techniques

August 3, 2010 6:09 pm

Montana Road Trip or Playing With Photoshop

by Jenny Armitage in composition,for sale,landscapes,prints available,techniques,watercolors

Watercolor Painting of the Decent into Butte, Montana

Montana Road Trip (12 x 18 watercolor) $250

This is the descent to Butte, Montana coming from the east. Crossing Montana on I90 the views alternated between narrow rocky places and expansive high plains, true big sky country. I wanted to capture the feeling of the decent from the narrows to the wide open space below. I took a number of photos through the dashboard trying to get that feeling. This one came the closest:

Reference Photo

As you can see, the four lane interstate dominates the picture. Also the road looks much flatter than it actually was. There are other problems too. The end of the road is almost dead center in the middle of the picture. Trees hide the expanding vista. There is nothing about the vista to draw the eye in.

Adobe Photoshop to the rescue. I don’t have a professional edition, just Elements 6. But it’s fine for my purposes. I began by using the lasso tool to select the right hand cliffs. I then copied them, flipped them right to left, and wedged them in over the left hand two lanes of interstate. I selected and copied some of the left hand cliffs and slipped them in behind my newly transformed right hand cliffs. I used both copying and the clone tool to remove the trees from my opening vista. I lassoed the right hand cliffs again and stretched them upwards. I enlarged the canvas and stretched the whole image to the right. I added a band of sunlight in the vista:

Altered Reference Photo

The result was quick and dirty, but it gave me a good idea where I was going. And it gave me a workable photo to draw from. I used the bottom of the concrete barrier still showing in my altered photo to help me plot the new guard rail. The feet of the unaltered cliffs helped me imagine the feet of my new cliffs.

Here’s my working drawing:

Working Sketch

I left out the mountain range on the left as it would detract from the center of interest at the foot of the road. I also pulled the right hand cliffs even further to the right than in my altered photo, thus opening up more of the distant vista.

I did the painting itself quickly beginning with the sky, filling in the road while it dried and then laying in the trees to establish the dark values. The trees are phthalo blue, french blue, new gamgee, and Winsor purple mixed mostly on the paper. For the cliffs I used cerulean blue, cobalt blue, and yellow ochre, and purple. I added more purple and blue to the right hand shadowed side and more burnt sienna to the sunlit side. Rather than using burnt sienna to dull the blues, I used hansa yellow deep. The sky is phthalo, cobalt blue, burnt sienna, and more purple. I used the same pigments for the road. The result is bluer and stormier than the photo, but more like the day itself with was dark and threatened but rarely delivered rain.

Or purchase a print here.

tags: Butte, Elements 6, I90, Montana, mountains, Photoshop, road

July 12, 2010 5:37 pm

Yellowstone Lake Painting

by Jenny Armitage in for sale,landscapes,prints available,techniques,watercolors

At The Water's Edge, painting by Jenny Armitage

At the Water's Edge (watercolor 10 x 15) $225

Here is another vacation watercolor. This one is from Yellowstone National Park on the north side of the lake. We picnicked here on our last day in the park.

Like my previous painting of Fort Robinson, I simplified the image by masking heavily and then getting out the big brushes. I began by painting in the sky and the light blue of the lake. Then I masked the sky and all of the water except the dark ripples. I painted the trees and hills in used a one inch brush and moving diagonally in wet juicy strips of cobalt blue, raw sienna, and phthalo blue. I blotted the rocky edge in with burnt sienna. The lake ripples are cobalt and phthalo blue grayed down with burnt sienna. After the paint dried I picked out the grass and the highlights on the rocks with mask and added more paint to the rocks and foreground.

Or purchase a print from my Fine Art America website. More landscapes by me and others are available at landscape paintings

tags: firs, lake, poured, shore, trees, Yellostone

May 15, 2010 4:05 pm

Two Paintings of Reedy River Falls, Greenville, South Carolina

by Jenny Armitage in composition,for sale,landscapes,prints available,techniques,watercolors

These are thee Upper Reedy River Falls, in Falls Park downtown, Greenville, South Carolina. The falls are actually about two or three times wider than my paintings imply, but I wanted to capture the immediacy of the girls looking up at the falls.

My first attempt show the full height of the falls. like the sense of scale and the horizontal lines of the upper rocks, but I thought it lacked visual punch. After looking at it a while, I decided that part of the problem was that the amount of area covered by medium value rock and the amount of high key fall are almost equal. Also the falls are almost dead center in the painting.

For my second attempt I came in closer and worked darker for greater contrast with the white water. I also reversed the image right to left, thereby clarifying the entrance to the painting. Finally I moved the falls to one side of the painting.

Upper Reedy River Falls, Falls Park, Greenville, SC

Ring Side Seats (watercolor 14 x 20) reserved for La Salles Show

To create the falls themselves I used a lot of liquid mask. I began flipping tiny drops of mask onto the falls. Then I washed the area with highly diluted phthalo blue. When I removed the mask the area looked white, but the even whiter dots gave it some sparkle. Then I masked the white areas of the upper falls and began painting in the water and the rock behind it. I used burnt umber, burnt siena, raw sienna, cerulean blue, cobalt blue, and phthalo blue. I let the blues predominate. I worked much darker on Ring Side Seats II than I did on Ring Side Seats I.

After removing the mask, I continued working softening edges and adding paler washes.

I used the same palette for the rocks but emphasizing burnt sienna and raw sienna.

Reedy River Falls, Greenville, South Carolina

Ring Side Seats I (watercolor 16 x 21) $450.00

tags: falls, Falls Park, girls, Greenville, masking, Reedy River, South Carolina, waterfalls

May 8, 2010 11:22 am

Through the Bamboo Grove

by Jenny Armitage in Uncategorized,landscapes,prints available,techniques,watercolors

Through the Bamboo Grove (watercolor 17 x 23) on reserve for La Salles show

As promised, here is a larger more finished version of the Bamboo Grove. I left the composition pretty much as it was in my little postcard painting, but I greatly increased the contrast by darkening the shadows and underbrush.

This time I poured the painting. Pouring watercolor is a process much like batik.

I began by making a value sketch of the painting in graphite. I transferred my sketch to the watercolor paper with graphite paper. Then I used liquid mask to save all of the white highlights. In this case highlights were thin strips of light on the edge of the bamboo, and the ridges where the sections of bamboo meet.

Once the painting was masked, I mixed three colors of paint very thinly in cups: cadmium yellow, new gamgee, and phthalo blue. I wet the painting and then poured the paint out of the cups across the paper working from left to right and sloping downward. I poured the yellows first then the blue.

After the painting was dry I masked all of the pastel values, mostly sky and unshadowed path and poured again. This time I used hansa light and new gamgee for the yellows and both phthalo and cobalt for the blues. I added quinacridone deep red rose too. I mixed all of the colors more thickly than on the previous pour. I used very little red and tried to isolate it on the bottom on the picture.

I repeated the mask and pouring process two more times masking two sets of medium values. The last time I poured only shadows and underbrush.

After the painting had dried completely, I removed the mask and assessed the results. I had beautiful varied greens in the bamboo and nice dark shadows, but bamboos were mostly one value and looked flat. I darkened the rear bamboo, and shadowed the sides of the bamboo to round it. I dropped some color into the highlights on the path and added some blue to the sky. I soften the skyline foliage and varied the greens a little there. I had left a roadway from my reference photo running across the painting just below the skyline foliage. I decided that that was a distraction and painted it out.

Prints available from my gallery at Fine Art America.com.

tags: bamboo, green, path, purple, shadows

March 16, 2010 10:32 am

The Green Mister

by Jenny Armitage in for sale,prints available,shows,still lifes,techniques,watercolors

The Green Mister (watercolor 10 x 14) $150.00

This is probably the last watercolor for my one woman mini show this coming April at Art in the Valley, Corvallis Oregon.

I’m using a new technique to replace liquid mask when reserving soft edged areas of white paper in many of my latest still lifes. Puddles of clear water on the paper will resist paint. In this painting I made little lines of water along the reflected light from the mister and silver vase before painting the window sill. The result is a soft sliver of white paper remaining after my washes.

To use the water resist technique use as much water as you can without running outside the area you wish to reserve. You may need to renew the water fairly frequently too.

The water resist technique is more trouble than either masking whites or carefully painting around them, but it has the advantage of creating a much softer edge. This technique is not suitable for fine detail.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.

tags: plant mister, silver vase, water restist, window

February 26, 2010 4:14 pm

Nautilus With Glass, A Color Fantasy

by Jenny Armitage in for sale,prints available,still lifes,techniques,watercolors

Nautilus with Glass Stones (10 x 11 watercolor) $150.00

My husband and I spent last weekend on the Oregon Coast. The weather was so fine we hardly even went inside at all. So on our last day having not set foot in a shop all weekend, it occurred to us we had bought nothing for our daughters. So we stopped in a shell shoppe. We did find some lovey sea urchins for the girls. But we also found something for us, a bisected nautilus shell. Stephen wanted it to display it, but I wanted to paint it. I’ve just finished painting it and it now lives on our mantle together with fossil shells and a free form hand made basket. But it will visit the studio again.

I took great liberties with the color of the nautilus which is really is really a dull orange in the outer chambers fading to blue green at the center. The color shift in my painting was driven by the decision to heavily under-paint the shell in phthalo blue to emphasize the depth of the shell. I over-painted with various mixtures of new gamgee yellow, quinacridone madder rose, and phthalo blue.

In Progress

The left most of the glass stones resting in the shell is actually stone marble. But the green and rust of the actual marble would have clashed horribly with the rest of the painting, so I changed it to a blue glass marble.

The background is a wash of burnt sienna grayed down with phthalo blue.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.

tags: blown glass, glass, nautilus, shell, still life

February 17, 2010 12:04 pm

Three Coneflowers

by Jenny Armitage in Floral,for sale,prints available,still lifes,techniques,watercolors

Afterglow II (8 x 9 watercolor) $60.00

Here are another three cone flowers from last Fall’s garden. This time I painted them during my gallery shift.

I altered my painting techniques a little from Afterglow I. I under-painted the petals in phthalo blue before over painting them in opera and dioxazine violet. I under-painted petals in phthalo blue too. I think the under-painting does add to the the three dimensionality of the flowers.

I also added dioxazine purple to the palette, working it in to the cones and the petals.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.

tags: coneflower, echinacea, flowers, pink, underpainting

February 12, 2010 4:13 pm

Afterglow: Pink Coneflower

by Jenny Armitage in Floral,prints available,techniques,watercolors

Afterglow (8 x8 inch watercolor)

Painted from a photo I took in my front yard last year, this is a close up of my pink cone flowers (echinacea). Like mums and asters, coneflowers are a reliable late summer flower. In the late afternoon light they just glow. I only have five of them but I hope they spread like mad.

I began this painting with the center of interest, the cone of the the cone flower. I painted the bright orange parts of the cone with a combination of quinacridone deep red rose and cadmium yellow. I began with the brighter orange edge and worked my way down adding rose to the mix as I descended the cone. I filled in around the orange-red highlights with a mixture of burnt sienna and cobalt blue letting the colors mix on the paper. I worked some rose into the mix as I reached the rim of the cone.

I added the petals next with deep red rose, cobalt blue and quinacridone opera from Winsor and Newton. Opera is a vivid pink which I rarely use, but has it uses. Nothing else in watercolor produces such a florescent pink.

I added the background last with a mixture of cobalt blue and cadmium yellow, toned down with burnt sienna. Burnt sienna which is a red-orange desaturates green but not to the extent that green’s compliment red would do. I applied this mixture in tone wet into wet layer and and used a paper towel to lift some of the final layer.

Prints available through Fine Art America.com.

tags: coneclower, echinacea, flower, pink

February 11, 2010 9:51 pm

The Magic Bowl II

by Jenny Armitage in Floral,prints available,still lifes,techniques,watercolors

The Magic Bowl II (watercolor 9 x 9)

I wasn’t entirely satisfied with Magic Bowl I. One on the things I thought lacking was textural contrast and I found the paperweight that formed the center of interest to be a weak point in the painting. The daffodil provides both color and textural contrast. I also gave the background more texture and contrast. I like the result much better. And it keeps the abstract design feel I was aiming for in the first painting.

I painted the bowl conventionally working from light to dark beginning with the daffodil and moving on to it’s myriad of reflections. I used hansa yellow light, winsor orange, cadmium yellow and cobalt blue for the flower. For the bowl I used phthalo blue, cobalt blue, cadmuim red, winsor orange and burnt sienna.

For the background concrete I applied several layers of burnt sienna and phhtalo blue. I salted each layer separately. Salting which is exactly what it sounds like (you sprinkle salt on wet paint) causes irregular lighter areas where the salt sat because the salt pushes away the water and pigment.

Prints available through Fine Art America.com.

tags: blown glass, daffodils, flowers, marbles, salting

January 24, 2010 12:32 pm

Fall Poplars or Playing with Pastels

by Jenny Armitage in for sale,landscapes,pastels,prints available,techniques

Fall Poplars (12 x 18) $125.00

I have admired pastels and mixed media with pastels for some time now. There is a sparkly quality about pastels that no other medium can match. Pastels over watercolors can create both spectacular and subtle effects.

My husband bought me pastels for Christmas, and I have been playing with them this last week. Pastels are if anything less forgiving than watercolor. All color mixing must be done on the paper either optically or by smearing. Pastel smears easily. The paper holds only so much pastel before it suddenly won’t take anymore. This last can be fixed somewhat, by using a workable fixative. Some lifting is possible with a kneadable eraser.

The method is very different from watercolor too. Working with them is a kind of cross between drawing and painting. Pastels are an opaque medium and therefore work best if the dark tones are blocked in first and the lights laid over them. Highlight go on last. Nothing runs. The chalk stays right where you put it until you smudge it.

I started this image on the rough side of a rose colored sheet of Canson Mi-Tietens paper. I laid in the sky with PanPastels. PanPastels come in pots rather than sticks and they are highly pigmented and almost dustless. Applying them is reminiscent of applying dry eyeshadow or rouge. The top of the sky is phthalo blue. Further down I switched to ultramarine blue. Then I worked back up the sky from the horizon, overlaying the deep blue with ultramarine and phthalo tints (both of which are almost white). I used white, and more of the blue tints to lay in the clouds. Then I got out a violet soft pastel stick and added the deeper shadows smudging them in as I went.

I roughed in the far tree line with a dark blue shade of soft pastel. I added a dark green shade lower down and smudged. I pushed the pastel up into the sky with a sponge applicator.

Returning to PanPastels, I added the hills with turquoise blue shade and bright yellow green shade. Burnt sienna came next. Then I went back over the hills with a variety of green and brown soft pastels to create texture. I smudged these in with my fingers.

Continuing with soft pastels, I drew in the poplar trunks first with a dark green gray and a red brown. I added a lighter gray and then an almost white gray. Then I added the leaves beginning with a dull orange, continuing with a brighter orange and finally a yellow orange. I smudged the leaves on the farther tree to suggest a little distance.

With soft pastels I put in blue and purple shadows under the foreground trees to indicate the rough grass line. I drew in the grass over the shadows with a variety of hard pastels starting with the darker colors and continuing with the lighter ones. I softened the lines with a finger.

After years of reserving or painting around the lighter colors, laying in the trees over the sky and grass felt like magic.

I enjoyed this. Watercolor will remain my primary medium, but pastel has a rough sparkly quality I’d like. Some images just seem to demand it. I may also do some mixed media, painting a watercolor first before accenting it with pastel.

I ship my watercolors rolled in a tube or, if they or very small flat. I provide free shipping for watercolors within the continental United States. Pastels cannot be safely rolled since they would smudge and they should be both matted and covered with a protective sheet. Therefore, the shipping cost of my pastels will vary depending upon size. All pastels will will include an acid free neutral colored mat and backing.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.

tags: PanPastels, pastels, poplars, trees

January 20, 2010 6:35 pm

Submerged I and II: Playing With New Methods

by Jenny Armitage in for sale,landscapes,mistakes,prints available,sold,techniques,watercolors

Submerged I (9 x 12) SOLD

I’ve been experimenting with a couple of new methods. These two paintings are the result. Both are based on some photos of trees half drowned by the swollen Willamette River I took this weekend. I wanted to catch the cold grayness of of the scene and the mystery of the half hidden trees.

Blowing:

I blew the trees. I placed puddles of paint on the paper and blew them into trees with a straw. The line of paint running out from the puddle looks surprisingly like a tree limb. And the direction the paint goes in is quite controllable. But once the paint has started in one direction it’s hard to make it turn. The paint follows the wet path as if it were a stream bed. The solution is to drag a little paint in the direction you want to take it and thus start a new path. Where the trees over-lap it’s important to let the first tree dry completely before starting the next, otherwise the paint form the new tree will run up the first tree.

There are several ways to vary the color in the tree. Leaving the supply puddle partially unmixed is one. New colors can be blown into the wet tree from the base. Accents and be directly painted onto the dry trees. I used all three methods on these paintings.

Layered Masking:

The second method is painting grass and bracken with multiple layers of mask. Thin lines of mask establish the highlights. Then color is applied. Then more lines are applied. Then more mask for multiple layers. When the mask is removed a complex texture is revealed. I was less successful with this method. It’s hard to see what you are doing or to guess the result. More practice is needed.

I used layered mask in Submerged I. But I didn’t like the results immediately. The foreground was too busy and detracted from my trees, which then looked much like the trees in Submerged II. After some thought, I painted over the trees in dark tones to match the foreground. The result is an evening picture.

Submerged II (9 x 12) $75.00

For the second painting I added the foreground wet into wet. The result is simpler and gives the feeling of the gray afternoon on the river.

The palette for both paintings is: burnt sienna, phtholo blue and dioxion purple, plus a dab of hansa yellow.

Or purchase prints from Fine Art America.com.

tags: blowing, flood, layered mask, river, trees, Willamette

January 13, 2010 5:27 pm

Reeds at Sunset

by Jenny Armitage in for sale,landscapes,prints available,techniques,watercolors

Reeds at Sunset (11 x 15) $75.00

This is the Willamette again, but it could really be anywhere. I was struck by the way the reeds look like they are growing out of a sunset.

Like the Broken Dock I painted a couple days ago, I began this painting by masking everything except the water. After the mask on the reeds dried, I painting the sky’s refection on the still water wet into wet beginning with an overall wash of very diluted burnt sienna. When the shine left the paper, I added various mixes of quinacridone deep red rose and new gamgee (yellow). I used cobalt blue and burnt sienna to ad the darker clouds and phthalo blue for the water.

Once the sky had dried, I removed the mask and painted the reeds in new gamgee, colalt blue, phthalo blue and burnt sienna.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.

tags: reeds, river, sunset, techniques, water, Willamette

November 20, 2009 2:20 pm

Summer Shoppers

by Jenny Armitage in figures,for sale,prints available,techniques,watercolors

Summer Shoppers (11 x 12) $150.00

This could be anywhere. What I liked about my photo was the sunshine and the interaction between the young women.

Poured Version

I intended to pour a very atmospheric painting, and I did pour one reserving only the womens skin for direct painting. But I was unhappy with the reflections in the windows and the draping of the sundress. I really liked the bright pinks, oranges and yellows I got through pouring though. So at the gallery yesterday, I repainted the image using not only my photo, but also the poured painting as a guide.

For most of the painting I used hansa yellow light, new gamboge, quinacridone deep red rose, and phthalo blue. Using two yellow helped keep things bright. I added burnt sienna to the hair and the leather bag.

I tried to keep most of the poured feeling by mixing the paints freely on the paper. I added the windows and other darks in many layers of transparent color.

I’m happy with the results, but were I to do this over, I would pour the windows, sidewalk, and shadows and perhaps the dark bag and pants. Then I would paint the women directly.

Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com. See more of my people paintings here: people art

tags: girls, shopping, summer dress, women

October 20, 2009 9:58 am

The Fossil Shell

by Jenny Armitage in for sale,prints available,techniques,watercolors

The Fossil Shell (6 x 9) $75.00

My girls like to hunt for fossil shells on the beach. Once a middle aged fossil hunter with a German Sheppard stopped to to talk with them. It was a brief conference between enthusiasts. He was looking for fossilized fish and other rarer things. The four shared the boulder strewn beach under the cliffs while I watched the waves. Then the girls and I headed back up the beach for the warm hotel room. He caught up quickly and thrust a stone into my youngest’s hand and was gone before she could say thank you or even see what it was. It was the find of the day, a fossilized shell perfectly preserved on one side and rough rock on the other.

Joy! I popped it right down on the sand and photographed it. It lives on our mantle piece now.

After the Mask Came Off

I began the painting by masking the shell. Then I washed the background lightly first with yellow ochre, then with burnt sienna. I painted in the shadow of the shell with phthalo blue. After that I used an old toothbrush to splatter it with layer upon layer of burnt sienna, yellow ochre, cerulean blue, and Prussian blue.

Next I removed the mask and painted the shell in burnt sienna, and cerulean blue. I added a few gouache white touches.

When I stepped back to look at it, I decided that the sand was too busy and had taken away from the picture. So I took the painting to the sink and scrubbed paint off it with a stiff brush under the tap. Washing a painting is a scary process, but sometimes it’s the only good fix. The result is softer, but still shows the effects of the splattering.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.

tags: fossil, shell, splattering, washing

October 12, 2009 10:09 am

Taking Ten With My Shadow

3 comments

by Jenny Armitage in figures,for sale,techniques

Taking Ten With My Shadow (8 x 10) $125.00

Ordinarily I paint from life or more commonly from my own photographs. But the photo I based these this painting on was taken by charlena of RedBubble. The art groups on RedBubble regularly hold competitions. One of my favorite groups, Just Watercolors, often holds competitions in which each artist paints the same photo. Up until now, none of the photos appealed to me particularly, but this one did.

Just Kickin Back by Charlena

Charlena’s picture is moody and emphases the intimate nature of the space and lighting. I didn’t see any way to do that better with paint than she had already done it with the camera. But I really liked the shadow looming up behind the resting musician, so I changed the format from horizontal to vertical and cut out most of the dark wall to emphasize the man and his shadow.

After Masking

My version of this scene is an almost entirely poured painting. After transferring my sketch to the paper, I masked the musician, his shadow and everything else dark in the sketch. The trick to applying liquid mask is to use synthetic brushes and to soap the brushes before and in between dips into the mask.

The Yellow Pour

When the mask was dry I poured the lights. After wetting the paper (a necessary first step to get the paint to stick) I poured a tea like mix of hansa yellow light over the paper. I waited for the hansa to dry before pouring first new gamgee, then deep red rose. Once again I wet the paper. I poured the area around his feet first. Then I poured upwards from his head to preserve the bright yellow halo effect around his face and hat.

The Second Pour

First Mask Removed

When the lights were completely dry, I removed the mask. I took a moment to renew the pencil lines the mask had lifted. Then I masked all of the areas I has just poured leaving only the darks. I left the mask to dry. Then, after wetting the page, I poured light mixtures of cobalt blue, phthalo blue, magenta and deep red rose. I tried to keep the darker and colder phthalo blue primarily to the shadow and the dark wall leaving the cobalt for the figure in the middle.

After the paint dried, I masked some small highlights in the musician’s face, hat, trousers and shoes. When the mask dried, I wet the paper and poured the same colors in the same places only darker.

When the final mask was removed I felt the picture was too bright. So I added little gray shadow under the chair to set off the vivid colors. Colbalt blue over the orangy pink floor produced a lively gray.

Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.

tags: musicians, poured, shadow

3 comments!

October 1, 2009 10:08 am

Challenging Myself: One Subject, Three Moods

by Jenny Armitage in buildings and bridges,composition,for sale,prints available,techniques

Queen Anne Nods to Shirley Jackson (11 x 15) $150

I set a challenge for myself this week. The idea was to paint a single subject in a variety of moods. The subject I choose was Deepwoods Estate, here in Salem. I took all of the photos for the painting in the same light and although the various aspects of the building gave me different ideas, the photos don’t convey much feeling to me.

Its Greener on the Other Side

Porch reference photo

I began with the front porch. I aimed to emphasize the softness of the light and the romance of the building. I also wanted to draw the viewer into the painting.

As you can see from my reference photo, my depiction is a little fanciful. I limited my palate to yellows and blues to mimic the soft shadowy light under the porch and the golden sunlight beyond it.

I think the painting works. The most common comment about it is that the viewer would like to step through the porch into the garden on the other side.

Turret and Cupola

Turret Reference Photo

Next I painted a detail of the roof-line from in back. This time I tried to contrast the harsh glittering light with the shaded parts of the building.

Because I intended to include many hard lines and less subtle variation in tone I looked for a place where the contrast between light and shade was particularly striking. But I didn’t want it to look like graphic art, so I poured this painting to ensure that the solid expanses of color were lively rather than flat. Once again I exaggerated, the light in the reference photo is not nearly as stark as the light I painted.

I like this painting, but it turned out rather softer than I had intended. I may try it again with an orange and blue palate.

House Reference Photo

The latest painting in this series is of the whole house. I’ve always found Victorian and Queen Anne houses a little creepy. Like wrought iron, they can be both sinister and charming all at once. On a bright sunny day there is nothing really creepy about the Deepwood House, but it does have a swallowed by the woods feel to it. Despite a generous lawn, there are few places where you can see the whole house. Instead what you see is patches of house through the trees.

So in order to bring out the sinister feel of Queen Anne archetecture, I pulled the trees in closer to the house and darkened the edges where the trees and house meet visually. I also distorted the shape of the house stretching it upwards to about fifteen percent more than it’s real height. Finally I chose a very earthy palate for such a pristine white house: burnt sienna, raw sienna, yellow ocher, phthalo blue and cobalt blue.

I poured this painting too because I wanted a lot of variation in tone. But pouring produces hard lines at the edges of the mask. The result had too many hard lines for the shadowy woods. I did so much scrubbing of the edges, washing over, and detail work that painting doesn’t feel poured to me. But the more I painted the darker it got. I finally had to stop for fear the house would no longer read as white.

I showed the finished painting to my husband yesterday. He said he really liked it, but then added tentatively, “Isn’t it a little eerie?” Yes, yes it is. But I don’t think it’s so eerie that it’s a caricature of the house.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.

tags: Deepwoods, house, mood, Oregon, queen anne, Salem, Victorian

September 29, 2009 8:10 pm

Turret and Cupola

by Jenny Armitage in buildings and bridges,for sale,prints available,techniques

Turret and Copula (11 x 14) $150

Back to the Deepwood Estate but with a very different feel. This is the west or backside of the house looking up at the turret and the tallest roof peak. The afternoon sun brought the architectural details into graphic relief. I decided to play with the posterized nature of the light by pouring this painting.

Pouring watercolors is much like batik dyeing. First I mask all the white areas of the painting. Then I literally pour cups of paint across the paper. After the first pour dries, I mask all the pastels and pour darker paint. Then I mask the medium values and pour again with yet darker paint. Once the painting is dry, I lift the mask and add the darkest values and the details.

In this case I used phthalo blue, deep red rose, and new gamgee for the first pout. I tried to keep the yellow on the cupola. In later pours I used only the deep red rose and two blues Phthalo and French ultramarine. I saved the french ultramarine for the final pour.

I masked the sky after the first pour and overlaid it with cobalt blue when the mask was removed. The details are all heavy purple and magenta mixtures of phthalo blue and deep red rose.

Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.

tags: cupola, deepwood, historic, house, Oregon, pouring, queen anne, Salem, turret, Victorian

9:41 am

It’s Greener on the Other Side of the Porch

by Jenny Armitage in buildings and bridges,for sale,prints available,techniques

Its Greener on the Other Side (10 x 13) $125.00

Built in 1894, The Deepwood Estate is a lovely example of Queen Anne architecture. But to my mind, the gardens are even better. There are four acres of these and they get better every year. The indoor and outdoor Deepwood Estate meet on the front porch. Steps from the porch lead to both the front and back gardens as well as the house and separate glassed-in porch.

Looking up at the porch from the front, I was struck by how the trees on the other side glowed in sun.

After cropping my reference photo to emphasize the the view of the backyard, I spent sometime correcting the photo’s perspective. After transferring my sketch to the watercolor paper I built up from light to dark reserving the white paper where the sun hit the porch wall.

The palate was phthalo blue, a little cobalt blue, hansa yellow light, hansa yellow medium, and burnt sienna. I tried to keep the porch shadows as blue as possible to emphasize the green and yellow of the view on the other side of the porch. And I exaggerated the porch shadows to increase the sense of depth and to show off the green and gold trees. I used the sienna very sparingly and only to gray down the blues and greens.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com

tags: deepwood, historic, house, porch, queen anne, Salem, Victorian

September 23, 2009 8:34 pm

The Mill Reflects Upon Itself

by Jenny Armitage in buildings and bridges,for sale,prints available,techniques

The Mill Reflects Upon Itself (13 x 16) $200

I love the way old glass distorts reflections. This is the second painting of reflections in old glass I’ve done at the Mission Mill Museum.

The old woolen mill is well worth the visit. Most of the original equipment remains inside the mill house and the mill wheel and machinery remains operable. One of these days I’ll have to paint the whole building. It’s bright red and looks like a stack of buildings piled up like crates rather than a single structure. The effect is charming and oddly reminiscent of a child’s toy.

In the meantime I remain fascinated by the glass. Here, a dye house window reflects the mill itself. I love the abstract designs created in the window panes.

I created the siding with multiple washes of paint. I began by painting the shadows in french ultramarine blue. Then I washed all of the siding with with a mixture of deep red rose grayed down a little with phthalo green. Next came Da Vinci’s burnt sienna, followed by HWC’s burnt sienna. The first is really very orange and the second verges on red. I didn’t wash the highlights with the redder sienna. Then I washed the shadowed siding in burnt umber followed by cobalt blue. I like the resulting glow from all of those translucent layers of paint.

I used much the same process for the reflected mill, except that I didn’t use any burnt umber and the final layer of deep red rose.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.

tags: factory, Mission Mill Museum, museum, Salem

September 21, 2009 10:38 am

The Golden Dolphin

by Jenny Armitage in for sale,marine,techniques

The Golden Dolphin (8 x 10) $100

Yes, I’m still playing around with photos from the Newport Fisherman’s Wharf. I liked the way the reflected light from the bay danced across the hull of the white boat.

To paint the reflections I first masked to whitest of the highlights. Then I washed the shadowed part of the hull with a very watery cerulean blue. I used cerulean because of the way it granulates and spreads out across the water unevenly. Then I lifted the lighter areas with a dry brush. Finally I used a small brush to paint in the dark outlines.

The palate is larger than I usually employ. There are three blues, phthalo, cobalt and cerulean. The yellow is raw sienna. The red is quinacridone deep red rose. I used burnt sienna to gray the blues.

tags: boat, fishing boat, Newport

September 14, 2009 5:16 pm

Twixt Wind and Water II

by Jenny Armitage in figures,for sale,prints available,seascapes,techniques

Twixt Wind and Water II (12 x 16) $225

Twixt Wind and Water

We spent last weekend on the beach. I took enough photographs to have seacape material for some time to come. While I was there I reworked Twixt Wind and Water. Here is the result. As you can see, I gave the painting considerably more sea-room to the left, so that she has something more to look into.

I began her hair with an under-painting of colbalt blue. Then I used layers of yellow ochre, burnt sienna, and cobalt blue to complete it. Quidacrone deep red rose provides the accent color in the hair band.

Her jacket is cobalt blue and prussian blue mixed on the palate.

The sea began as phthalo blue and burnt sienna with reserved whites. Then I changed my mind about much of the wave action and began experimenting with white gouache. To cover strong colors, gouache must be laid on fairly heavily. And even though I don’t use ultra white paper, gouache white is still bluer that the paper. Also, as I discovered gouache will washback into transparent watercolor and vice versa. Work a little gouache onto the paper and nothing painted there will ever be entirely transparent again.

The effect is interesting, but I think next time I’ll stick to transparent watercolors, unyielding to change though they may be. I like the translucency better.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com

tags: braid, girl, gouache, ocean, Pacific, storm, waves

September 10, 2009 10:37 am

Breakers at Seal Rock or Using all the White Techniques

by Jenny Armitage in for sale,prints available,seascapes,sold,techniques,unfinished

The Breakers at Seal Rock II (12 x 16) $125

This is the second painting I’ve done of the tide coming in at Seal Rock Wayside. The first was a little postcard sized painting I did while demonstrating at the fair. That little painting sold immediately. I liked it too, so when expanding it to a full sized painting I didn’t mess around with the composition much. But I did want to get some more variety into the rocks and spray.

Like the previous painting, I began by reserving the whites with liquid mask while painting in the ocean and rocks. I used phthalo blue and burnt sienna for the ocean.

I used the same basic technique to lay down the rocks as I did with the first little painting. I started with raw sienna and quinacridone gold. Then I added burnt sienna and quinacridone deep red rose. While the burnt sienna and deep red rose were still wet, I dropped in cobalt blue and phthalo blue. Finally I added some heavy burnt sienna and some French Ultramarine.

Once the painting was dry, I scrubbed the edges of the rock where the spay hit them with a stiff filbert brush to show how the waves obscured them. Then I broke out the white gouache (an semi opaque white) and added more spray. Over the dark painted rocks the gouache white looks gray. I used the gouache primarily for the shelf of the biggest rock and the bases of the rocks on the shore side. Finally I pulled out the razor and scratched in fine white lines where the water spilled over the rocks and little cuts for droplets of spray. All four techniques work very differently, and each has a character of it’s own. I like the variety that resulted from using them all.

Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.

tags: guauche, Oregon, razor, rocks, Seal Rock, waves

September 5, 2009 8:44 am

Sgrafutto or Taking A Razor to my Painting

by Jenny Armitage in landscapes,postcard,seascapes,sold,techniques

: Seal Rock Breakers I (5 x 7–damaged) SOLD

Seal Rock Park is one of our favorite waysides on Highway 101. This little painting shows a small part of the view north from the headland looking down at a string of volcanic rocks ringing the shore.
Last winter I took a series of photos of the waves crashing against the rocks as the tide came in. The photos look good in black and white but strangely lifeless in color. The contrast between the black rocks and the white waves is almost too much for color. So I left the photos on the back burner. But earlier this week I decided to try a small close-up view just to get me started.

To solve the overly black rock problem, I decided to make the rocks a chocolate brown. I began with raw sienna, and layered burnt sienna over the top. Then, while the burnt sienna was still wet or in some cases damp, I dropped in phthalo blue and let it interact with the sienna on the page. The result is almost as dark as the black in my photos but much more alive.

As usual I saved the white paper for foam and breakers with rubber mask. But I had a hard time getting the mask fine enough to show the run off down the base of the rocks. So when I tore the paper a little removing it from the pad (left of signature), I decided it was a good time to experiment with sgrafutto. After all, what did I have to lose?

Sgrafutto is an Italian term. It means to scratch the surface of multiple layers of color to reveal the lower layers. It’s a good technique for fine detail. In this case I used a razor blade to scratch through the brown rock to reveal the white paper below. Dragging the tip of the razor perpendicular to the cutting edge worked best. Dragging it toward the cutting edge produced a line so fine it didn’t show.

Now that I’ve tried it, I like this technique and I’ll use it to show more water against rocks in the future. I might also use it to show highlights in brick and stone.

The other technique I used to detail the spray is lifting. I moistened the edges of the rocks where they met the masked spray and scrubbed them a little with the brush. Then I took a dry thirsty brush and lifted as much of the paint as I could along the edges of the rock. You can see the results in along the left hand side of the largest rock and at the base of the far right rock.

I like this little painting and I’ll use the same techniques to make some larger versions of it later. I have plenty of rocks and breakers to play with.

tags: lifting, razor, Seal Rock, sgrafutto, waves

July 15, 2009 5:46 pm

Low Tide at Agate Beach

by Jenny Armitage in figures,for sale,seascapes,techniques

Low Tide at Agate Beach (12 x 16) $225

I love the ghostly look of the beach at low tide on a foggy morning. The beach stretches out forever half hidden in haze and strangely reflective, making the beach and the sky much the same color. The ocean swallows up all sound. All is quiet mystery.

But I have a hard time painting it. It is essentially nothing with variations. Here, to emphases the space and provide life are my daughters striding companionably into to that great emptiness filling it with sound and movement.

To paint the picture I masked the white waves, the foam and girls, but not their reflections. I painting the sky with burnt sienna and cobalt blue in multiple wet into wet layers. I painted the beach first in yellow ocher and than followed that with burnt sienna. I painted various mixtures of burnt sienna and cobalt blue wet on wet over the sand. The waves are a darker mixture of burnt sienna and cobalt blue painted wet on dry.

After the wet paper dried, I lifted the mask and painted the girls. The were actually dressed in brightly colored coats, but I painted them in more burnt sienna and cobalt to keep the monotone foggy feel of the beach. Then I dampened the area under the girls and painted in their reflections wet on damp.

I placed my signature carefully since in all that emptiness I knew it would be a design element.

tags: beach, girls, reflections

July 9, 2009 2:31 pm

Surf Dance

by Jenny Armitage in figures,for sale,postcard,seascapes,techniques

Surf Dance (5 x 7) $20.00

This is another little painting of the two brothers playing in the surf. They had found a log about half again as tall as either of them and were busy trying to return it to the sea. But as the tide was coming in, the sea kept giving it back. Here they have just finished taking it far so into the surf that they thought they had gotten rid of it. The victory dance was short lived. It came back. I don’t think they really minded though. They were having fun.

I used the same palette and method as the last little painting. First I masked the white foam and the boys. Then I painted the water and sand, beginning wet into wet and adding the details wet on dry. I painted the sand in with yellow ocher and burnt sienna right up to the first foam. I laid the thin layer of water reflecting the sky with blue cerulean right over the sand. I added the reflections last. When all was dry I removed the mask and painted in the boys and softened the foam.

Removable liquid masking is the easiest way to preserve small areas of white paper. I use Shiva Liquid Masque, but Winsor & Newton make a perfectly good mask too. The advantage to Shiva for me is that it’s slightly pink, making it easier for me to see where I’ve masked. Winsor & Newton is slightly yellow which I find harder to see against white paper.

Mask should be applied to bone dry paper. Use a synthetic brush well rubbed in hand soap to apply the mask. Resoap the brush regularly and wash it with soap afterwords. Don’t use water that has been used for masking when painting. Don’t remove the mask until the paint is bone dry. A rubber cement pick-up works best.

tags: Add new tag, boys, masking, surf, waves

June 29, 2009 5:05 pm

Biting Off More Than I Can Chew: Demonstrating

by Jenny Armitage in figures,shows,techniques,unfinished

I have difficulty painting in public. I never paint my best or even close to my best with an audience. Even at the gallery where people wander in and out infrequently, I have a hard time with painting in company. I don’t blush or drop my brush. But I don’t concentrate as well as I do in private. And I make fundamental errors more frequently.

But I must learn to paint in public and soon. And what is more I must be able to talk about it while I do it, because this coming August I have agreed to demonstrate painting and sculpture at the Artisan’s Village in the Oregon State Fair.

It’s sculpture that got me into this. I’ve sculpted for seven years now and I’m quite comfortable doing it with an audience. For the last four years I have sculpted all day at just about every art fair I’ve been in. Only heat and fancy carpets stop me.

Last Christmas a representative from the Artisan Village saw me demonstrating at the Salem Saturday Market Christmas Show and asked if I would be willing to take a booth at the fair. This is plum. Commercial booths at the fair rent for several thousand dollars. Booths in the Atrisan Village rent for $75.00. The difference? The Village is a juried venue. The catch? —artists in the Village must demonstrate from 11:00 am to 9:00 pm.

Most artist share a booth and share demonstrating hours. But I know no one else who sculpts polymer clay. And besides, it’s an outdoor venue and the hotter it gets the hotter polymer clay gets until it becomes much to soft to sculpt. What to do?

Well, I was looking for a way to display my new watercolors so I talked myself and the director into both sculpture and painting. I am to sculpt in the cooler mornings and paint in the heat of the day. Switching mediums halfway through the day should help me keep my brain active too.

Now all I have to do is learn to paint in public. I spent this weekend learning. Saturday and Sunday I sold sculpture while painting watercolors. I tried to stick to easy subjects and to leave the detail work for later.

I will try my hand at painting in public again at The Salem Art Festival in July, and the Silverton Fine Arts Festival in mid August. At the end of August it’s show time.

Here are my three half finished paintings. With luck I’ll be posting the finished paintings later this week:

Dances with Fountains (in progress)

This is the beginning of another painting in my Splash series of the children playing at Town Center Park. I began by masking the boy and the fountains and painting the water in cobalt blue and burnt sienna. After lifting the first mask I masked the splashes on the boy and the high lights in the fountains. Then I added raw sienna to the palette and began painting the boy. I think I am going to need a real red to complete his skin. Then I will lift the mask and complete the detail work.

Boy with Umbrella (in progress)

This is a full size painting of the boy with the umbrella. The boy is mostly finished, but I want to add a second umbrella on the lower right. I didn’t have a reference photo for that at the show. But I have plenty of pictures of umbrellas in the same light to choose from here.

The painting is on hot pressed paper. The palate is cobalt blue, phthalo green, quinacridone deep red rose, yellow ocher and ceruleum blue.

Pumice Seekers II (in progress)

This is a much smaller version of a painting I did a few months ago of my husband and the girls looking for pumice stones at Crater Lake. Stephen loves the original and won’t let me sell it. But it’s too large for his office. I’m hoping to have this smaller office sized version finished in time for his birthday.

So far I’m using just three pigments: cobalt blue, yellow ocher and burnt sienna. The painting still needs a great deal more contrast.

In the meantime I’ll be preparing to sell sculpture and paint at the Salem Art Fair. I will be at the State Fair August 28th through September 1st in Booth 414 on the south side of the village next to the floral gardens. Wish me luck.

tags: Artisan Village, boy, Crater Lake, girls, man, Oregon State Fair, Salem Art Festival, Silverton Fine Art Festival, umbrella

June 19, 2009 12:41 pm

Her Own Little Fountain

by Jenny Armitage in figures,for sale,mistakes,seascapes,techniques

Her Own Little Fountain (12 x 15) $75.00

Yes, it’s yet another painting of the children playing in the water feature at Town Center Park, Wilsonville, Oregon. What can I say? I love hot sun on skin. And the children were cute. This little girl in particular was adorable. She was all over that stream and happily oblivious to the camera.

This is my second painting on hot-pressed paper. The last was a rocky seascape and I used hot-press to get more luminous darks. That worked well.

I wanted to test the wipe-out properties of hot-pressed paper. Wiping-out means to paint solid color and then to lift the high lights. Hot-pressed paper wipes easier than cold-pressed or rough paper. It thought it would be a good technique for skin on a hot summer’s day. What I discovered is that it works well except for highly staining colors. Quinacridone deep red rose is highly staining. Actually I haven’t found a red I like that isn’t highly staining. The closest I’ve found is burnt sienna which is really an orange. I think I’ll wait for a less sunburn scene where I can use the raw sienna before trying wipe-out with hot-pressed paper again.

The palette was burnt sienna, colbalt blue, quinarindone deep red rose and yellow ocher. I reclaimed some whites with titanium white.

Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.

tags: fountains, gauche, girs, Town Center Park, water

June 8, 2009 5:23 pm

Splash Dance

by Jenny Armitage in figures,for sale,techniques

Splash Dance (8 x 11) $150.00

I started painting this young man on Saturday. Unfortunately the tummy bug that swept our family earlier in the week caught me just as I was starting to mask the whites. But I thought about him off and on all Saturday and Sunday. This morning I went right to work and here he is, the fourth in my Town Center Park series–one more happy extrovert getting wet.

I used tons of splattered masking fluid to keep the splashed water. I find flicking a damp flat brush produces a lovely semi-controllable spray of mask. The faster you flick the smaller the dots.

I’m particularly pleased with his shirt. To make it look wet and stuck to him I added a little cobalt blue to his skin tone and applied it very lightly to his shirt. Where the shirt is stuck to his pants instead of his chest I applied a grayed down pastel version of the same colors that went into his pants.

The palette is a raw sienna, burnt sienna, quinacridone deep red rose, phthalo blue, and cobalt blue. His skin is raw sienna and quinacridone darkened with cobalt blue. I washed him with burnt sienna at the end.

tags: boy, Town Center Park, water

June 4, 2009 10:01 pm

Memorial Day Waterworks

by Jenny Armitage in Uncategorized,buildings and bridges,figures,for sale,mistakes,seascapes,techniques,unfinished

Memorial Day Waterworks (17 x 19) $275

Yes, this is yet another painting of the Town Center Park water feature. This one is rather more ambitious than the previous two. I backed up to take in the feel of the whole stream bed. And I included not one but seven figures.

As you can see from the reference photo, I took some liberties with the geometry of stream bed. I narrowed the center wall of concrete and removed a trash can among other less major changes. I also slide the boys around a little so that they wouldn’t be directly above each other. Finally I eliminated the blond boy half hidden on the left hand side.

Refrence Photo

After the Mask Came Off

Once I was satisfied with the sketch I masked the boys and concentrated on the water feature itself. Masking an object against water or sky makes it easier to get the water to flow evenly to the edge of the foreground object.

Masking the boys also served as a final composition check as it made them stand out as the centers of interest. People always attract the eye and I expected the boys to so doubly because their skin provides the only warm tones in an otherwise cool picture and because their clothing and toys are the brightest colors in the painting. I liked the way the placement of the boys echoes the “S” curve of the concrete wall. Now that the painting is finished, I still like it.

But I’m probably still not done with this water feature. I like this subject and I’m learning the value of working in a series.

Pigment notes: The background is all burn sienna, phthalo blue and cobalt blue. To do the boys I added yellow ocher, cadmium yellow, and quinacridone deep red rose.

Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.

tags: boys, figure and figures, fountains, masking, Town Center Park, Wilsonville

May 22, 2009 10:37 pm

Sisters on the Rocks III: A Wild Change in Palatte

by Jenny Armitage in for sale,seascapes,techniques

Sisters on the Rocks III (12 x 16) $100

Yes color matters. I changed the palette to brighter clearer colors, but grayed them down with their compliments. This made the scene more restful. The active climbing takes second place to the static view. I like the effect, but it feels much less like Oregon winter to me.

I used red rose deep (quinacridone), dioxazine purple, cobalt blue, Prussian blue, and hansa yellow light.

I under-painted the rocks with cobalt blue to establish the basic shapes before adding much color. Then I dropped in dioxazine purple and Purssian blue. This resulted in an unreal landscape of glowing blue rocks. After stewing a while I mixed up a grey brown with the dioxazine and the hansa and a muddy orange with the hansa and quinacridone. I washed these over the rocks to tone them down a few notches.

Underpainted

[caption id="attachment_523" align="aligncenter" width="128" caption="Half greyed Half Blue"]

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The sky is cobalt blue with a tad of orange mixed from the quinacridone and hansa dropped in wet on wet. The sand is dioxazine purple grayed with the same orange. I used the same mixture for the headland in the background.

tags: Agage Beach, figure and figures, girls, gray, underpainting

8:03 pm

A Paint Box Full of Gray

by Jenny Armitage in techniques

There are various premixed grays and browns on the market, but I don’t use them. Nature doesn’t come in neutral gray, it comes in a infinite variety of grays and browns. The best neutrals for any painting are always mixed from the palette. Shadows look more real if mixed from the colors in the wall or ground on which it falls.

And grays are so easy to mix. To get gray, mix any color with it’s compliment: yellow and purple; blue and orange; red and green. Add more of the warm half of the duo and you get a warm gray or brown. Add more of the cool compliment and you get cool gray.

A Few Mixed Grays

tags: demonstrations, gray, mixing, techniques

11:45 am

Gaining Texture But Losing Transparency

by Jenny Armitage in for sale,landscapes,techniques

Sisters on the Rocks II (9 x 12) $50

This painting is almost all rock. To get the gritty texture I used naturally sedimentary pigments mainly burnt sienna and French ultramarine. Sedimentary pigments break into fine pieces and settle into the indents of the paper. I used granulation medium to heighten this effect.

But while granulation medium increases texture, it decreases transparency. Very little of this painting still looks like watercolor to me. Only the climbing girls, the sky and the background cliff look transparent. I liked this effect on the rocks in Sisters on the Rocks I because it exaggerated the transparent look of the scenery around the rocks. And in this painting is does heighten the transparency of the the girls. But, in future I don’t this I’ll use granulation medium for quite so much of a painting’s total area. It makes a better spice than a main course.

Stay tuned, I’m not finished with Sisters on the Rocks yet.

tags: girls, granulation, rocks, techniques

May 17, 2009 7:25 pm

Floating on the Lawn

by Jenny Armitage in figures,for sale,prints available,techniques

Floating on the Lawn (11 x 15) $125

This is one of my daughters’ friends luxuriating in the lawn. Sinking into soft grass and staring up at the sky is one of the best feelings there is.

I had fun with this one.

The biggest problem I had was forcing myself to make the grass dark enough. Consequently it went down in many layers beginning with cadmium yellow and cobalt blue and progressing through ultramarine blue and ocher yellow. I washed dioxazine purple over it to dull the color and dropped French ultramarine into the shadows. In the end the background took longer than the figure. [In fact I uploaded another version of this painting thinking I was done. After looking at it a while I strengthened the shadows and reposted it. ]

before the darker shadow.

The girl herself was purple pink in the light and I exaggerated that effect. I used rose madder quinacridone and cadmium yellow for her skin and dioxazine purple for the shadows in her face.

Much of the pink in her face was reflected light from her shirt. I used quinacridone magenta, more rose madder quinacridone and dioxozine purple for the shadows in her shirt. Then I washed her shirt with Winsor and Newton’s Opera—yet another quinacridone.

In keeping with the pink and purple theme I used dioxazine purple to under-paint the shadows in her hair before washing it with yellow ocher and burnt umber. I love under-painting for hair. It produces the most natural looking shadows.

purple underpainting

[caption id="attachment_478" align="aligncenter" width="127" caption="over-washed hair"]

[/caption]

Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.

tags: figure and figures, girl, under-painting

May 8, 2009 8:40 pm

Back to the Drawbridge and Masking Tape Woes

by Jenny Armitage in mistakes,techniques

I went back to the old West Salem drawbridge (newly converted to a pedestrian bridge) to take some more photos of the towers and the counter-weights. It a very different bridge on a midweek afternoon than it is on the weekend. Saturday afternoon it was crowded. Today there was hardly anyone there and I could stand in the middle as fuss with the camera to my heart’s content without being in anyone’s way.

I came right home to play with the photos and began yet another poured version of one of the counter-weight towers by noon.

I used masking tape to mask the edges of as much of the bridge as I could because I cannot bush as straight a line as I’d like with liquid mask. For some reason, perhaps because it is hard to see, mask is harder to brush straight than paint. I burnished all the inside edges of the tape with my fingernail and sealed all the of the outside edges with masking fluid. The result was seepage along the inside edge of the tape.

I’ll try direct painting the bridge tonight.

tags: masking methods, masking tape, pouring

May 7, 2009 11:24 pm

Pub Talk II: Half Poured and Half Painted

by Jenny Armitage in figures,for sale,prints available,techniques

Pub Talk II (9 x 13) $200

In this version of Pub Talk I tightened up the composition a little by moving everyone closer together and tying the couples at the far table together with the painting on the back wall. I reduced the number of archways to simplify the pouring process.

I began the picture by painting the people tables and the picture at the far end of the room. This was really the whole lower half of the painting. I used cerulean blue for the older men’s hair and the shadows in the faces. Cerulean blue was much more satisfactory for this purpose than phthalo blue was in Pub Talk I. I dropped cerulean blue and phthalo blue into damp burnt sienna for the darker hair.

For the rest of the direct painting I used the same colors as before. I used layered washes of raw and burnt sienna for the skin again. The clothes are all various combinations of phthalo blue, burnt sienna and raw sienna. The tables are burnt sienna washed over cobalt blue.

direct paint

Then I masked the lower half on the picture and poured.

It’s important when pouring to decide what colors need to predominate where and which direction to tip the board after the pour. I tried to place the yellows and reds along the left hand (sunlit) side of the arches. I placed the blues to the outside. I tipped up rather than at a diagonal because I wanted a peaceful cozy feeling.

I used raw sienna, burnt sienna, and phtalo blue for the first two pours. On the third pour I substituted dioxazine purple for the phthalo blue. On the final pour I used burn sienna, cobalt blue and dioxazine purple.

After the Third Pour

Removing the mask lifted a fair amount of raw and burn sienna as well was cerulean blue. I rewashed the peoples skin with these two colors. Then I darkened the ceiling fixtures and the archway walls.

Mask Off

Finished. And I do prefer it to the direct paint only version, although I think that may be in part because I got better at the people with each version.

Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.

tags: bars, men, pouring, women

May 5, 2009 11:29 am

Pigment Geekiness or Palette Ramblings

by Jenny Armitage in books,techniques

Choosing paint can be a daunting task for a beginner.

Not all pigments are created equal. Some stain and some lift. Some overpower every mix they are in, and some must be added in quantity to make any change at all. Some are textured and some go on smooth. Some transparent watercolors really are transparent and some are rather less so.

Nor are all paints created equal. Knowing what pigments are in what paint is vital. Some, the good ones, are just one pigment. Some are mixes. Some are mixes of lower quality pigments. And brand matters. Cobalt blue even if it is the very same pigment behaves differently depending upon the manufacturer and the grade of paint.

The name of the color does not necessarily answer any of these questions.

Fortunately some of this information is standardized. The Society of Dyers and Colorists and the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists have indexed the pigments. The index number is found on almost every quality paint tube. Cadmium yellow, for example is not one but one of two possible pigments PY35 and PY37. PY35 is a little greener. Some paints also include the American Society for Testing and Materials lightfastness rating. One is good and five poor.

But for the beginner, too much of this kind of information is simply overwhelming. It overwhelmed me. So I cribbed. A little over a year ago when I first started painting, I entered the art store with a list of paint colors drawn from the basic palettes of two or three artists who’s how to paint books I admired.

After my heart recovered from cost of buying all that paint at once ($295.99 or so), I made a chart of all of my brand new paints. First I painted each color across the page horizontally. When the page dried, I painted a vertical stripe of each color down the page. It looked like a multi-colored loosely woven basket. The idea was to show the colors and all of the mixing possibilities. I never looked at it again. And I have no idea where it is.

Then at direction of Butch Krieger, Watercolor Basics: People, I made a tonal value chart of flesh tones in paint. It was a lovely chart and I learned a lot about mixing flesh tones making it. I never looked it again either. It’s probably with the color chart.

Colored paint remained a mystery.

Sometime after that, I bought a copy of Blue and Yellow Don’t make Green, by Michael Wilcox. The book consists almost entirely of color swatches from a dozen basic colors. His basic colors are cadmium red light (PR108), quinacridone violet (PV19), cadmium yellow light (PY35), Hansa Yellow Light (PY3), cerulean blue (PB36:1), and ultramarine blue (PB29). To these he adds yellow ochre (PY43), raw sienna (PBr7), burnt sienna (PBr7), Phtalocyannie Blue (PB15), and Phthalocyanne Green (PG36). It’s a good list and I almost wish I had started with it, but I did learn somethings from my broader first palette and I still used many of the colors in it including one that Wilcox specifically warns against, Alizarin Crimson (PR83). (Alizarin crimson is subject to fading.)

And Wilcox did teach me a great deal about mixing paint. After reading Wilcox, I didn’t need a chart. I had a much better idea of how to mix colors although I didn’t do any of his color mixing exercises.

But mostly I learned about color by using very restricted one to three color palettes. Using only a few colors at a time I learned something about those colors. I add new colors to my basic palette slowly. Anyone who actually reads my pigment notes can’t help but notice that cobalt blue, french ultramarine, phthalo blue, burnt sienna, raw sienna and yellow ochre are my favorites. I think I have the blues and yellows sorted out. In addition to the above colors I use cadmium yellow and hansa yellow light. I still haven’t settled on the reds, but I’m leaning towards the quinacrones for the violet reds and windser for the orange reds.

In the meantime, my new paint bible is Hilary Page’s Guide to Watercolor Paints. Page tested all of the artist quality paints of all of the major manufacturer’s for light fastness. But that’s just the beginning. Her paint swatches show the value range, lifting capacity, transparency, and the wet into wet spreading pattern of each paint.

The swatches are conveniently divided into chapters by color and color temperature. Each chapter includes general notes on the pigments’ painting and mixes characteristics and toxicity.

She also includes: a color wheel of the pigments currently on the market; color curves for many pigments; and lists of staining, transparent, semi-transparent, semi-opaque, opaque, textural and two toned paints.

Truly a fantastic book, though perhaps only for real paint geeks. My only complaint was that it was last published in 1997. But as I’ve since discovered that she published a web update in 2000, I have no complaints at all. Hilary Page.com

She is my guide whenever I am tempted my a new color of paint. Dioxazine purple is my latest find. It’s beautifully transparent and there is no good mixed substitute. She gives it the thumbs up.

tags: Add new tag, beginnings, book reviews, Butch Krieger, Hilary Page, Micheal Wilcox, pigments

May 4, 2009 4:56 pm

High Tide at Seal Rock Beach or Experimenting with Canvas

by Jenny Armitage in for sale,prints available,seascapes,techniques

High Tide at Seal Rock (12 x 16) $200

I took the working photos for this one on a cold wet winter day on Seal Rock Beach just south of Newport, Oregon. At low tide it’s a fantastic place for poking in tide pools. At high tide it’s a wave watcher’s heaven.

This is the fourth watercolor I’ve done on canvas. Watercolor is a whole different animal on canvas. It even sounds different, like painting on a drum.

Canvas is just a hair smoother than cold-pressed paper, but the texture is very different. Cotton has a grain whereas paper does not. Greater detail is possible on cotton than on cold-pressed paper. But that’s just the beginning.

Canvas absorbs more water, so it takes much longer to dry; and drying is crucial because unless a wash is bone dry it will lift from canvas in a heart beat. In fact it’s extremely easy to lift watercolor from canvas. All but the most staining pigments will wipe back to white with one swipe of the sponge. It’s great for correcting mistakes but lifting just a little color for highlight is next to impossible. Mask will also lift paint back to white making it easy to add white details.

On the other hand, canvas accepts much thicker darker paint without getting muddy and dead looking. I’m coming to the conclusion that this last is the primary advantage of canvas for me. And that is why I painted this particular painting on canvas. I wanted to make the dark rocks just as dark and cold as they really were without worrying about dead chalky looking paint.

Since it is framed without glass the last step in a watercolor on canvas is to spray it with a clear protective finish. I use a matte finish. I don’t want shine.

This is essentially a two color painting: French ultramarine and burnt Sienna. There is a hair of raw sienna here and there but not much.

Gallery wrapped (painting continues around the edges of the stretcher bars) on cotton canvas so no frame is necessary. Shipped flat.

Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.

tags: beach, canvas, Seal Rock

May 2, 2009 10:33 pm

Skipping Stones and Body Paint

by Jenny Armitage in figures,prints available,sold,techniques

Skipping Stones (11 x 14) SOLD

Skipping stones is like testing an echo, faced with a smooth body of water and rocks at hand, all right minded people want to do it. This is my husband and girls skipping stones into the Williamettee River. Georgia learned to do two or three skips that day and Paula found some fresh water shells.

Because the painting is really all about basic body shapes and afternoon sun I began it painting by pouring. I wanted bodies washed in color. But I did so much direct painting afterwords that it hardly feels like a poured painting to me. Whatever I did, it wouldn’t come right and I almost gave up on it. I finally decided that for design purposes I should have made Stephen’s hat white like the girls’ hats. But with watercolor white is reserved paper not paint and there was no way I could lift enough paint to make his hat white again, certainly not white in comparison to the girls’ hats.

So I pulled out the white body paint. Body paint or gouache is opaque watercolor. Dark colors are lightened with white. Transparent watercolor dilutes gouache and it won’t cover it. Consequently, gauche must be added last. So I painted the shadow of the hat with transparent colors first and then I painted around the shadow with permanent white gouache. I had to apply it fairly thickly because opaque is one thing but covering is another. While I was at it I reclaimed a little white in Paula’s left shoe too.

The gouache white is bluer that the page, so Stephen’s hat is bluer than the girls. That’s fine because he’s farther away. If he had been close I might have had to paint the girls’s hats too just to even things up.

I’m not tempted to work in gouache. I like the look a transparent watercolor too much. But every once in a while a little gouache is a life saver.

Other than white, I used ceruleum blue, phthalo blue, raw sienna and burnt sienna for the first pour. For the next two pours I substituted cobalt blue for the ceruleum. Ceruleum is an opaque color (but not gouache). I used the same palette for the direct painting with the addition of raw umber.

Prints available through Fine Art America.com.

tags: body paint, figure and figures, girls, gouache, man, men, pouring, river

May 1, 2009 11:21 pm

Beware Dioxazine Purple

by Jenny Armitage in techniques

Dioxazine purple is a wonderful pigment for pouring as it is both staining and translucent. But beware–it lingers on brushes even after the water has run clear. Always test a brush that has been used with diozazine purple before using it, even if you think you’ve gotten it clean.

Oops.

tags: pigment notes