Tag: wet-in-wet

The Palm Tree, Nassau – Study from a Painting by Winslow Homer

A couple of things here.  First, I think that Winslow Homer is an amazing painter, especially in watercolor.  Second, I think that copying the work of a master forces one to study what is in front of you – how was this done?  what technique?

As Homer is a master of skies and atmosphere, I spent some time the other morning looking at different paintings he did.  Especially delightful are his paintings done while in the Caribbean, spending time in the Bahamas and other islands.  Homer’s skies are vast and expressive, subtle and strong.  I decided that his painting, The Palm Tree, Nassau, would be a perfect study.  What was most interesting was seeing how differently the same picture looks on different sites – some make it very murky, others make it very colorful.  Below is Homer’s painting:

The Palm Tree, Nassau (by Winslow Homer)

I printed out a copy of this painting on my not-too-high-end color printer.  In the end, I referred to it more for composition rather than colors or detail.  This image shows the sky with blues in it, but other images on the web gave the sky reddish and yellowish undertones.  In the end, I just did what I wanted.

The water could have been more turquoise, as is the water in the Caribbean; the foreground in Homer’s painting is some weird vegetation that I couldn’t figure out, but think it is typical for the scrub of the islands.  If you look at Homer’s painting, there is a reddish blob by the lighthouse – what is it?  Looking closely, you can see it is a flag.  For me, it was a big distraction, so I left it out.  Also, Homer’s rendition of the lighthouse is very simple – I decided to give it a bit more detail.

Copying this painting was a lot of fun.  The sea was rather meh, but Homer’s is not especially spectacular.  His palm trees, though, are divine.  Since I live where there are palms, I really liked the idea of actually attempting to paint a tree – or trees – that are rather intimidating.  Homer’s painting catches them snapping in the trade winds – you can just hear them clacking their fronds against each other.  I hope that my fronds convey the same sense of sound and movement.

Techniques used in this painting were wet-in-wet for the sky, light washes moving into darker ones for the foreground, and layers of colors for the palm fronds and coconuts.  I took some long looks at what was in the painting before me and felt confident enough to figure out what I think Homer did.  For the white of the waves and lighthouse, I cheated and used frisket.  Then, after it was dried, I laid in the sky, and then moved to other areas, working lighter to dark, some detail to final details, depending on what was going on.  Altogether, I spent about 3 hours doing this study.

Wet Work

I read too many spy novels!

So, if this isn’t about the darker sides of life, what is this about?  It is about watercolor painting.  As you may recall, I have been trying to work on my drawing and painting, between other life activities.  While I try to do one or the other daily, it doesn’t happen.  The thing that is happening is a beginning of focusing on various elements of watercolor.  Rather than just paint, I began to focus on retaining white space.  White space in watercolor is the paper itself – that is the only way to get a “true” white when painting, unless you put in white paint, such as a white gouache.  Many people frown on this.  So, retaining white means you paint around white areas, which have to be considered as you lay down color, or using a rubber-based frisket.  The frisket is great as you can paint right across it once it dries.  Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages.

In addition to retaining white space, I have added another focus in my painting.  Watercolor paper is painted on when wet or dry.  Painting wet-on-dry means applying paint to a dry paper.  Wet-in-wet means prewetting the paper, or painting onto paper where a wash is still wet.  Wet-in-dry allows for hard edges.  Wet-in-wet allows the paint to blur and blend, and how much it does this is dependent on the wetness of the paper and the slope of the easel.

The above picture was from a photo I took at the Monterrey Bay Aquarium of jellyfish floating around in their water.  The aquarium is backlit, and the light shines through the diaphanous membranes of the fish.  This was simply ink, followed through with a bit of color.  Drawing the jellyfish was fun – and in the lines of the tentacles, it almost became a dance with the jellyfish.

The jellyfish were drawn with a very fine point pen.  The Joshua Tree was done with a thick, permanent ink pen, about 0.5 in diameter (I think).  Here, the ink was used to create texture, with watercolor being secondary.

This is the point at which watercolor, ink, and white space became a focal point. I think these are a variant of snowbells, and they are found in the shade beneath trees. In such dim light, the white flowers are strikingly in contrast to the mulchy undergrowth, and in photos often are rather flat in appearance. This drawing demonstrates that flatness, but with the whiteness of the flowers preserved.

From the flatness of the line and watercolor drawing, I now worked on creating white in a dark painting. The flowers themselves look very flat because the paint I used to create – try to create – a 3D effect just pooled. The white is now filled with flat paint, which creates a flat picture. Here, the paint was applied wet onto dry paper, and the result is a bunch of hard edges. It is this realization that made me move into working a lot with wet-in-wet.

The pictures above are more attempts at preserving white, and working wet into wet. Probably the most successful one is the painting of the winter sky with the silhouetted tree.  Click on one of the paintings to cycle through the images in a slide show.

From the deliberate paintings I moved to wetting the paper thoroughly with water for the first of the two paintings above – soaking the paper with my brush, painting into the wet paper, and then painting again into the wet paint. The fir trees were more deliberate.  Here I tried to work with white space and with snow, trying to capture ways in which white can be interpreted with paint.  Again, click on one of the paintings to see the slide show.

While doing all these paintings, I started thinking about watercolorists whose work I admire, and who, I know, did wet-in-wet particularly well. Winslow Homer is one of the best watercolorists of the 1800s, and his skies have always appealed to me. The painting above is my rendition of his painting The Palm Tree, Nassau. I changed a few colors and compositional elements, but I used this as an exercise to study how Homer may have painted. He used wet-in-wet on the sky; white space for the waves and tower, and varying techniques for the palm trees and foreground.

Besides trying to understand how an artist created a painting, I also searched YouTube for artists working wet-in-wet. I came across Edo Hannema’s channel and was so impressed! He is a master of wet-in-wet, as well as working with white space. I learned a lot from observing and copying his examples; this painting may be from one of his videos or an interpretation of one I saw online – don’t recall. I think seeing his work, and copying his exercises, has started my being able to move forward. I plan to follow his lessons more in the near future. His paintings have a lovely simplicity as well as demonstrate a finely honed skill in wet-in-wet. He is from Holland, so many of his paintings show very flat land, which for me is fascinating as I live in an area with a lot of hills and mountains and valleys.

Finally, I did this one today. I was up at oh-dark-thirty, having my coffee, and thinking about all the things I have been painting over the past few weeks. It was time to try to paint something that used a lot of wet-in-wet, had a modicum of white space, and finally wet-into-dry, meaning wet paint applied over dried paint. I am pleased with what I have learned, from copying other artists’ works to my own experiments. Everyday is an exciting new adventure, and out of all of my interests and hobbies, watercolor is the biggest pleasure of all.

Below is a gallery of all the above paintings, and a couple of others as well.  Enjoy!

Sky and Water

More practice using wet-in-wet in varying degrees of paper dampness.  Again, this is Canson XL watercolor paper.  In my opinion, as a student paper, it is one of the better ones, having a pleasant texture as well as a responsiveness to water and color that other student papers lack.  Here, the final picture is not the point, but the laying in of washes, lifting colors, and other techniques – the practice, not the product.

As I said yesterday, I have not really taken time to learn about the paper.  This is important when you paint in watercolor – each paper has its own personality.  Once you are familiar with it, it becomes intuitive.  In my crazy life, I finally have the time to get acquainted with my paper.

Yay!

Snowy Sunrise

More working with wet-in-wet, as well as white and shades of white.  Not sure if the idea that the part of the lower trees facing the viewer convey a sense of shadow – being darker – before moving into the shadows in the foreground.

With wet-in-wet, it is really important to understand how a paper responds to water.  This is Canson XL, a student grade paper, but one that I like to use when experimenting.  I’ve never really worked at using it really wet, but the results of focusing on it – having it sopping, having it damp – is beginning to yield some decent results, such as few blooms and hard edges.

North of Here

This morning we are experiencing rain – a rare event in Southern California.  Strange as it may sound, it made me think about painting something without lines, wetting the paper first, and working wet-in-wet, just to see what would happen.  As a kid, I lived in upstate New York, out where pine woods and lakes were more common than people.  I miss that solitude – walking in a snowy woods, flakes falling, listening to the silence, all alone in a cold, lonely, and intensely beautiful environment.