Artist's Seal

I have always loved the look of those bold red symbols seen in much of Asian art. This isn't a new fascination either, I've admired them for a very long time.  It's such a dramatic punch they typically is the finishing touch on a composition, and without it, those pieces would often feel unbalanced. 

From what I've read these seals are highly varied and for artistic purposes tend to hold alot of meaning and symbolism for the artist.  In fact many artists have a number of different seals they use to sign their work.    

For a long while I've wanted to create one for myself, but what would it be or say?  I'd probably set down to design a seal for myself hundreds of times only to end up with pages of ugly or bad ideas.  Then finally, one day it hit me.  The seal I designed is centered around the Japanese and Chinese character for 'true' (or just or pure, but since my site and online persona is Truepinkas, we're going with true).

Digital (Adobe Photoshop)

I also wanted to point out that I'm not Asian.  I am unfortunately sure that there are many people who would take issue with me doing this, thinking I'm somehow stealing a piece of, or devaluing their culture.  I can assure you that that is not the intention here.  I am doing this solely out of admiration and enjoyment of this particular aesthetic and art form itself.

I currently plan on using this on many of my personal digital works, and may even have a stamper made of it for finishing watercolors or sketches.  In addition to that I am strongly considering using it as a primary element when I redo my website (www.truepinkas.com).
 

Potions, elixirs and salves!

Alchemical imagery is something that fascinates me.  I've even started a collection of objects for a future project.

Black and white colored pencil and graphite on toned paper,
Approximately 6 x 8 inches.

I really am enjoying playing around on toned sketch paper.  I've currently settled on using graphite for my darks and Prismacolor colored pencil for my white.  I have discarded the use of black colored pencil for the darkest darks because I was unable to get a smooth transition into the graphite.

I'm still evolving my workflow for these pictures.  I still typically do an outline of the silhouette of the basic shapes, but in the last one (snake and skull) I did the shading first and then went back in for the highlights.  The problem was that it yielded some grey mid-tones, which ideally the paper is responsible for.  For this one however after I did my outlines I went in and rendered the light values first and then came in and did the darks starting with the darkest and working my way toward the mid-tone.

I think in terms of value grouping, gradients and overall clarity of image, this one was more successful.  I primarily do these for studies and practice, but the idea of this being a finished medium has been brought up to me.  I'm still on the fence about it, but I can certainly understand the aesthetic appeal of this sort of look. 

'Yeah, Skulls are Okay.'

What would go well to decorate a lavender room?  How about a picture of a snake and a skull?

Black and white colored pencil and graphite on toned paper, 9 x 12 inches.

So when my family spent Christmas at my brother's house my niece got bumped from her room to make room for my family to spend the night.  She's a pre-teen, so that could have caused an issue, but she was very nice to us about it.  I decided I'd do a little piece to send to her as a 'thank you'.  This is a spliced paraphrasing of the conversation with her mother but it was something like this.

"What kind of animals does she like?"
"Snakes, wolves, and aligators.  Oh and like gory or creepy stuff."
"Okay, um, are like skulls okay?"
"Yeah, skulls are okay."

So there you have it.  Should look nice on the lavender walls!

A Simple Bridge

Sometimes a bit of stylization will go further than realism, but both are based on reality. 

 Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

 Just a simple bridge scene I painted to try and get better at eyeballing perspective.  I think it was reasonably successful.  As a general rule of thumb the more time you spend on the lineart getting it correct the less time you spend flailing around with paint trying to 'make it work'.  You can't just build a house on the uneven mushy ground, you need a solid level foundation to build upon.  The sketch/lineart is that foundation, and your investment in it will pay dividends. 

Do you take lemon? - Finishing

The printing and finishing process for this piece deserves it’s own post in my opinion.

I’ll start by saying that I use a low quality old LCD monitor on my painting rig.  Despite having a Spyder to calibrate this monitor it never really looks right concerning the value ranges.  Sometimes I have all these lovely shadowed details that print as a black splotch, and other times I get blown out highlights.  So I’ve taken to having multiple small scale prints done before hand where I adjust the mid high and low to a few preset versions that I’ve found correct for this horrible horrible screen.  Once I get them back I select the one that most accurately looks like I want and maybe adjust it a little bit more, and then save that adjustment layer for the final print file.  It’s a bit of guess work, and I have to pay for the small prints form the company I use, but small prints are cheap , so it’s not that big of a deal.

Normally that’d be it, I’d be finished.  I’d send off the corrected file to my printer and wait for my lovely prints in the mail, but not this time.  I knew I was going to print this big, so I had to make sure all the details were right, and that I didn’t have any stray brushstrokes long forgotten in the background.  What I didn’t want was to hang this thing up and have someone be looking at it and say ‘What’s this?’ and find that there was some weird splotch, or a base layer peaking through or some other anomaly.  So I set a grid over the image and methodically scoured each square for anything I didn’t want there.  After I made any corrections I marked off that square and moved to the next.  It was a slow but important step. 

When I was finally satisfied I sent the file off for printing.  The final image is 20 inches by 30 inches (including the little white boarder).  And I love it!  The people form iprintfromhome.com have once again done a terrific job, and I really can’t imagine using another company for my prints. 

Do you take lemon? - Process

Because I didn't do a tight sketch of the whole image ahead of time, nor did I do any real color keys to define the mood and direction of the piece it was really a very organic and mushy process.  While this can be fun at times it also had a propensity for making things take much longer than they really should. 

I spent a lot of time noodling away at odd little details that I really wasn't sure how they would interact with the rest of the image.  And I’d frequently zoom out from one of these areas only to find that it did not integrate well and felt very separate.  There was a constant battle between making the details look good up close, but also having it not interfere with the overall look and feel when backed out.  This is something that could have been much less painful had I really planned out the image beforehand.

There are a lot of fun little details in the image that I know don’t show very well at web resolution, but I knew I would be printing this one so I was comfortable spending time on them. 

Overall I found this to be quite the enjoyable image to paint and am pleased with the result. 

Next:  Printing

Do you take lemon? - Concept

While I certainly enjoy my work in traditional mediums, digital painting is my primary arena.  It’d been a while since I had a new digital piece that I can publicly display, so I decided that I needed to make time for a personal project that I could use in my portfolio. 

I didn’t really know what the image was going to be of, but I had a vague feeling that I wanted to paint something misty or foggy, so a swamp seemed to be a good setting.  I spend a little bit of time brainstorming some scenarios and stories of things that might work in a swamp setting.  Most of them were grim or serious but the last one was a bit of a joke.  It read, ‘A witch in a boat being pulled by a large wading golem or troll’. 

I was being indecisive so I posed the question to a few friends and almost every single person came back liking the sound of the boat idea…  It was a little odd for me as I really was expecting one of the other more ‘serious’ ideas to get the nod as the boat idea was really just me being silly.  Soon enough though I got over that and started treating it like I would an assignment from a client. 

I did a fair amount of sketches, and the idea started evolving.  And the next thing I knew I was working on a picture of a red witch having high tea in a row boat that was being pulled though the swamp by a Bavarian troll servant (Yes, the trolls are indeed wearing lederhosen in the final image).

Next:   Do you take lemon? - Process

Knowing When to Say When

There is very little difference between unfinished, finished and overworked pieces, but that very little difference makes all the difference. 

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

 When I work digitally I can experiment much more freely.  If I mess up I just hit undo, or go back in the history, or if all else fails, close without saving and reload from wherever I saved last.  That's not as easily the case with traditional mediums.  Traditional mediums aren't as unforgiving as you might imagine, but still, the level of effort to undo something in acrylic or watercolor is significantly higher, and there are some mistakes that there is no coming back from.

That makes knowing when a piece is 'finished' all the more difficult.  If it's too rough it looks unfinished.  A few strokes later the magic is gone and it now looks overworked.  The trick is finding the sweet spot where it looks just right to you as an artist.  My natural inclination seems to be to cover the whole canvas or page.  But there are timed when leaving the under-sketch showing, or a transition unblended actually enhance a piece.  It can give it a liveliness that is missing in overworked pieces.  

I wish I could share a tip or trick on knowing when to march forward and when to stop before it's too late, but I can't even begin to articulate it.  I think it's just one of those things you learn and understand on an unspoken level as you progress on your own journey.  So I guess the tip is to practice more, screw up some pieces and make sure you learn from them. 

Window

Just so you know I didn't abandon watercolor or anything, I just got a little lazy...

 Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

This was done just as a little pick me up after the hand paintings.  I really just wanted to do something simple that I could execute well to kind of show myself that it was the subject matter that was the issue before, and not the medium.  I enjoyed painting this overall, but there are certainly things I'd change.  I got a little too comfortable at parts and stopped observing.  And when I stop observing things tend to go awry...But nothing terribly noticeable, and I'm not going to point it out if you don't already see it...

BTW, there's a lesson for other artists...  Unless you plan on fixing it, don't point out the flaws you've noticed to other people.  Odds are they didn't notice it because they  didn't put it under the same critical microscope you did as the artist.

Drawing Hands

There's no way around it, I must go through it...

Colored pencil on toned paper, 5.5 x 8.5 inches each.

Yes I know they are in black and white, not really color, but it is colored pencil...  I chose to use these because I am familiar with them and the level of control I can achieve with them.  I can't really erase them, and I can't really blend them on the paper without getting a garish silver all over the toned tan paper, but since learning and studying hands seems to be an exercise in discipline, I found colored pencils unforgiving nature helpful in reminding me to make every stroke measured and  purposeful.

This was really my first time using toned paper and I must say it was eye opening.  Up to this point I mostly only ever drawn on white paper.  When you start white you can only go darker.  But when you start in the mid range you can push darker and lighter.

I honestly feel like I've only been drawing half of any given form for years, and as such, only really understand half as much as I should.  I'm going to do some more experiments and studies, but I think the toned paper really helps me get a better grasp of the three dimensional form I'm trying to represent on the paper.

So not only am I getting over my hand issues by learning more about their form and anatomy, but I've discovered how much I enjoy working on toned paper.  If you've never tried toned paper I strongly suggest you do, as it really does open you up and make you feel like your subject is coming off the page at you.  These were done on Strathmore's new 400 series toned sketch paper, which is available in Tan and Gray.

Thanks to the lovely people at Strathmore for the free samples! 

Second Attempt...

I'm almost too ashamed to post this...

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

I think the phrase is '...from bad to worse...'.  That's how I felt about this.  I completely spun out of control on this one.  I wanted so badly to redeem myself that I started jst doing stupid things to try and make it look better.  I almost completely stopped trying to observe my hand and was almost trying to paint it purly from my head (despite the fact that my hand was RIGHT THERE to look at).

This was really the one that made me want to stop for a bit.  Hands are hard, really hard.  And that was actually the problem.  I am VERY new to watercolors and am very much still in the beginning phase of learning the medium.  Unfortunately I am slso very much at the beginning of learning proper hand anatomy.  That was my problem.  If I were more familiar with the medium, or the subject I think I'd of been okay, but the combination is what killed it for me.  I need to focus on one problem at a time, at least in this case.    

The thumb in the corner shows a little bit of promise though... Coming soon I'll show you some pieces where I tackle hands head on in an arena I'm more comfortable with - colored pencil.

Sour Grapes?

Hello all,

I'm really sorry for how this all looks.  I did a few bad pieces and disappeared.  But I wanted to let you know that's not the whole story.  Sure, part of it is that those hands did leave a bad taste in my mouth, but another part of it is that I got lazy and started spending my lunch time skimming uninteresting articles about topics I could care less about...

I can't help it, I'm a procrastinator by nature and very often have to force myself to work on a drawing or a painting, in much the same way one might force themselves to go to the gym or go running.  And like in those situations after I've done it I always feel glad I did so, but it doesn't make it any less difficult to get started.  (I think a common mistake people make is that if they 'aren't in the mood' they don't work at their craft.  You will get excited by a project here or there, but you'll stall out quickly when you encounter a difficult problem so you really do need to get over that and just push through.)   

And of course the third part of the 'Hey, where did he go?' equation is that I don't ONLY work in watercolor.  While at the time I thought it was a good idea for this to solely be about watercolor I've found that it would be significantly more productive for me to convert this blog into a general art blog for myself. 

I'll have a new post up for Friday. 

Growing Pains

This hurts to much to post....

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

It's awful.  You can think what you want about it, but I think it's terrible.  The proportions are bad, quality of the painting is poor, and When I see it all I see are my repeated attempts to 'fix' it.

The problem was that hands are hard.  And as it started to go down hill instead of looking at my hand, which was RIGHT THERE to use as reference, I just kept trying to go off my my head.   I don't know why I do that, but it seems to be a pattern, when things start going bad I turn inward for the solutions.  Sometimes that works out, but not in the case of hands.  I just don't have the anatomical knowledge to do that...  and so with a grimace on my face I show you the first thing in this book that I would consider a failure.  I promised myself that the next day I would try this again, and turn my failure into a success!  

Painting Water...

...and some ducks too I suppose.

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

In all seriousness, the main reason I painted this was because I was interested in trying my hand at water.  It is incredibly complex.  I think I faked it reasonably well here, but it's certainly something I want to try more of. I think it becomes one of those skills that you eventually just do it without really looking at anything.  Painting much more off of personal knowledge than exacting details.  I'll eventually dig up more water photos and have another crack at it.

Again, I'm astonished how much latitude you have with watercolor when compared to digital.  The audience is just so much more forgiving of sloppy or low detailed areas than they would be if this was digitally painted.  I wonder if the inherent texture of the medium plays a roll in this.  

Inspiration

It is easy to see beauty in a flower, but it takes a quiet mind to see beauty in other things. 

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

A few weekends ago I was helping my brother clean out his garroge in preparation of moving.  It hadn't been cleanre dout in a decade and was full of rusted, moldy disgusting-ness.  Most of it went straight into a dumpster, but some things had to be set aside, like this little metal gas can.

I can't say what it was, but something about it really caught my attention, so I snapped a few quick pictures of it with my phone for later use ( I was there to help clean after all, not sit down and paint).  This is just further proof that you can fake/imply details in the background if you have a strong subject matter and good composition.  A fun little piece over all.  

Taking Risks (Even if They are Small)

Sometimes I get attached to a piece midway through and am terrified I'm going to ruin it any second...

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

This was one of those cases...I has painted the flag stones and the lily pads and the flower and it looked pretty good, but the top seemed empty.  The photo I was working from wasn't particularly well composed so it just kind of ended there and I wasn't sure what to do.  I'm not sure why I did this, but I grabbed one of my Niji Water Brushes and I wet the entire top section and them proceeded to just drop in black, sienna and a blue and just let them sit there and mingle a little as they dried. Nine out of ten people who have seen this say that is their favorite part...  

The other thing that was challenging in this piece was I had initially painted the water between the surface pads black, which was a terrible idea and looked nothing like what I wanted for the picture.  But I had discovered back on the house form a few posts ago that one of my yellows is rather opaque, so I used it ti mix up a green and was able to get those dark green murky submerged shapes in the water, which I was thrilled with.  This is a technique I'm certainly going to use in future water scenes when depicting submerged objects. 

I cheated...

...the whiskers are done in colored pencil. 

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

So I reached into the magic shoe box and pulled out a picture of my parent's cat.  What's interesting about this picture is I've painted it before in oils, and I also did a colored pencil version of it years ago.  I unfortunatly have to say thisis my least favorite version of the picture.  I sort of feel like I botched the subtleties of his face.

Aside from that, fur is very challenging.  I obviously can't paint every single hair, but I think there is a lot of room for me to improve on implying groupings of hair.  It also wouldn't hurt me to get a better grasp of the underlying anatomy instead of just relying on knowledge of surface details. 

I may not feel it was terribly successful, but I feel I learned a lot of what not to do when painting small furry animals, and that's just as valuable as doing it right.  

Photo Reference

I decided to paint something other than food stuffs...

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

It's based on a photo of a house I took years ago.  I have no idea where this house is, or who lives there.  I'm the kind of person who will insist on pulling over or doubling back so I can snap a picture of something I find aesthetically pleasing.  This has led to shoe boxes and hard drives full of lots of interesting subject matter for me to pick form when I lack inspiration.  

Overall I like this piece, but I did learn a general lesson.  Black is fine for first pass painting, and for final details if appropriate, but it's horrible for washes intended to go over something that's already there.  It really deadens the colors.  So I guess it's not useless, as you might need that at some point, but it wasn't what I felt I needed here.  Overall still successful.  

Visually Interesting

Sometimes I find myself staring at the strangest things, or photographing them.  I must look like a loon a lot of the time...

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

I found this apply core to be very satisfying to paint.  All the planes and texture of the flesh and the little reflection on the bit of smooth skin on the bottom, they were just entrancing to me.

The flesh was darkening as I was working though and it hit a point where I just had to stop myself form going back and toughing parts of it up.  I think as an art project at some point I will video myself painting an apple core and not resisting the touch up urge.  If played kinda fast it's be like the painting itself was browning!

Red/Pink

I'm defiantly going to have to do this with some heirloom tomatoes coming up...

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

 Just a painting of a sliced tomato.  It was challenging to get a red that captured the fruit propperly while still showing depth and difference in texture.  This was really a good exercise in color matching and mixing. 

I was also unable to capture the tiny highlights on the wet seeds, so that's certainly a goal for the next one of these... 

Borrowed Fruit

I actually asked someone if I could borrow their pear...I did, in fact, return it.

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

So I learned two things with this piece.  The first of which I think it called glazing.  The napkin was originally done the wrong color, so once it had fully dried I went over it with a wash of another color to tint or glaze it.  I liked this technique a lot and plan on using it more later.

The second thing was more of an experiment.  When I originally painted it there was a large bloom on the lower left of the pear that became more pronounced as it dried.  the next day I mixed up a dark green and managed to repair that spot.  The trick is/was when your trying to fix a dark area using a wet into dry technique you have to be very gentle otherwise you'll begin lifting the dry pigment off the page with the wet brush and only make matters worse for yourself.

Now if I could only figure out a way to correct things like that fuzzy yellow halo on the middle right...well I guess more careful painting will fix that in the future.

The owner of the pear liked seeing the finished painting.

One bite at a time...

It didn't brown as much as I was expecting...

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

This one sparked an interesting discussion.  A friend of mine said that when he looked at it the bite didn't really feel inset to him.  He said it felt flat and more on the surface.  I understood what he meant (though I disagreed).

The issue at hand though was this is what the light on the apple looked like as I painted it.  I could have easily gone in and added shadows I didn't see to make it look more like what people would expect, but then I wouldn't have been as true to the actual subject.

That's right folks we're looping back around to the 'when to stop looking at the reference' subject.  I think in little studies like this where my purpose is just to learn and explore I should stay as true as I can.  However if I'm doing a piece for a client, or if it's something I might like to hang on my wall or sell prints of I think I'd be better served adding in a bit of manufactured details.

Photo Reference

Yes, I really am that pink.

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

I decided to switch it up a little and instead of doing a still life I took a quick photo of my ear and used that as my reference.   I know plenty of people who would immediately say that I shouldn't have done that.  That working from photos is cheating or inferior to working form life.  To some degree I'll agree.  I'll agree it is inferior in some ways to working from life, but it is not 'cheating' in my opinion. 

The thing to keep in mind when working fomr a photo is that even though you trust the camera, it will lie to you.  Colors may shift, there could be lense distortion, light bloom, range clipping (like when all the darks just get mushed into a synonomous black color and all the details are just gone from them.  Just learn about these things and be aware of them.  Then you can make informed decisions about how closely you want to follow your reference.  

What has it got in its pocketses?

Forty-six cents, keys and a pen apparently...

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

It’s funny how certain subjects just keep cycling back around to me.  I was doing pretty well with organic shapes.  Fruit and nuts and the like.  I was getting more accurate with color and precise with form and shading.  Then I do this…keys coins and a pen.  It’s fairly lacking in detail and has some issues with form and draftsmanship (the pen for example is nowhere near straight).  Yet for its lack of realism I find that I enjoy its overall aesthetic.    

I’ll admit this confuses me.  When I work digitally I sometimes feel like the work is all about the tiny details and proficiency in draftsmanship.  And looking back that appears to be the direction I was trying to head with watercolors (it may still be, I’m just not sure),  Yet somehow when I look at this I easily forgive those issues and embrace it for what it is.  Even the red pencil lines around the largest coin don’t even bother me, if anything somehow I feel they enhance the image. 

I think I’m learning a lot more than just to be proficient with watercolors…

Wonderful Pistachios

I had left this still life set up overnight after I finished with it...nothing but shells and skins by the time I got up.  These are very popular in my house.

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

I'm very happy with the overall composition of this one (which I should be, I spend like 10 min fiddling with pistachios trying to make them look like they casually spilled out of the bag). 

Most of these little paintings in my book are done with a small round brush, but with this one I also used (for the first time) a small Niji Waterbrush.  It's a synthetic brush that has a hollow barrel that holds water.  When you squeeze it it flows out through the bristles.  I found it extremely useful for getting the gradient in the shadow area because it was small enough to get in the tight spaces, but I didn't have to keep re dipping to cover larger areas connected to the small ones.  An added bonus is that because it's adding more and more water over time the longer you use it the more diluted the pigment you loaded on the brush becomes, which makes it ideal for working gradients in my opinion. I highly recommend it. 

Lineart

My watercolor sketchbook is now protected from vampires...provided they turn to this page. 

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

 I found this to be a particularly difficult subject because of it's overall paleness and subtle variation in color and tone.  I also chose a particularly horrible spot for lighting.  There were two light sources that competed with each other leaving me with this kind of ambiguous lighting that still doesn't look right to me.  So I learned my lesson there and will be selecting more defined lighting for the immediate future. 

I did however try something new with this piece.  A friend of mine had commented that he had been distracted in previous pieces by the pencil lines.  I don't really have a problem with them, but I decided to try using red mechanical pencil 'lead' instead of the black used previously.  I was really pleased with the result and how it almost visually disappears under the paint unless your looking for it (it does not dissolve in the water).  At some point I'll also be heading in the opposite direction and experiment in working with black ink under-drawings, but not yet. 

Wild and Uncontrolable Watercolors!

First I paint it.  Then I eat it.  The apple, not the painting.

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

I used to think watercolor was a wild uncontrollable medium.  Where I had to have a give and take relationship and be able to improvise and work around the will of the paint.  I used to cross my fingers and just hope not to ruin a piece with an unexpected bloom or pigment shooting off in a spiderweb like shape the instant it touched damp paper that looked dry to the naked eye.  However I'm starting to think that it isn't as wild and unpredictable as I once thought.

Yes there is still a give and take, and sometimes there are happy accidents that I can take advantage of, but I think most of it was really just my lack of understanding of the medium and the more technical aspects of it. 

Surprise!  It turns out that it's just like anything else.  The more you do it the better you get and the better you are able to predict what will happen if you do certain things.  Imagine that.

Who paints Okra?

Well I do, especially when the okra I'm painting were grown by my wife. It adds just that much more of a personal connection to me.  

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

I like the way these turned out.  I think I'm getting better and am really starting to understand how paint will behave based on the current wetness of the paper.

There are what I will currently call safe and workable zones on both the wet and dry side of the spectrum, and a big zone in between that I tend to leave alone.  That middle zone seems to cause 'blooms' when painted on.  This image doesn't have any large noticeable ones but I'd characterize it as an area that is dark around it's edge and light in the middle (like the lower left hand portion of the whole lemon from my Xanthophobia post.  I'm sure it has it's uses, I just haven't yet figured out how to tame it, so for now I'll stay away. 

Not so bad...

Now that I have internet access again, I can continue posting.  :)

After my initial confrontation with yellow, it's really not so bad...

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

Quick little painting of a banana.  Now that I'm finally started to get a good feel for these paints I'm making more of an effort to accurately portray the variation in color tone and shade.  

A friend noted that I seem to be doing a lot of still lifes.  And I told them that I'd be doing a lot more of them too.  While I've done some work in watercolor before, I am really trying to treat this as a completely new medium for me.  That means starting with the basics and a lot of practice pieces.

Xanthophobia

Xanthophobia is the fear of the color yellow.  

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

Every color has something about it that can make it tricky to work with.  I think I remember reading in Jame's Gurney's book Color and Light that green is considered the hardest color to work with in a composition, but to me yellow is the one to be feared, or at least it used to be.

I've always been a bit shy of yellow when working in physical mediums.  It's so pale and delicate.  While doing this painting  I was concerned that it would pick up other colors or that I hadn't washed my brush enough and that it would turn to a greenish or brownish blob and lose it's vibrancy.  

I'm pleased to say it didn't.  The thing to remember with watercolors is that when working with a pale color like this, use it first so that the wet brush you are laying it down with doesn't re-activate any other pigments on your page.  If your using it with ink, use an ink that dries to waterproof and BE PATIENT and allow proper time to completely dry, not just surface dry.  Once you get the yellow down on the paper, let it dry completely as well.  Then when you come over it's edge with a darker color it won't spread because the paper is completely dry.  Use clean brushes and very clean water.  Don't rush things with yellow.  There's no need to fear this color, just understand it's delicate nature, have a plan to prevent color contamination and be patient with drying.

Why?

There were grapes in the house, and we have blue plates.  That was reason enough for me...

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

Things I paint in my little book are for practice.  For me to get more acquainted with the medium in general.  Mixing, control, working with happy accidents...all that good stuff.  Buy why practice?  Why do I want to be better with watercolors? 

It's an interesting question.  I suppose on some level all the people in the early days saying digital painting wasn't 'real' or that it was 'cheating' got to me in some way.  No, I don't think they were right, but there is a certain legitimacy to physical mediums that digital just doesn't command yet, though there is growing respect for it.  Plus, I really like the look of it and the serene meditative state I find myself in when using watercolors.  I just don't get that when working digitally.

If we want to take the question a step further, it's because I like making things that myself and others enjoy looking at.  I don't need a deep emotional reason, or a cause I'm trying to draw attention to.  I just want it to look cool.  I want to make things that people like looking at.  I know there are a lot of 'fine arts' types who just hate that idea, but it's the truth.  If you feel the need to explain or justify your work with those things go for it, but I don't.  Unless it's work for a client, in which case, they supply the why for me, and I still just worry about making it look cool.  :)

Asian Inspired

So far everything I've shown has been from my little Moleskine sketchbook.  However today I thought I'd share three pieces I've been working on outside of my sketchbook.

Watercolor on paper.  8x16 inches each.

I've done very minor digital editing to these, mostly to correct scanning issues.  Additionally the Chinese characters were added digitally because I just wasn't sure I wanted to commit them to the paper.  They read waterfall, tiger, and blossom respectively.

When to stop looking?

Here's a quick little painting of an office plant of some kind or another.

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

While I was painting it a friend I was chatting with pointed out at one point that I had stopped looking at the actual plant.  At some point in the process I had decided that I had enough of the 'real' details and was just going to go around the page until I liked how it looked. 

I think this is tied to what you want the end product to look like.  I wasn't interested in realism, but more an impression of the plant, so I didn't need to be exact beyond a point.  I think this relates back to the 'level of detail' idea from a few posts ago in that each situation is unique.

I'm getting more confident with these paints so maybe I'll start trying to bump up my realism in the next few pieces if I find something I think would look better that way.

In the end artists are not supposed to be cameras or copying machines; we edit, embellish, select, and focus an idea.  

Onion

Here's a quick little painting I did of an onion.   

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

Overall I'm happy with the level of detail I was able to achieve using just the tip of my small round.  I'm also starting to get more comfortable with my pan paints, which was the whole point of me painting this onion.

I think the other thing that helped was I did this one inside, whereas the other two were done outside.  Presently I'm much more a studio painter than a plein air painter ('en plein air' is a french phrase that means something like, 'in the open air'.  Another way of thinking of it would just be painted from life while outside).  Having said that I specifically put this kit together with the intention of using it anywhere any time, so I need to figure out what's not working as well for me when I'm not in the studio.

I don't like how close it is to the bottom edge, so clearly composition matters a great deal to me even in these little sketches in my book.  It's something I'll have to keep in mind and work on.

As a side note from doing these and scanning them and posting them I'm starting to see and understand why I'm having some of the printing issues I have when printing digital work.  Even though I use a professional monitor calibration tool, something is still off about it.  I've been strongly considering putting my old CRT back into use because I felt it had truer colors uncalibrated than my LCD does with the calibration...

Level of Detail

Here is a little painting of some leaves from a random plant outside. 

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

This little painting left me with an interesting question.  What level of detail am I looking for in my paintings?  Leaf A doesn't really have any literal details.  Leaf B does (though to be honest they really aren't literall either, as I just kind of wanted to give the impression of the veins and not be exact to the leaves themselves).

I don't think there is a singular answer to my question.  I think a thoughtful blending of more impressionistic elements like A with some more literal elements like B to draw attention will be important as I learn and grow.  I guess the trick is desciding what elements will be done which way.  Some of that will be compositional descisions, and some stylistic preference.  It's all part of building my artistic vocabulary in this medium I suppose.  

Page 1

This is a painting of the Smithsonian Institution's Castle building with a bunch of the tents on the national mall for the annual Folklife Festival.

Watercolor on paper, 5 x 8 inches.

I'm the first to admit that this isn't really all that great, but I did learn a lot from doing this piece. 

My first mistake was not wetting the paper at all before I began, though I'm not sure it really would have helped today as it was over 100 while I was out.  The paint dried before I had any hope of mixing on the paper.   

Second, this was my first time out with this kit and I really didn't do any extensive testing regarding what the colors in my pans actually looked like or how they mixed.  I'm not sure what miracle I though was going to happen, but I will certainly be putting some time into getting used to my new travel kit, as I think that will make the biggest impact on my next painting.

Third, I can't see well.  I know I can't see well.  Yet I chose a subject at a distance that I had no hope of being able to see the more subtle details.  Until I get a little monocular telescope, I'm gong to stick to closer subjects.

Starting Line

I’ve always loved the aesthetic of watercolors, and it seems to be a very versatile medium suitable for a variety of styles. When I do illustration work I primarily work digitally, but for a while not I’ve felt the urge to explore and build proficiency with a more traditional medium. So two years ago I took an adult education class on watercolors to get the basic ideas about technique, some technical details on the medium and a little bit of Q&A time with someone a good bit more experienced than me. I got a good foundation from this regarding various techniques, and how to achieve a variety of textures, and how to stretch paper and what not. Overall it was a good experience for me.

Since then I have only produced a handful of watercolors, and probably haven’t improved very much. But I intend to change that. I got myself a little travel kit of paints, a Moleskine watercolor sketchbook, and a whole little school box of other related supplies. I’m going to try and do at least 2 little sketches in there each week and share them here along with whatever bits of knowledge I discover or acquire along the way.