Monday Discovery

Experimentation Part 1

As I was walking through the stationary and art supplies section of our local Wal*Mart, I happened upon these little bottles with a sponge on top.  They are for moistening glue on stamps and envelopes.  I wondered, though, if they might be used as a type of waterbrush.  I immediately began thinking about washing paint, painting wet on wet, or… TREES!  I don’t know if Bob Ross is the one who invented the idea of “stabbing” paint at a canvas to make happy little trees, but I remember watching it every weekend on PBS.  He would take a fat round brush and stab paint, then come back and create highlights with a stiff, flat brush, his knife, or just the stick end of the brush.  Then, of course, he would make some white and gray M’s in the sky and call them birds.  Happy little birds for the happy little trees.  So I bought two of them to experiment with.

I decided to do a quick evergreen.  I filled the little bottle up and proceeded to load it with paint.  If you decide to do this, remember that for most evergreens you stab from the top down and out in a triangle.  For most diciduous trees, start in the center of the base of the triangle and work out and up.  That may be a different lesson some day, today we’re just playing with a sponge bottle.

The first thing I noticed was the rapid flow of water on this thing.  Loading it with paint was a chore.  As a matter of fact, it was hard to tell if I was loading the sponge with paint, or if I was just flooding the pan.  Application wasn’t much different.  You can see that I was able to get a couple of good stabs in, but after that it just washed the paper.  Not bad if wet on wet is what you’re going for, but I was really going for stark and bold.

As the paint dried, I decided to try and add some branches and some highlights with my regular water brush.  This is when I decided that I should really look into getting some opaque paints.  I knew that if I tried to add another layer of green on top that this would just become mud.  Then I remembered the lifting technique that I played with last week.  So, I patiently watched Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory with my beautiful young bride and Girl2 while the paint dried.

I quickly found that the sheer flood of water coming from the sponge didn’t allow for any control what so ever, at least not in the application I had chosen.  Again, this would have been fine for wet on wet, or even just to create the wash of sky, ground, and shadow.  But, as a paint applicator I found it severely lacking. As I stared at it, though, I wondered what I could do to control the flow of water.  My waterbrush, for instance, has a bit of sponge inside the tip before the bristles are attached.  I wonder what would happen if I stuffed this area with cotton or silk to allow water through, but not a straight flow.  I also wondered what would happen if I filled them with paint and used them on a much larger application?  Let me play with it for a week and let’s see what all we can come up with.  If you have any comments or suggestions, I would love to hear about them!  Leave a comment below, or email me.

Tune in for next week’s Monday Discovery for part II.

Atmospheric perception

On Friday, Jeff Knecht and I had a critique session in which he mentioned that the trees on the left of this sketch were difficult to distinguish.  He thought they were one tree and thought that the details were a bit jumbled.  My lovely young bride and I had been talking about that very thing just that morning and I asked her for some pointers.  She suggested that I try to distinguish the colors more and that I incorporate a bit more atmospheric perspective.  I asked her if she would be willing to write out a lesson for me to post here.  Alas, it was the last week of school for my art teaching lover, and she was too busy with clearing her room for summer.

I did find a cool tutorial online that I thought I would share with you, along with my step by step version.  Kristen Godsey wrote has an article that is hosted at The Artistic Network called Getting Greenery Right.  She suggested that I should wash my foreground color first.  After that dries, paint in my background tree.  Once the background tree dries, then I should lift the background paint off of my foreground image.  HUH? Not to worry.  It’s not as complicated as it seems.  In her demonstration, she is lifting blades of grass to create a lighter foreground.  She uses a very stiff brush and a full pallet of transparent and opaque paints.  I use a waterbrush and a set of transparent pans.  Let’s see if I can modify this technique to work for me.

First, I use a warm green for the leaves of the cottonwood tree in the foreground.  This is strictly from memory, so you’ll just have to believe me when I tell you it is a cottonwood.  Anyway, I apply a wash in the full overall shape of the cottonwood tree.  Then I went to play on Twitter while I waited for the paint to dry.  I know that it was not very zen of me, I should have been of one mind and all that.  But seriously, waiting for paint to dry is not one of my strong suits.

Next, I use a cooler and darker green for the cypress tree in the background.  This is kind of the confusing part for me because usually if you want something to stand out in the foreground you make it darker.  But this type of tree actually is darker.  You can tell, I am easily confused.  Anyway, that’s the point of using the cooler color to give it a little push to the background.  That’s where the atmospheric perspective comes in to play.  Less detail and more subdued colors move an item to the back or off to the side out of focus.  If I had wanted this in the foreground, I would have used bolder colors but still less detail so that the focus would have remained on the cottonwood, and subsequently the chapel (remember the chapel?).

“Lifting” the foreground is especially simple with a waterbrush.  The constant supply of fresh water easily lifts the pigment off the paper.  The only thing I had to be careful of was lifting off the foreground color as well.  Also, just like with a regular brush, after you pick some paint up, you have to remove it from your brush or you just keep redistributing it.  So unless you want to lay that same color back down on your painting, best to wipe your brush off after every lifting stroke.

Almost finished now.  I have reapplied the foreground color.  I’ve added a little more heat to it (a little red and a little sienna) and brushed it around the whole of the area of the cottonwood.  Also, I’ve used it to define some of the shading on the tree.   It has already made a distinction and now I’m excited to see how it’s going to turn out.  I’m off to play on Twitter while the paint dries again.

Finally, I went back in and added the tree trunks, branches, highlights on the leaves, etc.  This time, I think it’s quite obvious that they are two different trees.

I’m eager now for a chance to try this in the field.  It is supposed to be beautiful weather all week so I may ride down to a creek by my day job and try this out on location.

I hope I can twitter from my phone while the paint dries, though.

Book Review: The Watercolorist's Essential Notebook

As I cruise around the interwebs, I occasionally (everyday, sometimes twenty times a day) come across a book that interests me.  While perusing Russell Stutler’s site, I noticed his book list of recommended reading.  Among them was The Watercolorist’s Essential Notebook.  Having bought and explored the book, I decided to share my insights with you, my friends.

The Good:

First, I would like to say that this book is just chopped full of valuable tips and tricks!  There are tips on everything from how to compose the painting to how to create your own palette from a used styrofoam meat package.  Gordon MacKenzie has taught watercolor for many years and this is a collection of the handouts he has given his students.  The illustrations and instruction are very well done and easy to follow.  As a stack of handouts, you couldn’t ask for better.

The Not-So-Good:

MacKenzie’s handouts are truly informative, especially in a classroom setting.  As a book, however, they don’t lend themselves well to a sense of order.  That is, there really is no beginning or end to them.  If you are a beginning watercolorist, there is no clear cut place to start.  The first handout in the book discusses topics that won’t be explained for 100 pages.  Every section is written with the assumption that you are already familiar with certain aspects of watercolor, or that the information you are lacking will be readily available from an instructor.  This makes for a difficult read, especially if you are like me and read these books cover to cover before attempting the practicals.

Recommendation: ♦♦◊◊◊ 2 diamonds

If you are looking for an introduction to watercolor, this is not for you.  If you consider yourself at least a little knowledgeable on the subject, there are a lot of demonstrations and examples for you to learn from.  If you are advanced, or are teaching, this book has a great many resources for you and your students.  If you are going to make copies for your class, however, please remember to contact the publisher for permission.

This book is worth buying, regardless of your skill level, but you will get more out of it if you are of intermediate or advanced skill.

EDM 118: Draw Some Rocks

I picked these rocks up in the yard where I work.  I carried them around in my pocket for almost four days.  Every night putting them on my dresser and every day putting them back into my pocket, intending to draw them when I had a chance to stop.  When I had a chance to stop, I found that I was not interested in drawing the rocks.  Lately, I have been imagining much grander things for the EDM challenges.  I get an idea, like the portrait of one of my high school friends, and then get frustrated when I have trouble relaying that idea in graphite on a 3.5″ x 5″ sketchbook.  It took me a couple of days to get back around to the idea that it’s the celebration of the everyday matters that make every day matter.  So tonight, I drew the rocks.

Making Your Mark

This may come as a shock to some of you, but there is more than just one way to make a mark.  My trip to the OKC Zoo on Saturday had me trying out a Faber Castell pen.  I found it to be “scratchy” and lacking the ability to lay down a dynamic line.  But, sometimes that’s exactly what you’re looking for.  In comic illustration, for instance, that is exactly the kind of thing they want for outlining and hatching superheroes going “Ker-Pow!”

I prefer the flexible nib of the brush pen, or even just a brush, because I rely heavily on the fluidity of the line to give me the shapes I am looking for.  Perhaps with more training and patience I will come to appreciate more the finer tipped pens.

A lot of times, however, I want to use watercolors to sketch with.  As a child of the 70′s and 80′s, my work is HEAVILY influenced by the artists with their ink and wash sketches, particularly those found in Highlights magazine.  Often, I don’t think a watercolor is complete until you have the shapes outlined.  For that you either need to sketch with the paint first and wait for it to dry before attempting to outline, or you need a waterproof ink.   The Faber Castell did outstanding in that area.  Better even than a sharpie, and those are supposed to be “permanent”.

Many people like to lay down the initial sketches with a graphite pencil.  I never liked that because the wax always seemed to show through in my finished product.  That is until I discovered watercolor pencils and watersoluble graphite.  These are great for laying down quick lines and then painting them away with your wash.  Of course, the downside is that they wash away when you need the outline. Or they’re gone with the first wash and you don’t have the marks to show your value map.  Again, I’m sure this is something that comes with practice.

I have been experimenting in my figure drawing group.  I started with oil pastels and have now tried them, charcoal, and a china marker.  So far, I like the china marker most.  It gives me a rich, dark line that I can vary with pressure, and I can go very light to get grayscales.  Plus it takes me back to pre-school and drawing with my crayons.

This week, I challenge you to experiment making marks with tools you wouldn’t normally choose.  If you normally use pencil, try pen and see what it’s like without the net of being able to erase.  If you normally use pen, try chalk or pastel and see what it’s like not being able to feel the paper as you mark.  And if you can’t really find anything you’ve not tried before, you can always break out your crayons.  And after, have a snack and a nap.

For the EDM 115, draw something green, I really had to think.  How do you make something look green when you are only drawing in graphite?  Of course the obvious answer is to draw something everyone knows is green like a plant, a shamrock, or *Maureen O’Hara’s gorgeous eyes.  I looked around and I found something that if you know what it is, you’ll definitely recognize as green.  If not, you’ll have to ask you friends who drink.

*Maureen O’Hara is the only woman who even comes close to competing with beauty of my bride.

Pushing the Darks

At the beginning of last week I had asked some of the online artists that I admire if they would be willing to write a critique on my first hundred days of the EDM challenge.  I received a lovely letter from Jeanette Jobson of The Illustrated Life.  For those of you unfamiliar with Jeanette’s work, she specializes in dry media but works in everything from stone to fish.  She seriously wrapped a fish in paper and then added paint to the impression.  It sounds nasty, but the results were gorgeous.  Jeanette is an artist’s artist full of talent, creativity, and practice.  That’s exactly what I said to butter her up so she would write me this nice letter: