Shadow Play

"Shadow Play" - 8x8

Well, I just finished the second (or third?) painting in the Wardensville series.

As usual, my emotional pattern remains intact - high hopes at the onset, an early setback where I think I've ruined it, a stubborn refusal to quit, a rescue and recovery mission where my hopes take flight again, and then a slow, anti-climatic finish, and finally some disappointment.

I suspect this is how every artist feels during the process of every painting. Why do we go through this? I think most painters I've talked to say it's the process and the vision, but rarely the results, that provide the rush we crave.

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!

New year! New opportunities!

I'd like to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

I'll start off 2013 with some wonderful news. I learned early in December that Mumbles and Squeaks has earned entry in the 2013 Southern Watercolor Society show!

The show juror, Mary Ann Beckwith, selected 80 paintings from a pool of 410 works submitted by 241 artists. By SW rules, only one painting per artist was permitted.

This is the first time that I've tried to enter a large watercolor show, so I was very surprised to have made it. When I look at the work of the other artists who are included in the show, my amazement multiplies.

The show will open at the Gadsden County Arts Center in Quincy, Fla., on Feb. 8 and run through April 27.

My next challenge will be shipping the painting. I got a little bit of practice on shipping art earlier this month, so I hope this part of the challenge won't be too stressful.

You can learn more about the Southern Watercolor Society at their website: www.southernwatercolorsociety.org.

Merry Christmas

 I've nearly missed the season, but here's my holiday image for the year. 

I'm not sure how many cards I made using little prints of this painting -- I used up all my blank cards, so that ended the card's run at the start of the week. 

I hope the recipients enjoy their cards -- I don't bake or do much decorating for Christmas anymore, so this activity has become my holiday treat.

Best wishes to you and yours!

Comparison

This is the final painting of Mumble and Squeaks.

And here's that failed version from earlier this year that I allude to in my previous post. You may not see the splotches easily in this image, but believe me, they are there!

And now the "rest of the story"

With apologies to the late Paul Harvey for my post title -- here's what happened between versions of Mumbles and Squeaks.

The problems with the first painting: Shadowed areas that got too dark too fast, and keeping those shadows even, yet interesting.

When I got too dark, I panicked, and tried to scrub things out. That ruined the surface of the paper, and then it would not hold paint without bleeding all over the place (ah the benefits of sizing!).

But the larger issue was the diagonal shadow cast from the little roof above the second-story door. That shape drew me to the scene to begin with, and it was so complicated, I could not paint it quickly enough to keep the wash even. Even trying to pre-wet the area with clear water didn't help me. I started getting splotches where wet areas would meet nearly dry areas...it was a mess. And I was so busy trying to just get the wash down, I was not making it look interesting -- it was just an ugly, splotchy shape.

So I walked away for several months and thought about those problems. I transferred a fresh drawing to a new piece of watercolor paper, but I decided that I would not put brush to that piece of paper again until I had developed a more thorough plan of attack.

My solution developed after watching a snippet of a John Salminen painting video. As you know, I'm a big fan of his work (see why at www.johnsalminen.com).

This video snippet was part of an advertisement for one of his painting DVDs, and it showed him using strips of cheap masking tape to mask out an area of a painting. He layered multiple layers of tape over an area, and then used a very sharp knife to cut through the tape and expose an area of paper, which he then painted with a wash.

Watching this, I questioned how it was possible to cut the tape and not cut the paper -- but I thought it was worth further exploration.

It turns out, if your knife is sharp enough, then you can feel your way along the surface of the paper without damaging it. So after several practice attempts, I decided to use that technique to mask around the primary diagonal shadow shape.

Since I had the freedom to lay paint on quickly with the shape's edges protected, I started playing with brighter colors in areas that I thought would have reflected light. Since the entire painting is painted with four colors -- essentially a yellow, red, blue and green, it was easy to brighten areas but keep the overall color palette in harmony.

Once I had that essential shadow shape down, I pulled off the tape and began to work on the rest of the painting. As the layers went down, I went back into the cast shadow several times to darken some areas and highlight others. With the primary shape defined, I found it easier to paint in that area and keep layers even.

So, I can't imagine doing an entire painting with that kind of layered masking approach, but I did find it helpful in getting a complex shape down on the paper. And it helped me get a painting finished!

"Mumbles and Squeaks"

"Mumbles and Squeaks" (11x16)

After a nearly 6-year ferment, I've finally finished this painting. Yeah!

I took the reference photo back in 2005 or 2006. It's a building in downtown Oakland, Md., that may or may not still be there. I've not been in the downtown area there since the day I took this photograph. Something about the long cast shadow caught my eye, and I quickly snapped a photo.

That quick shot helped contribute to my long journey. It included all kinds of visual distortions that distracted from the essence of the scene. I loved the basic idea -- but I did not feel comfortable in my drafting skills to render the scene correctly. I had to make a transition from copying to drawing -- and I didn't think I had the wherewithal to do it.

Finally this spring, I made the effort at translating the photograph into a detailed line drawing, and I think I eliminated and/or minimized most of the problems from the shoddy reference image. I'm still aware of one problem -- but, as usual, I didn't see it until it was far too late to correct it.

After making the drawing, I took my first shot at the painting. You may remember an in-process image of that painting from the spring. Well -- let's say that didn't go anywhere. And everything went back into the drawer again.

I'll explain what happened between the first and second painting attempts in my next post. Stay tuned!

"Red Shed"

"Red Shed"
8"x8"

Well, the first one is finished...I don't know that it turned out quite the way I had originally imagined it, but it will have to do. Somehow, my sketch has more balance and energy...too much concern with painting clean, straight lines has diminished those positive attributes.

Once I had finished the painting, I went back and looked at my sketch and realized that one possible problem was the background foliage. In my sketch, I had broken the mass of trees into two parts, with the corner of the background structure jutting out against the flat sky.

In the little study, and in the final painting, the foliage area had grown and now rounded that corner behind the building.

Thinking that perhaps this chance was affecting the balance of the elements, I scanned the painting and then Photoshopped the sky back into the scan. Somehow that change made me feel better, so I decided to take the risk and do the same in the painting.

I carefully masked the shape of the building with masking tape, then scrubbed out the foliage in area that concerned me. I tried to go light on the pressure, to lessen the damage to the surface of the paper.

Once that was done, I removed the masking tape, and carefully flushed more Cobalt Blue into the area to match up with the rest of the sky. The top painting is the result. The bottom is what it looked like before I made that last change.

I'm not sure that it really helped matters. I think the geometric arrangement of the overlapping structures is more dominant in the final version, but you could also argue that the foliage shape helped to soften those hard edges and balanced the two corners (lower left and upper right). I'm not sure. Based on the pencil sketch, I had really liked the arrangement, and I wanted to stay as close to that model as I could.

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.