Watercolor - Lesson 2- Using two pigments

Oranges and A Lemon

This week our lesson was about using 2 pigments - Aureolin and Alizeron Crimson with a touch of blue to make the shadows show themselves off.

The original still life was set up before us in the classroom and later we received a photo to help work with out subject over the week. I made a gray tone jpeg of the work to further help see where the shadows fell and where the highlights were to be. Working with values is very helpful and certainly makes the work much more interesting and 3 dimensional. It was now time to begin my first fruit still life.

I started out with a light yellow wash over my fruit and then moved on to the lemon. I felt that my washes were consistent and were partially successful, the fruit were marginal but appeared to be round and the shadows appeared to be coming from the right point but I over worked this piece. It appears that in the course of doing so, I am learning how to apply color, blend and certainly how to make mud so far; however, I do feel that I am progressing.

I continued to work from fruit to background and back and forth until I have become somewhat satisfied with the piece. I need to work harder or smarter to have my skin of my paper remain fresh and for the colors to remain transparent. Scrubbing out and relaying paint, may work for an exercise, but the fluidity of the hand and the intention of knowing where you are going is the same in all art forms. It keeps the piece alive, interesting and inviting. I will continue to work towards this process.

Here is the photo from which I was to work.

Relearning Watercolor - Value Studies

It appears that I enjoy the beginning of things, as here I am again at the beginning. I was enjoying the application of color onto paper and allowing the color to swirl in and out of each other doing what color does. At that point, I was unaware that I knew nothing about how colors react with one another or did so instinctively, but never gave it any thought.

At times, when lucky, I can command the backgrounds of my pieces and find a feeling of calm and peace within that structure. The images were created by using different colors and very few values. When I got to the foreground, nothing- no sense of direction, no understanding of what comes next.

Well, when texts do not satisfy that need of understanding one must find a human who can demonstrate these things so that they can become knowledge. In so doing, they become skills that naturally flow easily from mind to hand to brush to paper and enable the creator to further the story telling. The solution to this situation- a beginning class in watercolor at the Peninsula Fine Arts Museum under the instruction of Bill Holber.

We began with lesson one-usually a good starting point -learning flat and graduated washes- and then with a painting of the Great Smokey Mountains in Mist. A single color painting.

So, how do I begin - I believe it all begins with one color working with itself to speak through the visual image. Single color telling the story.

The eye must know how far that color must reach to give depth and clarity to the piece. It must be thought out - knowing where to begin a painting is often only found when you have seen the entire painting. Values within that color must represent the entire story when using a single pigment or enhance each part of any pigment. Well, of course if anyone is reading this already knows this, but I did not and finding it has given my self critic a bit of joy.

First of all, the painting must be sketched to produce a value study. After procrastinating this in detail, I finally stumbled my way to the paper and went to work. It was developing - yes I can see it now. Let me count the values - could it be as many as - 9 and then perhaps a touch of yellow for some green.( I do believe in my next piece, I will do myself the favor of not having to do this step but do a gray tone scale of the jpeg in photoshop and study that.)

"Oh my," she exclaimed as she thought, "Now where do I go from here?"

I attacked the problem as any good potter would do and set out to make my "paints" the proper color and amount for each of the paintings I wanted to attempt. I added so much of this and so much additional water and there were little math problems to help recreate each value. After admiring and trying to use this new procedure, it was rapidly abandoned for what now seems so natural. Get that first value down and then work them up.

It is fun to paint.
"Oh, my!" she exclaimed again. "I can see."

These are the 3 pieces that I presented for my value study.