Intermediate Watercolor Where do I Need Hard Edges?

We've all seen paintings that suffer from too many hard edges. Often, if we pay more attention to content than form, the individual parts of the scene insist on being kept separate. A hard edge is the best way to ensure that, but the result can be a jigsaw puzzle that is difficult to see as a cohesive whole.
Deciding which edges in the forest really need to be hard is tricky when we are all wrapped up in doing justice to the individual trees.

Working under the assumption that the best way to see if something needs to be in the painting is to leave it out, I recommend making a study that has no hard edges at all. When it is finished, the study will tell you where more focus is required. It also helps to have a limit in mind, say, half a dozen strokes, so you can identify the most important spots.

You may have to wet both sides of your paper to get it to stay damp long enough

For homework, choose an image that has lots of shapes, and paint a version that is all soft edges. Part of the exercise is to practice the techniques involved in keeping the shapes blurry without losing definition altogether. The awareness skills that are at work include noticing as soon as a hard edge appears, and stopping right there. Then dry the paper, re-wet the relevant areas and continue.
Assess the study, with an eye toward where it needs greater definition. Make the hard-edged additions one at a time, and stand back each time to see if that's enough.

Beginning Watercolor 10/31 Careful / Carefree

Many scenes and images rely mostly on the final layer to give the shapes meaning. The role of the strong darks in the sequence of layers can sometimes be obvious even before you begin painting.

This scene, for example, is made up of almost nothing but strong darks. It's clear that by themselves, the darks would be sufficient to tell the story. The layers that would come before the darks could be applied in a most carefree manner, with the confidence that the narrative content of the scene would be provided later. This increases the likelihood that some of the beautiful, confidently applied paint would still be visible when the painting is done. It's an opportunity to let the paint flow, which is why we came to watercolor in the first place.

Sometimes the role of the darks is not as clear cut as in the snowy dusk scene. 

There are plenty of light and middle value shapes in this photo, which can confuse your eye, but imagine what the scene would be like if all we saw were the darkest darks. Notice how the top of the green building and half of the red one are outlined in dark. If the big, lighter shapes had gone outside the lines those outlines would pull the picture back together. The dark doorway and windows would establish the frontal plane of both buildings, while the cars and their shadows would show us where the ground plane is.

Here's a rough version of the final layer by itself:

When you are not sure how much of the narrative content of a scene is carried by the final layer, try making a quick study of just the darkest darks. Basically, we are looking for an answer to the question, "When in the sequence of layers do the shapes get their identities?"

Not every scene is held together by the darks alone. In the selection below, all but one get their meaning late in the sequence of layers. Can you tell which one relies on some careful attention earlier in the painting process?

Make a "darks only" study of a couple of these, then pick one to paint that tests the ability of the final layer to pull it all together. Be really splashy with the earlier layers! The messiest painting gets the prize.

Beginning Watercolor 10/24/19 Light to Dark and General to Specific

Whatever  you decide to paint, day to day, it can often be made easier by looking at the subject as a sequence of layers. Landscape, still life or portrait, most realist watercolors progress from light to dark. The transparency of the medium makes it easier to put dark on top of light than the opposite. At the same time, paintings tend to progress from general statements to gradually more specific ones.

In this scene the sky is lighter than the skyline. It would be easiest to paint the sky first and then put the skyline down on top of it. Any other order would require matching the edges of the shapes, making them adjacent to each other rather than subsequent.

The shadow shape on this face is darker than the local skin color. It would be logical to begin by painting the entire head with the light tone we see on the right side of the face. The shadow could then be painted on top of the first layer. The strong darks, like the hair, nostrils, and lips could most easily be applied on top of layer number two. Light, middle, dark.

At the same time, the likeness progresses from general to specific. The first layer, which is a pale silhouette, has no features or idiosyncrasies yet. It could be one of a great number of heads. But once the shadow shape is applied as a second layer the face begins to take a more specific form. It gains three-dimensionality, and it is bathed in light. The third layer, the darks, brings greater specificity, revealing the mood, the age and the identity of the sitter. 

In the early stages of the painting, the faith that the darks will establish the individuality of the subject allows the painter to work in a carefree manner. Layer number one can be more casual than number two, which, in turn can be looser than number three. 

Here are a few images that resolve neatly into light, middle and dark value shapes. You can also use the ones above. It is useful to ask when the shapes get their identity, so you will know when you  need to be careful and when you can be carefree . Keep it simple.

Intermediate Homework 10/24/19 Exaggerate! Invent! A La Derain

These pairs of images are meant to invite a bold approach to choosing colors. You can see that the values are believable, but the colors are something else. Do you think  Derain was observing the actual colors? Was he exaggerating them, or maybe inventing them, entirely? Keep color temperature in mind when you choose your interpretation. 

Use the photo as the source of value relationships. Let Derain's paintings give you courage to explore.

This may be Derain by Matisse or Derain by Derain. The web is confused. I'm guessing it's a self portrait.

Intermediate Homework 10/17/19 Invent, Exaggerate, Explore

Invent? Exaggerate? Explore?

You know what I'm talking about...
Reality is just a jumping off place. In class we all got involved in holding onto accuracy of values and letting go of everything else. Color, for example:

Derain

                                                 Not as wild as it first seems, perhaps. 

Below are a few images that rely on a simple dark/light pattern for their structure. Desaturating a photo makes it easier to keep track of the values.

Have fun 

Beginning Watercolor 10/17/19 Seeing in layers

Being able to see the light, middle and dark layers through which your subject will progress takes you most of the way toward a graceful translation of reality into the language of watercolor. Not everyone paints the lights first and the darks last, but for our immediate purposes let's all work that way this week.

The first step, as usual, is to identify the major shapes. Roughly speaking, the "Major" shapes are those that need to be separated in order to understand where they are in the pictorial space.

In this scene, the "white" house is a major shape. It is below and in front of the sky, which is also a major shape. The house overlaps the telephone pole a tiny bit, but it's enough to tell us which shape is closer to us. The pole also reveals where the more elaborate house is in the illusory space. That humble pole turns out to be quite important. Everything in the scene can be located relative to it. 

it's the funky house that really interests me, though, first of all because it isn't white. It's a middle value warm neutral, that we call white because of what we know rather than what we see. 

Let's focus on the values of the major shapes. The sky is the lightest, for sure. The house is middle, or dark middle value, and everything else is dark.

 This scene was chosen because it unfolds nicely into two or three layers in each shape. There is nothing that needs to be reserved. You can simply apply each successive layer on top of the previous ones (OK, I see that little highlight on the red car. Shall we put it in?) 

Give this image a try, if you like, or choose one of the others, below. See if you can paint each major shape with a pale first layer. For each layer of each shape ask if there's anything that you need to paint around. 3 or 4 layers are usually enough to tell the story.

Have fun!

Salt

An unusual composition, with just about everything in the middle distance. Maybe you could make that into a single shape.

Intermediate Watercolor, 10/10/19 Separating shapes

 Separating Shapes

We have spent some time practicing how to decide which edges in a shape are hard , soft, or both. As a means of separating shapes and creating an illusion of depth this is a skill every realist painter can use. It's not the only one, of course, so let's extend this investigation to include other variables: How do we decide which variables to use to get the major shapes to appear separated by space?

In this painting, by Joyce Hicks, just about every shape has a hard edge, but there is no confusion about where things are in space. Consider, one by one, what she has done with color, value and composition to make it easy to read depth in the scene.

By contrast, Josefia Lemon's landscape comprises almost entirely soft edges, yet she, too, creates a feeling of vast space. Go down the list: Value, color, composition and wetness. What decisions has the artist made to bring about this illusion?
These are deliberate decisions, the result of experience in both the nature of the medium and understanding how we see.

Here's a scene with a real collision of shapes.Some work must be done to simplify the picture and get the shapes to separate. Can any of the shapes be combined to make the space easier to read? Which variables would that involve? What can be done with color to keep the background more distant? How about value? Edges?

How many separate buildings do you see in the background at the end of the street? Could they be combined? How can you keep them separate from the group of buildings in the middle distance, right behind the car? Don't forget color temperature as a spacial tool. As a rule, warms advance and cools retreat.
Make a couple of sketches of one of these photos, or, better yet, find one you'd like to translate into watercolor. Experiment with manipulating variables to separate shapes in space. Keep track of the decisions you made so we can discuss them during critique.
Have fun!