Saturday at the Office (private collection)
Elizabeth Edwards just published an interview with me for First Angel and Friends. I love it. She asks great questions and I had a blast answering them.
You can read the interview here.
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May 16, 2009 10:49 pm
May 12, 2009 12:09 pm
I don’t know why I am obsessed with the old drawbridge counterweight, but I am. I’d like to say my obsession was producing great paintings, but it isn’t. I’d like to say that there was some symbolism in the counterweight, that justifies all this futile painting, but there isn’t. I don’t see it as a symbol of impending doom hanging over the bridge or man’s ability to lift great burdens or anything else. I just like it.
But I can’t paint it. Here are the efforts of yesterday and the day before. Neither is necessarily finished. Neither is without potential. But I think it’s time to do something else for a while.
Suday's Counterweight
This is almost entirely wet into wet. Only the details are wet on dry. I used Hansa yellow, rose madder quinacridone, cobalt blue, and Prussian blue for the bridge. All of the colors layered or dropped in. I didn’t do any mixing on the palette. The sky is cobalt blue and burnt sienna partly mixed on the palette and applied wet on wet.
The movement in the sky seems to distract from the bridge and there isn’t enough contrast between the bridge and the sky.
Monday's Counterweight
This time I masked the bridge first and poured the sky in a single pour cobalt blue and cerulean blue. I used the same pigments as Sunday for the bridge itself and the same application method.
This one seems garish to me. The counterweight to too bright. Again there isn’t enough contrast between the bridge tower and the sky.
Of the two, I think Sunday’s effort has the most potential and I may get back to it later. Darker sky perhaps?
May 8, 2009 8:40 pm
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.
May 7, 2009 11:24 pm
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.
May 5, 2009 11:29 am
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.
May 4, 2009 4:56 pm
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.
May 2, 2009 10:33 pm
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.
May 1, 2009 11:21 pm
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.
April 27, 2009 5:09 pm
Highway Cathedral I (9 x 11) $50
I doubt it’s original of me, but I’ve always loved the shapes of bridges from below. From above the bridge connecting connecting Salem and West Salem is a dull and even ugly highway from which you can see only tantalizing glimpses of the Willamette River below. But from underneath it’s all about arches, windows, and water.
To get the feel of the concrete, I used mostly naturally granulating pigments: cerulean blue, French ultra marine blue, burnt sienna, and yellow ochre. The only pigments without natural granulation I used were cobalt blue and phthalo blue which I used to the darken the shadows on the underside of the highway.
For the foreground I mixed burnt sienna and French ultramarine blue with granulation medium to accentuate the textural effect. Next time I may add ox gall to the water pigments to smooth them out for contrast.
This was a fun little painting. I’ll do a few more under the bridge paintings over the next few weeks.
April 26, 2009 12:02 pm
Sneakers II (11 x 17) Private Collection
Paula and her sneakers again.
This time I panted her directly without pouring. I used a very limited palette: burnt sienna, cobalt blue and yellow ochre. I also washed her face with cadmium yellow and winsor red. There is tad of alizarin crimson on her lips and the shaded side of her face.
I prefer this painting but my husband prefers the poured version. I did a better job with her face here. But I agree with Stephen that the colors are livelier in the poured painting. It’s tempting to do a third version, but I think I”ll stop here.
Purchase a print of this painting at Fine Art America.com.
April 24, 2009 1:11 pm
Sneakers I (11 x 17) $100
This is my youngest daughter in a characteristic pose. I love the way she has clasped her hands in tight but spread her legs out with her feet pidgin toed.
I poured all of this painting except for her hands and feet and an under painting of the carpet. I painted her hands and feet first, and then masked them to protect them from the pour. I left the under-painting of the carpet pattern unmasked.
face and hand
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I masked and poured three times. When the mask came off: I adjusted the values, added shadows and shoe details; and touched up her face.
first pour
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mask off
I used Winsor red, alizarin crimson, and cadmium yellow for her face and hands. I used hansa yellow medium, burnt sienna and phthalo blue for the first pour. I substituted raw sienna for hansa yellow in the second and third pours. I direct painted with the pouring palette.
What would I do differently? Well I like this painting a lot as is. I would mask the hands and face before painting them and paint them after the pour next time. I think I would also leave the sunshine streaks across the carpet out.
I like the painting enough that I’m going to do it again without pouring.
Or purchase a reproduction of this painting at Fine Art America.com.
April 23, 2009 9:21 am
After the last of the viable mask has been removed, I wet the paper generously to remove the last remnants of the of the mask. This is a necessary step because unless the masked area has been washed, it will take paint unevenly or not at all.
Then I laid in the sky. This time I went for blue (cerulean blue, and French Ultramarine).
With Sky
From here on out it’s all detail. I used a mixture of French ultramarine and Windsor red for all of the brush work. I varied the temperature of the mixture to match the surrounding pour image and to cool shadowed areas. I mostly left the poured passages alone.
The Counter-Weight (11 x 14) ($75)
What would I do differently? Well, the current composition is unobjectionable but it lacks excitement. The early painting had movement and especially depth that this one lacks. I may go back to the bridge with sketchbook and camera in hand, but not today.
Here are some other examples of paintings I have made using the multiple mask and pour method:
April 22, 2009 9:27 am
Pouring is one of my favorite techniques. It literally means to pour paint across the paper. It can either be the atmospheric beginning to a painting or a major part of the painting process. Some people use it to create abstract shapes to suggest the painting subject. But however much pouring is used, it provides transparent color passages that can be gotten in almost no other way.
The method I use most frequently was popularized by Jean Grastorf in her book Pouring Light: Layering Transparent Watercolor. Her technique uses multiple masks in much the same way batik uses multiple wax resists.
When I first began painting I used her pouring and masking method as an aide to help me paint with contrast, because it forced me to divide my picture into five distinct tonal values or less. It also helped me loosen up about color. These days I pour only when I think the subject of the picture will be enhanced by pouring.
Sunday I photographed just such a picture, one of the counter weights to a local railway drawbridge recently converted to a pedestrian bridge. The silhouetted subject is perfect for pouring.
Working Photo
After one false start detailed in the previous two posts I had a drawing of the bridge I liked. I began the painting by transferring it to a block of Arches 140 cold-pressed paper. (Because removing mask is hard on paper I always use the more durable 140 weight cold-pressed paper when pouring.) My photo of the bridge has loads of minute detail. In my cartoon I simplified. I want the silhouette of the bridge tower and counterweight to predominate. Too much detail would take away from the graphic nature of the image.
After making the cartoon I taped off the edges of the painting and began masking the sky plus everything I’d like to remain white. The trick to masking is to use nylon brushes and to soap the brushes frequently. This keeps the mask from gumming up the brushes and saves your quality brushes from rack and ruin.
Once the mask was dry, I mixed three cups of very thin paint: cadmium yellow, phthalo blue, and Windsor red. I deliberately choose staining colors, because mask lifts pigments. Then I wet the paper (an important step as otherwise the paint tends to run off the paper without staining) and poured the yellow straight across the top of the tower. I tilted the paper right to let the paint run off and wiped up the excess. Then I poured the red just below the yellow, tipped the paper, and cleaned the excess again. Some of the red bled into the yellow making orange. Then I poured the blue the same way across the counter-weight adding a dull purple where the paint crossed the red paint I had just poured.
After the First Pour
When the paint had dried completely, I masked all of my lightest values and poured slightly thicker paint over the paper in roughly the same places. After the paint dried I masked the medium values and repeated the process with milk-thick paint. When the final pour had dried, I pulled the mask off, revealing a bold but rough painting in vivid color.
After the Mask Came Off
It’s all brush work from here.
8:50 am
The Disaster
There were a number of problems with my first attempt at the “Counter Weight” painting. All most all of them had to do with composition. Three major compositional problems. First the support panel half way up the draw bridge tower brings the eye to a full stop. Second, the girders connecting to the tower lead the eye out the the picture. Third, the dark girder on the left hand side want to be the center of interest.
In addition to the my composition problems, I used French Ultramarine in my final pour. It covered everything underneath causing dead patches in the painting.
Playing with the values did not help. I went from bad to worse. Where I attempted to removed the French Ultramarine I got mud. Darkening the background only made it look dirty.
So, I began again at the very beginning, with a value sketch. This time I moved in above the support panel, centering interest on the counter-weight. I eliminated the girders from my drawing. I’m sure the bridge would fall down without them, but my painting won’t. And I won’t lose the feeling of looking up into that great big counter-weight hanging over your head.
Then I began again. In a few minutes I will post Counter-Weight IA: A Pouring Demonstration. Since I have finished the painting to my satisfaction, I know there will be Counter Weight II: A Pouring Demonstration.
April 20, 2009 11:11 pm
A couple days ago I began pouring demonstration. It was cheeky of me to post the first half of the demonstration before for the painting was finished. I got bit too. I thought about deleting this demonstration entry, but there is too much to learn from mistakes to do that. Instead I will rename it and recast it a hair:
The problem began with the composition itself. Here is the photograph I began with:
Working Photo
I began by making a line drawing of the bridge and transferring it to watercolor paper. What I should have done first was made a preliminary value sketch.
Cartoon For Painting
Then I became beguiled by the lovely colors produced by pouring it.
After the First Pour
After the Second Pour
After the Mask Came Off
There were beautiful colors there after the pouring was done, but the darks were much to heavy. Lightening the darkes only muddied them. And the compositional flaws became more apparent as I worked. In the end I gave up in disgust.
April 16, 2009 10:45 am
Hat and Shoulders (9 x 12) $100
For this watercolor I worked from a candid snapshot of my niece taken a couple summers ago. She wore the hat everywhere we went. I don’t have many pictures of her in it though, because that was the summer she was camera shy.
I had fits getting this painting right. I tried it and failed twice on Tuesday.
Two problems. First, I love the effect of the strong light on her hat and shoulder, but the light on her face is very low contrast and the color temperature varies enormously. Getting the subtle value changes and temperature changes in her face was difficult. Second she doesn’t have much pink in her face under neutral light, but her blouse bounced purple pink light up into her face.
Both of my Tuesday paintings contained too much pink and exaggerated the temperature and value changes in an unflattering way—she looked like Rudolph of Red Nosed Reindeer. All of my favorite skin reds for light complexions reds (alizarin crimson, rose madder, and quinacirdone) stain so her red nose was there to stay.
Rudolph
I took Wednesday off to think and painted something else instead. I began again Wednesday after dinner, resolving to keep my palette limited and to introduce value and temperature changes slowly. I began with a unifying wash of cadmium yellow and cadmium red. Then I laid in the pinker skin with cadmium yellow and alizarin crimson wet into wet. I added the blue tones to the ailizarin mixture rather under-laying it. I used the alizarin crimson with cobalt blue for her blouse to unify the reds. The result was still a little too much, so I washed burnt sienna over her skin. That helped tone it down a little more.
I think she’s much improved although still not as pretty as the real girl.
Or Purchase a quality reproduction of this painting here.
