Heavy metal

I am steadily working on my current project. I'll hold off identifying the subject right now, but I think it might be familiar to some. I think it's an unusual subject, and it's one that I've contemplated doing for some time. The demands of the Wardensville series has finally pushed me to it!

This is my largest painting this year...15x15...and doing these big, wet washes has been a challenge. I think that's why I avoid larger works. It takes a lot of concentration to keep things under control when you have washes running all over the place. This size requires the use of large, flat brushes, which hold more pigment (and more water!).

That's where I often make a mess of things, because I'll try to "fix" something, and then a massive bloom will erupt, and then I'll mess up all sorts of other areas to "fix" the solution to my first "fix," and then it spirals out of control. Agh! Then I swear off big brushes and return to my little paintings for a while.

But, in this case, so far so good. I'm finished with the big areas, so I can concentrate on developing the forms.

I'm working essentially with three colors - a cool blue and cool yellow, and a warm red. I like the neutrals produced by this mix.

Joy

"Joy" - 8"x5"

Finished!

I've been working on this rose as a commission since the start of the year. Once again, I decided to challenge myself with yellow and, as usual, yellow put up one heck of a fight. See my earlier post on yellow to learn more.

The primary yellow here is MaimeriBlu's Permanent Yellow Lemon (PY175).

Benzimidazolone Lemon is considered lightfast, which is why I chose it for this rose. It's difficult to find a transparent cool yellow that is lightfast, meaning it won't fade or shift to an unsaturated gray after prolonged exposure to light.

The other pigments I used were W&N's Permanent Rose and Cobalt Blue.

This is the second painting I've done of late where I've confined myself to a traditional triad of Blue, Red and Yellow. As was the case for "Red Shed," it's hard for me to work in this way. Cobalt Blue always seems so gummy when I use it for shadows -- and since the yellow is so dominant here, I felt as though I was fighting the little grainy flecks in every dark area.

In contrast, using the Lemon Yellow with Permanent Rose made for brilliant orange mixes...the best I've seen in any of my paintings, in fact. So this mixing discovery is one positive I will take from this project.

I hope my client enjoys the painting!

First study in the series

Well, this is the first little study I've done in the series. I really liked the original pencil sketch, so when I moved to this stage, I decided to keep things very simple. I just wanted to know if the idea would work with a limited palette and simple masses of value and hue.

The color palette is Quin Gold, Cobalt Blue and Permanent Alizarin Crimson. I also made a point of mixing the colors on the paper, rather than on my watercolor palette.

Portrait workshop project

I've been playing with a project from an April workshop that I wanted to share.  Jane Paul Angelhart returned to the Shenandoah Valley in April and conducted a workshop for VECCA.

Jane had prepared three portrait projects for us to work on through the three-day workshop. Since I'm so meticulous on these portraits, especially at the beginning, I didn't come close to finishing the first two projects, and I missed the third day altogether because of work commitments.

However, weeks later, I've finally finished the little girl from the first day of the workshop, and I thought I'd share some images of my progress.

For her class participants, Jane provides reference photos and a 7x10 piece of watercolor paper with several critical outlines pre-drawn. Those are the red marks you can see on the first image above. (I'm posting these images larger than I normally would because they are class exercises.)

This first image is my favorite because I love the hints of color on beautiful, clean paper. There's something so fresh about an image at this stage.

As you can see in this version, I've skipped quite a few steps, but mostly the changes involve building up the skin tones of her face by using washes of Daniel Smith's Quin Coral, Perinone Orange, Quin Gold, and MaimerBlu's Sap Green. I also used gentle scrubber brushes to soften and alter the line of the highlight along her forehead.

 

Finally, here is the finished version, which includes several more washes along the background, additional washes on her shirt, refinement of the shape and shadows of the ear, and some more touches of wispy hair. I didn't want to fuss too much with secondary areas such as the ear, because that's not the focus of the image. Her eyes, as well as the shape of that beautiful highlight, should be the dominant element. 

I cannot stress enough how much I have learned from taking two workshops from Jane Paul Angelhart. She is an extraordinary teacher, who provides the right kind of guidance from the onset. I never thought I could paint portraits because my early attempts at mixing skin tones were always disastrous. But Jane's palette, and her enthusiastic demonstrations and advice make all the difference.

Faces finished

Here are the long-promised close-ups of the faces in my most recent painting. So far all reactions to the painting have been positive, and I'm generally pleased with how it developed.

The faces have been developed using Jane Paul Angelhart's palette of transparent and semi-transparent colors. However, I did substitute one of her stalwart pigments, Holbein Olive Green, in favor of MaimeriBlu Sap Green.

I have found in difficult to work with the Olive Green in some past paintings because it pushes toward orange tones when glazed with reds and pinks. I found that the Sap Green was more neutral in skin tone applications. I want to test that idea further in my next attempt at a portrait.

More butterflies

So here is the result of the plastic wrap. . . pretty nifty! And, the bonus benefit is that the technique can be completed more quickly than the careful layers I built up in the first version.

Now, I'm not saying that carefully painted "random" shapes aren't fun . . . but truly, there is a benefit in regard to the paper's surface. I had so many thin layers of paint on the previous painting that when I got to the end, I was having difficulty keeping a crisp edge on some of the darkest ares. The paper sizing was no longer effective, and feathers and bleeds were creeping into completed sections every time I applied fresh, dark color. So, reaching this level of texture with only a single application of pigment and water was very helpful in the long run.

I next applied one layer of a neutral tone over the plastic wrap effects to unify the patterns and then tackled the difficult section: evenly applying a mixed black throughout the painting.


The darkest design shapes hold the composition together, I think. Here you can see the butterflies still covered in their masking fluid, surrounded by dark, velvety passages.

I mixed my black from Permanent Alizarin Crimson and Pthalo Green. It works wonderfully as a dark staining color, but it also tends to shift from green to purple if I don't have the proper balance of pigments in the mix. When dry, I went back over the dark areas once more, and added a touch of Cobalt Blue to the mix to even out the color shifts.

I had applied some masking fluid to areas that were wholly contained within the largest dark areas to preserve them, but the outer edges of all the convoluted shapes were painted freehand. I had to work quickly, and always stay ahead of the wet edge of paint to avoid obvious brushstrokes. Keeping these shapes sharp and flat-toned was critical to my concept in this painting.

Kadie Redux

On the last day of the Angelhart workshop, I decided that I would apply the techniques to my Kadie portrait -- the first portrait I had ever painted, which I finished in the spring of 2009.

Well, let's just say that what I did at the workshop doesn't merit sharing. I got the shadow areas too opaque too quickly, and tossed the painting as a false start.

So when I got home, I decided to start again.


Here are the early stages of the painting. The original painting was a more traditional head-and-shoulders image and included her left hand as she was holding it up (I think she was in the process of waving goodbye when I snapped the reference photo). For this exercise, I cropped to just her face. I never liked how her hand came out in the original. It was badly drawn and out of proportion to her face.

The face washes are mostly built with quin gold, quin coral and perinone orange, all pigments that Angelhart heavily relies on for building skin tones.

These are pigments from Daniel Smith, which first I worried about because I thought they were so much more expensive. Turns out, when you compare the same-size tube, they're not any more expensive than Winsor & Newton. It's just that W&N offers pigments in 5 ml tubes, so instinctively you think that paying $13.44 for a 15 ml tube of Daniel Smith Cobalt Blue is terrible. In fact, the 14 ml tube of W&N Cobalt Blue costs more -- $15.72 (priced at www.dickblick.com).



Here I am still building up skin tones and adding darks to help me gauge values.



And here's pretty much where I am right now. I've done a bit more work since this image was taken, but it's been nearly two weeks since I last touched any of my brushes. I hope to get back into the groove a little bit this weekend. I've got a lot to do on her hair (which is very different than the approach I took with the original), and I think I've got to lighten some areas around her face.

I'm really struggling with trying to make colors bold enough to be seen from across a room, but also work when seen from only a short distance. I guess that's where working on large pieces is a benefit. You can eliminate the "close-up" view from the equation because you can only process the image from a distance.

Baby steps

Well, I think it's looking better. The contrast of the rust/maroon elements on the falls helps immensely, I think.

Looking back over my color chart from the weekend, it appears that the most attractive mixes come from using Yellow Ochre. Those samples actually exhibit some almost silvery effects. Most of the others tend toward brown or green.

But I'm loath to use Yellow Ochre in most of my paintings because it is somewhat opaque, and it exhibited "milky" and dull attributes the few times I've tried it. Perhaps I was using it with incompatible pigments, so with some more experiments I might give it a second look.

All about yellow . . .

I'd like to take some time to talk about yellows, since they are giving me so much trouble in this new mini.

By the way, here's the next stage of the iris:


Some progress, but it's still been very frustrating to create shadowed areas without turning them into mud.

So I decided I had to do some research. It's too late for this one, but I might be able to learn something for a new attempt.

So, out with the color wheel to discuss some color theory.



On the color wheel, colors that are opposite are complements, and when they are mixed, they neutralize one another, creating, in theory, a gray.

I use this principle all the time in my snowy barns series by mixing French Ultramarine Blue with Burnt Sienna. Those complements, representing blue and orange, create wonderful neutral tints. I can create a rich gray, or shift the balance to make the gray warmer or cooler.

In theory, as can be seen on the color wheel above, purple and yellow are complements. So, they should also be able to create a range of "grays," or neutral tints.

But, it's not that simple, it seems.


Somehow I'm pleased to see that, even on the color wheel, the window showing a mix of purple and yellow (circled in the image above) creates a muddy brown.

Yuck!

Muddy browns are not I'm after in creating the shadows in the iris' standards and falls, But that's what I keep running into as I work through the mini.

First, here's a rundown of some of the available yellows I have. These are all Winsor & Newton Professional Water Colours.

The range runs from cooler colors such as Winsor Lemon, to the warmer Quinacridone Gold. (Note on Quin. Gold -- this is W&N's new formulation which uses several pigments to mimic the appearance of the original one-pigment paint using PO 49. The one-pigment formula was discontinued in 2005, according to Bruce McEvoy's Handprint site.)

There are also two more opaque yellows in this mix, Cad. Yellow and Yellow Ochre.

The yellows I actually have used in the iris are Aureolin and Quin. Gold.

The pigments I've used within those two yellows to create shape and depth are two mixed purples (from the other irises) made from French Ultramarine Blue (PB 29) and Perm. Alizarin Crimson (PR 206). One purple is mixed with more blue, the other with more red. I've also used touches of Pthalo Green (PG 36) and Perylene Maroon (PR 179) as reflected colors within some of the shapes.

Now, if I create a color-mix swatch using all of these options, will I find that some mixtures are more successful than others?

Doesn't look promising. To the two mixed purples, I also included Ultramarine Violet. (To see the chart more clearly, you may have to click the image to see it full size.)

But, I'm going to use this chart for a future iris to help in planning. I hope that will lead to a better result.

In the meantime, stay tuned to see if I can rescue this mini . . .

Progress

The background was the first thing I did on this mini, and, as you can see from these updates, I haven't changed it. It was completed wet into wet, and I mixed the colors on the paper rather than on my palette. Mostly it's Thalo Green and Perm. Alizarin Crimson, with splotches of New Gamboge.


As for the color of the iris, it's a mixture of Ultramarine Blue and Permanent Rose. I pre-mixed two purples from these pigments, one warmer and one cooler. I use the two to create depth by pushing some of the petals (technically standards and falls) to the foreground, and others to the back. It's the technique I used in my class last fall, and using two color temperatures also creates more energy and interest.

New ideas

I'm trying out some of the ideas from Lynn Ferris' workshop, specifically the idea of mixing colors on the paper rather than on the palette.

I did a fast sketch of this scene on a piece of 140# cold press Arches, stretched over a board. Then I plunged in -- and immediately hated how it was turning out.

But I keep plugging along on this. I have no plans for it -- it's purely an experimental exercise, but it's slowly growing on me.

What I'm most unhappy with is the background foliage. It feels like a flat, green mass, with very little sense of depth.

But what I'm most pleased about are the blacks, the shadows within the building. I'm worked hard with using the complements together there, mixed on the paper. (They're permanent Alizarin Crimson and Pthalo Green, by the way).

So an interesting experiment so far. I'll see how it comes out.

Cleaning up

The tape's off; the staples attaching the paper to the board have been removed, and I've trimmed the excess edges.

This is my first watercolor portrait. I've had a few figures in other paintings, but this is the first dedicated attempt I've made in this genre.

A word on the flesh tones. I heavily depended on MaimeriBlu's Dragon's Blood (Semitransparent, using a mixture of PBr7 andPR209). In my previous figure attempts, I had great difficulty working with flesh tones, particularly those tending toward the fair and rosy. Using W&N Permanent Rose (PV19) and Permanent Alizarin Crimson (PR206) in mixtures with Yellow Ochre (PY43), Raw Sienna (PY 42, PR 101), and a host of other yellows, never produced the look I wanted. The reds were always too strident.

By chance I had a trial 6-tube box of MaimeriBlu paints which included Dragon's Blood. It's perfect. It's bright, but not garish. It rewets beautifully (which can be said for nearly all MaimeriBlu paints), and plays well with others. The flesh tones in Kadie are a mixture of Dragon's blood, W&N Raw Sienna, and W&N Cobalt Blue (PB28).