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.

Wardensville series

I've decided to try a series that examines some of the often overlooked scenes in Wardensville. It's really an exercise in composition -- i.e. looking closely at a scene and exploring the relationships between shape, masses of value and hue.

I regularly follow a number of artists who share "daily paintings" through their blogs. For some reason, square compositions are prevalent on many of these sites, so I feel that influence as I work through this series and develop paintings that are composed within squares. But, I've also completed several other square compositions prior to this, and I find the challenge of the square very appealing.

Award Winners!

Rimmed in Rust

I just received word that "Rimmed in Rust" won first place at the Randolph County Community Arts Center Gala Exhibition in Elkins, W.Va. Best of Show was won by my watercolor friend Deanna Gillum of Buckhannon. Yeah Deanna!

The volunteers and staff at RCCAC do an excellent job staging exhibitions throughout the year. Plus, the display space in the Great Hall, formerly the sanctuary of St. Brendan Catholic Church, is wonderful, with excellent lighting and atmosphere. For more on RCCAC, visit their website at: www.randolpharts.org

I'm so glad this painting caught the attention of juror Michael Christie. I like the design of it immensely, but I wasn't sure if it was just me or if it did truly fit together in a pleasing way. It's difficult to step back and assess your own work.

Fire Engine Red

This recognition follows an earlier merit award for "Fire Engine Red" at Aqueous 2012, the West Virginia Watercolor Society's annual juried exhibition, which this summer was held at Arts Monongahela in Morgantown, W.Va.

Juror for that show was Beth Nash, and Best of Show was won by the irrepressible Linda J.C. Turner of Jane Lew. Linda is a jaw-droppingly accomplished watercolorist, and WVWS is lucky to count her among its members. For more on WVWS, including links to its exhibitions, visit www.wvwatercolorsociety.org.

Favorite painters

I have a slowly growing list of favorite painters, and I'd like to share my list with you.

I must caution, however, that I have never had any formal art training, which includes art history. I am sorely lacking knowledge of painters of the past, so my list tends to lean heavily toward contemporary painters, particularly watercolorists.

In my defense, watercolor is what I love, so I can't help but favor some great contemporary painters who love the medium as much as I do. I'm also blessed to have taken workshops from a handful of these painters.

Some of my favorite watercolorists:
Joseph Alleman
Jane Paul Angelhart
Carol Carter
Lynn Ferris
Joyce Hicks
Antonio Masi
Jeannie McGuire
Dean Mitchell
John Salminen
Ron Thurston
Mary Whyte

Some of my favorite painters:
Edward Hopper
Grant Wood
Charles DeMuth

Of course, the tricky part is explaining why these painters appeal to me.

I'll break my explanation into categories.

First, I love architecture, and several of these painters are noted for their skill in rendering architectural subjects. DeMuth, Hopper, Alleman, Masi, Mitchell and Salminen are masters who engage the viewer with dramatic interpretations of geometry and space.

Second, even though I don't really know the rules of composition and design, I can instinctively appreciate great design. All of these painters arrange the elements of their paintings in ways that simply feel right to me.

Third, you tend to develop preferences as a child, and I loved several storybooks that included illustrations that were representative of the early regionalist art movements in the U.S. So I am naturally drawn to Wood, DeMuth and Hopper because of a host of book illustrators who apparently internalized those styles.

Fourth, I appreciate efforts to push watercolor into new territory. I'll put Carter, Masi, McGuire, and Thurston in that category. Carter uses all kids of wet-into-wet techniques to reinvent her subject matter. Masi and McGuire are bold enough to use opaque watercolors in tandem with transparent watercolors, and the results add depth and atmosphere to their subjects. Thurston will break every "rule" -- as long as it looks good when he's finished.

Fifth, I enjoy dramatic light and shadow. I'll put Hopper, Angelhart, Ferris, Mitchell, Salminen, and Whyte into this group. Notice that subject doesn't really matter in this context -- Portraits, figures, landscapes, interiors -- all are enhanced by a mastery of lights and darks. Entire compositions are elevated by the effective use of this simple duality.

Sixth, I love watercolor. I enjoy watching artists ride that wave, so to speak. The move toward super photo-realistic watercolors generally leaves me cold. I appreciate the effort and the skill of the painter, but I don't feel anything when I look at those paintings.

On the other hand, let me see purple, mauve and golden hues mingling in the shadows of an old barn in a Dean Mitchell landscape, and I feel joyful. Joyce Hicks fits into this category because of the lovely bright washes that construct her landscapes -- her paintings look so carefree, as if all the washes just landed there in mere moments and were perfect at the onset. Now, I know that is not the case, that she spends a great deal of time developing compositions from her sketches and studies, but the final effect is so refreshing. Carter also really excels here with her boldly imagined florals, landscapes and portraits.

So these are a few of my thoughts on my favorites. Who are your favorite painters?

Background in

After several layers, I ended up with the background being too dark and overwhelming, so I masked over the figure and scrubbed out some of the background with a natural sponge. 

The rough treatment helped -- it's closer to the mid-range value I had originally intended, but up close you can see the bumps and bruises suffered by the paper. I really must get out of this scrubbing habit.

Bright Eyes

Here is another of the class exercises from Jane Paul Angelhart's class. I did most of this while the workshop was going on, with a few extra touches done since. I think I need to get a background started before doing much more with this little girl's face. It's hard to gauge the shadows and cast shadows against the plain white background.

Returning to A.'s portrait

While I was able to look at my class exercise portrait with new understanding, I also pulled out my portrait of A. And I could see much that needed refined in her face as well. Here's where it is at the present time. If you look to my earlier post about A., I think you can see some of the changes I've made.

It's a trifle difficult to explain everything that I've done (I get in the moment and forget), but mostly I started seeing more of the nuance in the shadowed shapes that create the roundness of the facial features.

I had tried at an earlier stage to darken the far side of her face, but I lost my nerve and blotted out most of what I had done. This time, with the background in place, I was able to work more on that side. I think I've done a much better job this time. That far side of her face really seems like it's turned away into the shadow now. And, most importantly, I haven't lost any of the likeness. In fact, I think it's more like her now.

The chin is another area that I worked on that is important to A.'s likeness. It's more rounded now and a better three-dimensional shape.

I've included a close-up of A.'s features here for a better look.

I suspect that if I put this away again, I'll see even more the next time, but I really think I want to set this aside for good this time. I need to move on to new projects!

Trying to push things

I've not been painting very much of late. My "studio" space became part of a home improvement project, and it's only been in the last few days that I've gotten the room cleaned up and put things back in their proper places.

Since we are still putting the house back in shape and I don't want to start anything new, I decided to pull out the class exercises from Jane Paul Angelhart's class in April. It's amazing what fresh eyes can see!

I decided to work on the cooler parts of the shadows. Over and over again, I've heard Jane say, "Form is always turning." So I've I tried to breathe some life into the many forms that make up this face.

To explain, Jane always attributes many of her instructive comments to Yuqi Wang, a friend of hers from a previous work situation. Wang, by the way, is an amazing artist. And he's absolutely right. As the light hits the rounded forms of the face, the cheek, the chin, the lips, etc., you see the complexity of those shapes converging.

I'm getting better with these nuanced shapes, but I've still got a lot of work to do before I'm nearly as good as I want to be.

Opaque watercolor

I'd like to talk about the workshop I took at the Beverley Street Studio School in Staunton, Va., (www.bssschool.org) a few weeks ago with Charlottesville, Va.-based artist Rick Weaver (www.richardweaver.net) on sketching with opaque watercolors.

I was a little confused regarding the term "opaque watercolors" prior to the class. I realized that some people  use that description when they are talking about gouache. Searching online, I found that some painters, such as Bill James (http://masterartist.fineartstudioonline.com), use gouache regularly, albeit thinly, while describing his paintings as watercolors. Others, such as Donna Zagotta (www.donnazagotta.com) mix traditional watercolors with permanent white gouache. Donna has a wonderful blog post that describes this method in detail (http://donnazagotta.com/blog/?p=1761).

Once I got the materials list for the class, I saw that no gouache was required, but an extra-large tube of Titanium White watercolor was needed.

I had first learned of watercolor artists using Titanium White when I read a feature article on Jeannie McGuire (www.jeanniemcguire.com), from whom I later took a workshop. But Jeannie's use of the unorthodox white isn't particularly opaque -- it just adds a sense of body to her compositions.

As it turns out, Rick Weaver's use of Titanium White is much more opaque than I had previously seen in watercolors. But also Rick comes at each work from an oil painter's perspective.

As he explained in the workshop, he had started using watercolors for a practical reason -- it was easier to travel with watercolors than with oils because of all the restrictions airlines and the TSA now enforce regarding the transport of chemicals. So watercolors have become an ideal sketch medium for Rick to use while traveling.

However, his use of watercolor is consistent with the kind of painting technique you would find in oil or acrylic painting.You don't save whites. You paint over elements you may not like. And nuance in paint application and paint edges is very important.

His palette includes a lot of opaque watercolors as a start (cerulean, cad red and cad yellow, yellow ochre) as well as some heavily staining colors (pthalo green, permanent rose, dioxine violet). And then nearly everything gets mixed with varying levels of Titanium White before being applied to the paper. Water was used mostly to clean off his brush and to get a yogurt-like paint consistency.

I found this kind of painting to be very difficult. I've never worked with anything but traditional watercolors, so I had a hard time simply getting the paint off my brush. With the white mixed in, colors actually dry darker on the paper, which is the opposite of my normal watercolor experience where transparent glazes dry lighter. My inexperience definitely showed, as Rick's comments to me mostly stressed the need to move away from transparent applications and to go more opaque.

One interesting element in his painting setup is his use of colored matboard as a painting support. Like a pastel artist, the use of a toned background was often helpful, it seemed, in building body in the painted areas. I started off on plain, natural white 300-pound Arches, and really struggled to get opaque. Not having any matboard with me, I used another participant's idea and toned some white watercolor paper with a staining color. Once that dried, it was more like Rick's toned piece of matboard -- and I found it easier to work the next day because of that head start. But it was still a difficult process for me to work through.

I've not tried anything else since the workshop, but I have a little travel palette now labeled "Opaque," and I want to play with the idea again at some point. And, I'd like to know if there are other artists out there using watercolors in this kind of opaque application.

Back to class

 

During my absence, I've not painted a great deal, but I have taken two painting workshops. I find that I have to take workshops to reinvigorate my attitude from time to time.

The first of these workshops, in mid-April was with my mentor, Jane Paul Angelhart. I've now taken three workshops from her, and I would never have attempted portraiture without her influence.

The little girl above is one of the class exercises Jane distributes to her classes. She provides photo references and 7x11 pieces of watercolor paper with the basic outlines of the subject already in place. The reason she does this is to expedite the instruction process. This is not a drawing class. The workshop's goal is to teach people how to use her particular palette of "circus colors" in depicting a child's face. So the focus is on mixing and glazing pigments.

That said, it's always amazing to see how a group of nine participants, all starting from the same point, with the same photo reference, end up with nine very different interpretations of the subject.

I have worked on this project for a few hours since the workshop. My goal has been to try to push the rounded shapes of her face, and to more accurately depict the darker side of her face. In my portrait of A., I don't think I went far enough in creating a sense of distance and shadow on the far side. So far, I've been more successful here. But then, I also find it so much easier to work on the portraits of subjects when I don't know them personally. For me, it's much more stressful when you know the subject.