light to such a degree.

If you look closely, you will see some of my ink bled into the paint. I used my iron gall in, not my waterproof micron pens, and a stub nib to draw. From there, I wet the sky, dropped in colors, and then let things dry to dampness. I wanted to create soft edges for the mist in the distance which blurs and softens edges. The rocks themselves were painted wet-in-wet initially, and then other colors applied to either dry or damp paper. The sand and the rivulets were painted in the same manner. In the end, I drew again with my iron gall ink to add texture or detail.

Keeping this sketchbook is so much fun! I have room to paint as the sheets are big, the paper is strong so I can use both sides, and I can paint with a lot of water should I wish. It is proving to be one of the best decisions I have made of late!

Little Creek – Watercolor

From a photo of a nearby creek in a local park. Not a great watercolor but perhaps a bit more solid than the ones I have done earlier this week. The fact is, once you don’t make painting a daily practice and let it slide by, you really need to get warmed up to do it yet again! I’ve been far too busy with other things, and it shows . . .