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.