Tag: frisket

Chatter Watercolor

Birch Trees

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Birch Trees – from a photo in Module 2 of Andy Evansen’s Class

If you have been following me for a bit, you know that I have enrolled in a lot of painting classes. This is a study from my watercolor class, online with Andy Evansen. His work covers a lot of subjects, but I like his ones of the natural world the best. So, lazy me, I stick with his photos of the wilds, but will, at some point, take the dive and do something with buildings and people, and maybe even cars.

I used frisket to create the hard edges of the birch trees and the snowy areas of the logs in the foreground. The other white areas, the snow, is plain paper, no frisket. After the frisket dried, I did the sky, sunlit mountain, and dark background. Then, a bit of the foreground. Finally, the frisket was removed.

When the frisket was gone, I worked left to right, creating the shadows of the birch trees. Upon those shapes I added heavier paint to create the blacks characteristic of birch trunks. Various other details got worked in. White gouache came in handy to clean up some of the birch tree trunks as well as to create the fine branches of the trees toward the top of the painting.

The only thing I have some issues with is the very large birch tree on the right, the one which stretches top to bottom. It is not quite right, but that is something for correcting later on. Despite that, I am pleased with what I am learning, and creating, with all these classes. Painting and drawing and artwork is in the forefront of my mind these days, and it is beginning to show in more “successful” paintings from my viewpoint.

9×12 CP 140# Arches paper; primarily watercolor with a touch or two of gouache. (Maybe 3 or 4 or more….)

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Acrylic Painting Chatter Gouache mixed media Watercolor

Water Thaw – 4 (Final Version?)

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Water Thaw 4 – Final Version??

The end! Or is it?

Anyway, as I mentioned yesterday, more blue in the lower front, some other touches, and then let it sit overnight.

This morning I took another look at it, and the only way I can describe what I did was to refine it. I increased contrast in some areas to create harder edges. Other things were designed to lead the eye toward the center of the painting, toward the whitish rock at the top of the water. I also looked for areas that just didn’t look right, somehow too symmetrical or distracting. In the end, little bits here and there made it better to my eye. But – that was during morning coffee when I was trying to wake up!

I have never worked on a painting – a watercolor – for this long a time period. Total time is probably 8-10 hours. Time was spent laying down frisket, colors, letting things dry. Then frisket was rubbed off. Water was sprayed at different times and salt sprinkled. Rubbing alcohol was also sprayed on. I think the last round of frisket took about 30 minutes to rub off, along with salt. The result, though, are transparent layers of color which I could not have accomplished otherwise.

While the perspective seems a bit off – or maybe we are looking down into the water from above? – I like this painting. It’s a new adventure for me in watercolor, and while bright, I don’t think it is overly so. I deliberately did not use any orange!! New ideas are coming to mind for painting in a transparent medium. Mood and impression work here for me – not realism, but suggestion. So, spring thaw, melting ice, new leaves.

In this final version, I cropped it and changed the perspective a bit in Lightroom. Post-processing artwork is much like post-processing a photo, an din the printing industry it is done all the time. You can see the uncropped version in the gallery below.

Arches 16×20 140# CP, acrylic, gouache, watercolor.

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Chatter Watercolor

Water Thaw – 2

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Round 2!

First, I removed the liquid frisket. From there I added more color to increase contrast, again using the wide 1.5 inch flat brush. While the paint was still wet, I sprinkled on some kosher salt. After letting it dry, I again added more color, salt, and then spritzed it with rubbing alcohol. This morning I shook off the salt and now am contemplating what to do next. The first step, though, will be to add more frisket to help preserve the existing whites as well as some of the areas of color.

Such a crap shoot at times!!

Below you can compare the first image to the next.

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Chatter Watercolor

Water Thaw – 1

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Water Thaw #1

As I mentioned in my last post, I am trying to change my de facto style into something a bit lighter in color, less intense, and more abstract. This round I am working in layers with an idea in mind. The idea is the spring thaw – frozen water broken up (perhaps), or a stream suddenly overwhelmed by waters pouring down from mountains, as spring warms and melts snow in the higher elevations

I used a liquid frisket with a bamboo pen, drawing with the resist, smearing it around, and finally using a brush dipped in detergent to create different shapes. From there I painted using a 1.5″ flat brush to place colors where things could be. Above is the result with the frisket removed.

Watercolors on 16×20 140# CP Arches.

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Chatter Watercolor

Disastrous Fun

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I promised to paint more buildings.  So I did.  I painted a house in the middle of a cold, cold climate in the dead of winter.  I made better house drawings when I was 10.

I have really lost touch with real cold, real snow, and a real winter.  I do have memories, though, of the intense gloom of the woods in northern New York state.  There was something so magical about them – the silence of the woods, the snow falling, the sense of being alone in the world.  I liked the idea of capturing that with a building, on water, in the dead of winter.

Buildings mean people, even in the middle of nowhere, on a river.  People usually mean unnecessary noise, and in the woods or hiking, the last thing I want is noise.  Silence is something to be savored in our noisy age.

So, let’s get back to the “disastrous fun” of this posting.  “Disastrous” as this is such an amateurish painting, and “fun” because the more I got into, and the more I realized how awful it was, the more fun I had.  Making a “good” painting no longer had any meaning – it was the experience.  And the snow.

The final touch was the snowflakes.  White gouache to spatter.  I spattered on the painting.  It flew onto my glasses.  I spattered some more.  It flew onto my glasses.  I changed how I was spattering, and there were streaks.

Snowflakes don’t streak in the real world.  Spattering paint is an art form in and of itself.

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Chatter Watercolor

Redbuds in Bloom

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Outside my studio window is a small California Redbud.  It really needs more sunshine to show off its flowers – there is too much shade on the western side of my house, and so it does not bloom very often or very much.  Still, it is a lovely tree.  Slender branches, heart-shaped leaves that change color and drop in the autumn.  Local birds like to hang out in its branches.

Today, I tried to express the beauty of several redbuds in bloom, with spring growth abounding in new leaves.  I drew the trees first, then used frisket – a lot of it – in the forms of lines and dots.  From there, the background was laid in, using varying colors to represent leaves, flowers, and other trees or branches.  The frisket was then removed, and trunks painted using warm and cool greys.  Afterward, magentas and yellow greens, warm and cool.  It was all rather splattery!  Finally, after everything dried, white dots applied to suggest spring insects and twinkling sunlight.

Not entirely pleased.  As a realistic painting, it fails; however, as an abstract, it has potential.

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Chatter Watercolor

Aspen Grove

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I painted this using multiple layers of frisket on the paper.  On the first round, I blocked off the right side of the aspens.  Once I was fairly content with the overall image, I added frisket over various areas, such as the greens and browns of the foliage.  I made lines to represent trees, and dots to suggest a glint of sunshine on a leaf.  I did this three or four times on dried paint.  In the end, I removed the frisket, left some areas white, and painted over other white areas with transparent glazes, hoping to pull together different areas of the painting.  Finally, I made small dots of colored paint in the foliage, to suggest leaves.

This study was to utilize what I have been learning from the experience of following Rick Surowicz’s YouTube videos, as well as what I learned just painting.  This is the first time I conscientiously laid out a plan or method on how to approach the painting.  First, drawing.  Then frisket.  Next, washes of green, gold, brown, and oranges broad across the paper and blurred using a spray bottle and blotting.  From there, details, contrast, and so on.  Overall, I think my painting has taken a turn for the better.

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Chatter Watercolor

Study: Rick Surowicz’s “Snow Creek’s Edge”

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Today was another practice session using a study by Rick Surowicz on his YouTube channel.  This one is titled “Snowy Creek’s Edge.”  As with the one I did the other day, there is a lot of use of frisket, and this particular study with filled with it!  Keeping areas white is important, and many watercolorists eschew using it – I know I sure did – but judiciously applied, it really does make painting easier.  What I really liked is that it is an excellent way to express narrow bands of snow lying along slender branches and twigs.  It also allows for creating negative space without painting tediously around things – a good skill to have, but at times not necessary.

Coming away from this, I am getting less caught up in copying Rick’s painting and using it as a point of study in watercolor technique, blending colors, and usage of tools and brushes.  Tomorrow (unless the family Thanksgiving becomes a bit much during the morning) I plan to find a snowy scene, either from a photo I have taken or from a public domain image, and work more with snow in the landscape.

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Chatter Watercolor

Weeds Behind La Purisima Mission

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Last summer we ran away from home, up the coast, to La Purisima Mission in the area of Lompoc, California.  It’s a small town with a wonderful secularized California Mission, La Purisima, restored by the state during the Depression.  It has gardens, outbuildings, a wonderful historical center, and is a lovely place to walk around on a sunny day.  I took my camera with me, and today’s painting is based upon the photograph below.

This little patch of weeds is located on the backside of the mission, and I found it so charming.  The weeds are typical California plants – hardy, drought resistant, resinous.  Grasses and flowers.  Furry leaves.  All these help keep the plants from drying out in the relentless sun and low humidity.

I am not really sure if I caught what I wanted to do with this photograph, but I am pleased enough to put my name on the scan  I used a lot of the techniques I learned from Rick Surowicz’s Fall Lake video.

Putting on the frisket was scary.  I was so unsure about it, but knowing the only way to learn was to do, I did!  Blobs, lines, sprinkles and splatters of frisket.  Paint.  Paint some more.  Finally I arrived at a point where I just didn’t think I could go any further, and it is at this point I stopped.  And then removed the frisket.  More paint added here and there, lines, whatever.  The final result is below.

 

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Chatter Drawing Watercolor

Holiday Cards: Laundry

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Another practice study from Peter Sheeler.  Here he uses masking tape – painters tape – to create a frisket.  He tore pieces of tape and pressed them into the paper, as a resist to the dry brush technique he used to create the sense of a very windy laundry day.  As a kid, I remember those days, pegging the clothes and sheets.  It was a lot of fun, a lot of work, but always worth the smell of fresh air on your sheets when you went to bed.

First, here is the picture with the “laundry” masked with randomly torn bits of painter’s tape.

And here is the final picture.  To frame the picture, I used more tape around the edges of the picture.  If you watch the video, you’ll see why!

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