Beginning Watercolor 5/16/13 Which came first...?

You’ve all probably heard me say that you shouldn’t give up on a painting until you’ve put in the darkest darks, because you don't know how effective the illusion will be without those powerful dark strokes.

I keep waiting for someone to ask, “if you can’t tell whether the painting is any good until the darks go down, why not put them in first?”

It’s a very good question, and I’m ready for it. You should put them in first, just not on the same piece of paper as the painting. By all means, make a study that maps out the pattern of only the darks. It will help you see where the lights and middle values are headed, and give you an idea of where you need to be careful in the early stages.

San Pedro y San Pablo Etla

This image has plenty of strong darks. A quick study may reveal how much of the narrative they carry.

Darks only

An altered photo makes it clear that the darkest darks in this image tell most of the story.  A rough,  painted version of the pattern would provide the same information, with the added benefit of a physical memory of how it could be painted.

Edge of Town, Oaxaca
It is not so obvious what role the darks play in this image. I'll leave it to you to find out.

For homework, find a photo or a live scene that you would like to paint, and make a quick study of the darks alone. When you are ready to paint a proper picture, keep the study handy, so you can be reminded that the darks will add substance to what may seem hopelessly flat.

Beginning Watercolor Homework 5/10/13 The Illusion of Space

From our elevated viewpoint in the park, it was easy to tell which of the overlapping landforms was farthest away, and which was closest. To translate that sense of depth into the language of watercolor, we can practice seeing the scene in terms of the basic formal variables that are the tools of the medium. We can manipulate relative value, color, edge quality and composition to create a relationship of the major shapes that describes their placement in space. How many variables and what degree of intensity we employ for each determines the impact of the illusion.

Joseph Zbukvic

If you look at Joseph Zbukvic's scene of Venice in terms of foreground, middle and background, the shapes resolve into far fewer than there seem to be at first. Consider how he has used value to separate them from the adjacent shapes. Where has he used both value and color? How about edge quality? Overlapping composition?

The awning stands out more boldly against the sky than the domes do. The shoulders of the man on the left reveal his position relative to the base of the statue more obviously than his arms. What has the artist chosen to do with the variables to show us where everything is?

For homework, try turning up and down the degree to which you use the basic variables to separate shapes. For example, make a sketch of a shape overlapping another of the same color, but a different value. Then make another where the same shapes are closer in value. Try varying the number of variables you use at one time. Let your shapes be different in color, as well as value, for instance.
Your shapes can be based on a realist image, or entirely abstract. The idea is to practice fine tuning the extent of the feeling of space between the shapes. 

If you want to, and you have time, try applying what you observe to a simple scene, or an arrangement of shapes on a page.

Intermediate Watercolor Homework 5/10/13 What Matters

It may seem obvious that just because you see something, it doesn't necessarily belong in your painting, but, somehow, we often forget. What we know well when we are contemplating can evaporate as soon as we begin to actually paint.
Even if you have the detachment to wonder whether the bit you're about to paint needs to be generally stated or richly detailed, how do you know the answer? How can you tell what is essential information and what is optional?
First of all, it helps to remember to squint. With your eyes narrowed way down, similar colors blend together. The value range is compressed. Separate shapes merge and become part of a simpler pattern of darks and lights. Basically, what remains visible when you squint is enough to tell the story. Anything more than that is embellishment - you can add it if you want to, but the viewer will get along fine without it.
If your painting has a definite focal point, There's another tool that makes deciding what matters easier. Focus on the center of interest. With your attention fixed there, use your peripheral vision to observe the  part of the scene you want to treat next. While the focal point is detailed, the less important parts of the big picture are relatively indistinct. This is the appropriate way to treat the areas that play a supporting role. If you shift your focus to each shape as you prepare to paint it, everything will be competing for the viewer's attention.

Bound                       David Taylor

The trees and buildings in the background of David Taylor's cityscape are deliberately simplified. No doubt he could see more specific information, but he included just enough to tell us what we need to know. Standing where we are, we don't need to know much about the window treatment of the distant buildings, or the leaves on the trees. What matters is provided. What doesn't is left up to us.

For homework, look at a scene with an eye toward the role each part plays in the big picture. Can you afford to give the paint room to run, as Taylor has with his trees?

Your job is to allow the paint to be in charge as much as possible. The guidelines you establish for what matters come from your intelligent assessment of the job each passage does. With those few standards in place, the paint can do no wrong. Have faith.

Beginning watercolor Homework 5/2/13 Who's in Charge?

Being part of a community of painters is unmistakably valuable, as is having a retinue of references, resources and influences. But in the moment of deciding where the next stroke goes, we are all on our own. Sooner or later we have to take on the role of director of our painting practice.

Time spent honing awareness skills provides a foundation for becoming your own best teacher. If you narrow your focus down to one thing at a time, it is possible to clearly observe how the choices you make effect your work.

The first step is to discover which single feature of your work needs attention. Take a good look at the copy you began in class. Is there a part of the page or an aspect of the whole piece that feels uncertain to you? Are you confident about color, value, wetness?

Choose one variable that you want to strengthen, and make a plan for an exercise that will direct your attention toward a solution.

For example, if you see that the space in your picture feels ambiguous, check to see if the shapes separate from each other adequately. If they don't, make a study in which at least two of the main variables (color, wetness, value, composition) are at work to separate each shape from its neighbors.

If you suspect that your color choices may not suit the subject, design a study that puts deliberate limits on the number of colors you use.

This process is not as analytical as it may sound. Each of us has a store of visual experience that informs our decisions. What is your instinctive sense of where your painting needs work?

The homework is to zero in on something you want to work on. One thing. Trust your gut, and get to work. Be prepared to tell the group what you chose to do. That's it.
Have fun.

Godwit                                         Tom Hoffmann, 2012

Intermediate Watercolor 5/2/13 The Zone

The structures at Gasworks park are much too complicated for any properly crazy painter to try to duplicate, which is a GOOD thing. The big shapes are familiar enough to tell a lot of the story, without all the specific information of which pipe goes where.
The color is another very accommodating factor, since that rusty neutral can be made by mixing any pair of complimentaries.
Everyone did plenty of color and shape work at the park yesterday (if you weren't there, you can use the hundreds of photos that google provides). Use your studies to design the shapes and to decide on a limited palette.
This is an opportunity to set up boundaries for your exploration that pretty much assure that you can do no wrong. Rule number one is, "Do not correct anything".

Design a group of big shapes based on the gasworks. Zoom in or out, as you please.

Make a mixture of your complimentary colors that will serve as a rough representative of the local color of the structures.

Paint the whole shape with a very wet wash of your mixture.

Use the component colors of your mix to make the shadow shapes and the calligraphic railings, seams, rivets and ladders.
Do not correct your brush strokes. Let the paint do whatever it wants. Have faith. You have established enough control by prescribing the shapes and the colors. The marks you make with the component colors will be informed by what you notice about pattern, proportion and distribution.

When the dust has settled, you can mix up a strong dark within your chosen palette, and use it to create additional structure and boundaries, as needed. This is a final layer. Use it sparingly. The difference between "correcting" and these final darks is that one involves removing paint that you judge to be wrong, and the other places an additional layer of punctuation marks on the sentences you have already written.
Have fun.

Beginning Watercolor Homework 4/25/13 How wet is the Brush Compared to the Paper?

Many watercolorists assume that they must wait for the paper to be wet to exactly the right degree before applying secondary strokes that need soft edges. In fact, controlling the edge quality of those strokes has much more to do with how dry the brush is than how wet the paper is. Try this quick and surprising exercise, after you read it all the way through:

Make three 6x6” washes of clear water, one just damp, one quite shiny, and one dripping wet. Now load the brush with plenty of pigment and very little water. The paint should be thicker than what you would use on dry paper. Observe how the brush strokes look on the palette. You should be able to see the tracks of individual bristles before the stroke flows back together. Work quickly, so your washes don’t dry. If you were to make a short stroke in the center of each of your washes, what do you think the results will be? Go ahead and try it.. Were the results what you expected?

In the exercise above, the wetness of the brush was kept constant, while the wetness of the paper was deliberately varied.

Now try an exercise where the paper's wetness stays constant, and the brush gets wetter and wetter:

Make a large, damp, colored wash, about 6" tall and 12" wide. It should be shiny, but not at all puddled. Start with a brushful of a saturated, different color that you know is drier than the paper, and make a stroke off to one side of your large wash. 

Now add a little water to the brush, and work it around on the palette. Make a stroke of this wetter color near the first one. Add a little more water, and make a third stroke. Keep adding water, a little at a time, and making a new stroke beside the last one, working your way across the wash, until you lose control of what happens on the paper.

In the first exercise, the look of your secondary strokes is one you will want to use often. In the second exercise, what happens when your brush gets too wet, on the other hand, is something you won't do on purpose very often. Which one would be appropriate for soft-edged shadows?

For the next critique, look for a passage in a scene or an image that could be represented with the kind of strokes you made in the first exercise. Experiment with the wetness of the brush to discover what works to give you the kind of edge you want. Bring in the study and the photo, if you use one.

Intermediate Watercolor Homework 4/25/13 Water as a Subject: Make it Simple

It is not unusual to be seduced by the apparent complexity of water as a painting subject and end up making a multi-layered collection of several hundred brushstrokes. It is natural to want to do justice to the ever-changing subtlety of the surface, but it somehow always manages to elude translation. It can seem, since the subject is so complicated, that there must be something missing from your attempt. And if you look a little more closely, sure enough, there is another element of subtle variation, one more layer of strokes, that might be just the missing ingredient. And so it goes, becoming more and more elaborate, and more and more like mud.
You might conclude from a few experiences like this that water is just too hard to paint, and add it to the list of subjects to be avoided. Living in Seattle, though, you can only get away with that for a little while before the lakes or the sound, or just the wet streets start calling to you. Besides, how can you paint Koi without something for them to swim in (hmmm, now that's a koi painting I might enjoy)
The problem is all about the complexity of the subject, but not with how to match that in paint. Rather, it's a question of how to make it simpler. Instead of focusing in on ever more subtle aspects of the subject, the real task is to step back and look for ways to generalize all that information.
Looking at water as interpreted by master watercolor painters is a good way to begin seeing which, of all those features we can perceive, are the essential ones.

Winslow Homer, in the Adirondacks

OK, it helps when the water is nice and calm. This is treated almost as an upward-facing mirror, reflecting the sky, with just a few strokes to represent the reflection of the canoe and paddlers.  But calm or not, Homer has surely omitted plenty of information. Is it too simple for you? How many layers did the artist make? What did the water look like before the darks were applied? Before the middle values?

Homer, again, in Bermuda.

How many layers? What did the first layer look like by itself?

John Singer Sargent    Venice, The Grand Canal

These are the same three layers that Homer used in his Bermuda scene: Sky, with reserved lights for the reflected buildings on the left, then the middle value reflections of the shadowed buildings on the right, and, finally, a few dark strokes for the reflections of the gondolas and posts.

Anders Zorn

This water, though very carefully done, is no more complex than Sargent's or Homer's. Count the layers. 

All three artists worked from a very general first layer - basically a reflection of the sky rendered with a single, overall wash. The second layer was the next most general statement - reflected buildings or, in Zorn's case, the soft-edged middl-value backs of the ripples. Finally, each painter made a series of hard-edged, horizontal darks to represent the reflections of nearby objects. 

For homework, try copying the water in a master work, like one of the above. Then, look for a picture of water (or go sit beside some real water), and see if you can perceive it as a series of layers, the simpler, the better. Here's a potential subject: