Tag: shadows

Chatter Watercolor

Morning Sketch 8 – Shapes & Shadows

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Negative painting can only go so far as other things in watercolor need attention. Shapes and shadows are very important for both realistic and more abstract things if you want to make them somewhat recognizable! Consequently, I have been painting fruit and vegetables all morning, to the point I am feeling crazy. Some subjects are more successful, others not, but the lesson is to paint shapes directly and with some finesse, as well as to create shadows while the subject is either dry or wet. Click through at your convenience for a trip to the market.

One thing I have realized from painting all these things is that patience, once more, and mindfulness, is necessary to get anywhere with these things! What looks spontaneous often is not. Instead, it is made up of experience and thought and so on. Persistence is my only hope . . .

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Chatter Watercolor

Morning Sketch 3 – Winter sun

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Nothing great . . . 6×9 on Strathmore Vision 140# paper.

What is the purpose of this sketch? First, trying to lead the eye to the two trees on the opposite river bank. Second, trying to reflect warm and cool light on the snow and ice of the river.

Problems? Paper is not great, but good for these kind of studies. Also using different paints – Schmincke pan paints, which are more saturated than the travel paints I used the past two days. And, as always, my sense of perspective is off. I am not quite sure why and it really bugs me!! Oh, well, perhaps one day I will find the answer to that problem.

Thinking about the atmospheric perspective, it seemed I needed softer edges in the distance. So, I wet the paper, blurred it a bit, and smeared a light mess of a blue-grey to give some distance. Then I took the painting into LR and decided to adjust the vertical perspective a bit, tilting the picture back a bit, and then doing a “smart fill” in the areas left white by that adjustment.

Don’t know if it improved the picture, but I think it might have as I often feel as if I am falling into my painting from above – sort of like a bad dream.

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Chatter Gouache

Somewhere in the Mountains

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I went to Pixabay looking for snow and shadows and cold weather. The painting is of the photo below, done in gouache, 7×10.

The challenge here is depth of field – details – not too many details – simplification – and most fun of all, the shadows on the snow. I really enjoyed looking at the photo, imagining myself in it, and wondering where it is I am. In the photo, the white snow on the bare tree branches is really easy to see, but with gouache I always find my whites are never bright enough. Always interesting to compare a photo to a painting!

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Chatter Watercolor

Skating Pond

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I was never any good at skating, but I did try it out a lot when I was a kid. We moved from a really cold place in the midwest to a warmer climate on the east coast, leaving rural farmland with ponds and lakes for a bit of suburbia in New Jersey. Every year the neighbors would get together and scrape the snow off the nearby lake, test the ice, and create a skating pond. We were never allowed to go by ourselves because of the chance of falling through the ice, but it seems there was always a dad or mom to supervise a dozen kids in snow suits, wipe away our tears, keep us generally under control.

Watercolor, 9×12, 140# CP ArtBeek paper.

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Chatter Watercolor

A Messy Thaw

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Nothing like a slushy pile of dirty snow alongside the road to make you really appreciate bright, white clean snow!

I thought I would do this for more practice painting snow, using some of the things that stuck in my mind from the Shari Blaukopf’s class on painting snow. Add to that, I tried to recall and implement some of the things I have learned over the past several months from my courses with Ian Roberts. Something seems to be shifting!

Kilimanjaro 140# CP; 9×12.

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Chatter Watercolor

Along the Coast

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The same painting, scanned with an Epson V600 and merged. However, two different software were used to merge. One was Microsoft Ice. The other was the photo merge bit of Lightroom. It’s hard to really tell which software impacted the final image more as both were manipulated a bit in post. However, the difference was that the LR version had dark paper around the edge and was rather muddy. The MS Ice was lighter and more clean in overall appearance.

This is the image merged in Lightroom. .

This is the one merged in MS Ice.

It’s hard to see the difference in some ways, but I think either is fine to my eye.

Anyway, I am rather pleased with the result here. I think I got the depth of field properly done for once. Perspective doesn’t seem off. The sandy berm really pleases me because sand is hard to do! I mixed together ochre, alizarin, and cobalt blue and then added a gallon of water to make the wash. The shadows are ultramarine with a bit of carbazole violet.

Another thing I like is the murky, seaweed filled foreground on the right that fills the shallow water. And, too, I did some justice to the reflections of the island in the right background. In the end, I applied a light glaze to the foreground water on the right and to the grasses to the left of the sandy shore in the middle left background. Painted on 300# Kilimanjaro from Cheap Joe’s.

I have few other WIPs, but they need a bit more consideration at present.

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Chatter

A Bit of Snow

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Where I live there isn’t a very big likelihood of snow. At higher elevations, yes, but here in coastal California, 800 feet isn’t gonna get it.

So, I dream.

I’ve lived in some places with stunning countryside, such as rural Illinois, upstate New York, in the Rockies of Colorado. Snow was beautiful and thrilling. As a kid, it’s a wonderland, but I remember my mother would always kvetch about all the little mittens, the snowsuits, the boots, the scarves, the this and that to get a herd of kids dressed to play – and then ten minutes later, they are all back in the house.

Poor Ma!

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Chatter Gouache

To the Lighthouse

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A bad reference to Virginia Woolf’s novel, which is an interesting read.

This painting is a dedication to lighthouses worldwide. They have saved so many lives by letting sailors know of treacherous waters. Add to that, lighthouses are often found in spare and rugged places, all of which make for dramatic and wonderful photos and paintings.

I have often thought I would like to live in such a place, hearing the waves crash, watching the light circling through the night, and, of course, the sound of fog horns. Throw in some seal barks and sea gulls, and I would be pretty happy. Sleep could be a challenge though.

I made up this painting, amalgamating lighthouses and buildings from various images. My goal was to practice shading, such as moving from a sunlit side to the shadow side, using pointillism techniques. You can see this on the conical shape of the lighthouse as well as on the buildings. I have tried to give a sense of cliffs and housing sunk down a bit behind the green of the grass. Morning or evening light for the sky, or an intimation of fog and filtered sunshine is also attempted.

As I work more in pointillism, I realize that this helps me tremendously in sorting out colors. As far back as I can remember, mud has been my most famous by-product in painting. It could be that this is something I really need to use as a primary technique, though I am thinking of doing a pointillistic painting in gouache, and then re-wetting it to blend the colors applied in dots.

Now, on to other adventures!

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Chatter Watercolor

The Mountain

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Yesterday was a watercolor day!  I warmed up with a copy of Wesson’s painting, and then moved on to more water.  I am not intimidated by water in the form of lakes or streams, but do need to learn how to do oceans and waves and white caps.  I am trying to get a grip on reflections and how water and reflections interact.  I think reflections appear longer when the sun is behind you rather than in front of you, like shadows.

Here, a mountain and a lake, with some very deep shadows.  The distant mountain is quite bland to my eyes and would like to liven it up with deeper greens and richer browns.  I didn’t.  I tried to keep it more simple than the actual photo.  I did to a point.

I think most painters will always find faults as they know, as they paint, what challenged them while they painted and what their vision was, versus what they put down.  My life.

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Chatter Watercolor

Late Afternoon

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I’ve been really into doing wet-in-wet watercolors this month, and think it may become a theme for the month of January.  So many areas of watercolor benefit from it.  Skies seem to lend themselves to it, but so do fog and reflections.

Here, a winter landscape, partly from memories of those lovely, cold afternoons in upstate New York or rural Illinois, when the clouds were low and dark, snow was on the ground, but somehow, the sun made it through, casting shadows and a bit of color on the vast swaths of white.

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