Tag Archives: tips and tricks

Book Review: The Watercolorist's Essential Notebook

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The Watercolorist's Essential Notebook

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

EDM 118: Draw some rocks

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.

Pushing the Darks

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EDM 108: Draw a clock in your home

EDM 108: Draw a clock in your home

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:

Sent: Monday, April 27, 2009 7:28 PM
To: Jonathan Manning
Subject: Review of your art

Hi Jonathan,

I have looked at your drawings and the first thing that strikes me is your dedication to put in effort to improve your drawing as well as the quantity and diversity of subjects that you tackle.  It truly is the way to improve drawing skills by practice and by exploring objects in the world around you.

When I look at your initial pieces and compare them to your more recent work, I can see the changes that have taken place with your ability to observe objects, values and relationships.  Your early pieces show a good grasp of form even though its not there completely at that point.  As the drawings progress, I can see the changes in your observational skills as more detail creeps into them.  You’re starting to really see what is in front of you, rather than what your brain is telling you should be there.

Values are fairly flat in the early drawings as is quite common with people still feeling their feet as artists.  Later drawings are showing more form through depth of shading.  Darks are still limited but moving in the right direction.

I get a sense of the pieces that held your interest in the sketches and those that were more just ‘things’ to draw to fulfill your commitment to the EDM.  The detail and livelier marks in some of the drawings shows how a subject inspired you and how creating the detail was part of the enjoyment for you.

Overall, I see an improvement as I’m sure you do as well.  Practice is the great leveler for achieving drawing skills.  It is said that it takes 10,000 hours to become proficient at anything, from baking bread to drawing.  I’d love to see your work after the 10,000 hours are up.  I’m sure it will be inspired.

Best wishes,

Jeanette

Wow.  That makes me feel warm and fuzzy for sure.  I received that letter shortly asking my beautiful young bride, the art teacher, for some advice on “pushing the darks.”  Here is what she had to say:

When my Dear Husband (DH) asked me to help write a lesson for his site, saying I was intimidated is a huge understatement.  I normally teach 6th-8th graders to draw what they see over several months.  I walk them through various value techniques – shading, cross hatching, stippling…  How on earth do I write a single lesson to instruct you, dear reader, to “Push the Darks?”

To begin, figure out what you’re going for – realism or not.  For realism, study your subject for SEVERAL minutes.  Pay attention to the composition.  What do you, the artist, want to focus on?  Do you want to draw all or part of the object?  Will it fill the page?  Do you want to add anything else?  Study the contours and draw what you see.

If you are not going for realism, what are you trying to capture.  Focus on that while you lay out your shading and composition.

My DH has a habit of getting the basic shapes down and then making up the shading as he goes along, never looking at the object again.  The artist in me says, “Wow, cool!”  The teacher in me screams, “Wrong, do it again!”  (Just like Pink Floyd.)

Values, the degree of lightness or darkness in a color, give form and dimension to your work.  It can make your project look like a photo or a cartoon, 3-dimensional or flat.  Be careful to not just draw outlines to show light and shadow.  Instead focus on the value areas.  Let your viewers eye/mind fill in the areas not outlined.  Let the negative space, the area AROUND your subject, do the work for you.  The contrast between light and dark provides movement and draws the viewer in.  When I say, “Pushing the darks,” I mean that you should try to have your darkest areas as dark as you can make them and in stark contrast to your lightest areas.

For practice, complete several drawings of the same subject with the same light.  Push the darks on one.  Make the contrast stark, just black and white with no middle value.  Do another with only a variety of values and no lines.  Vary the shading- try hatching (straight lines for shading), or stippling (a series of dots to fill in an area).

ptdsample

As my DH reminds me often, experiement and break the rules.  The rules exist as a reference for unfamiliar territory.  But they can seriously hinder your art.  They’re really more like guidelines anyway.  Be a pirate.

I couldn’t have said it better, dear.