PLANNING AHEAD

Wednesday's class last week included a holiday luncheon at a nearby restaurant overlooking the lake. But before we left for lunch, we had time for a demo as well as critique time of works some of the artists had brought in from their studios.

This photo reference from our trip to Italy has several minor details changed to help improve the composition. The chimney was reversed and moved to the left to make the division of space more comfortable and the perspective seem correct. That roof line has been straightened, too, at the top and bottom edges. Click on each picture to see the details if you like.

There's 'junk' in the photo on the center right that's been turned into building surface, and the picture is narrower, with measurements that follow the golden mean and Phi.

Notice the distant hills and how that horizon line has been adjusted, too, to bring more focus on the buildings. Although I loved the palm fronds on the upper left, they were changed to repeat the look of the foliage on the right so they wouldn't draw too much attention. The long lines of the fronds seem to steal focus from the roof tiles.

All the planning ahead of time used to bother me because I wasn't painting. Now I relish the planning, organizing, and rearranging of the composition and enjoy having several future paintings in the planning stages.

It's rewarding to take a decent photo and try to make it better before painting the scene. (But it didn't used to be...it was a struggle for a long time.) Plus, all that time spent studying the photo and drawing helps me know the subject better. 'They say' the better you know something, the better you can paint it. They may be right.

This painting took less than two hours to actually paint. However, the planning and drawing involved at least six hours, plus it took a long while to fly to Italy to get that picture!

"SMELL THE CAPPUCCINO?" Transparent Watercolor on 140# CP Arches 13 x 19.5"

BREAKING IT UP

Artists can be notorious for not giving up on a painting..... all that time and effort, let alone the paint and paper expense. We keep at it no matter how bad it gets - we can be such a stubborn bunch.

Fortunately, most of us have discovered that we can salvage parts of a painting by cropping. I'm posting the original painting below that really must be cropped into smaller shapes. Here you see my future book mark, business card, greeting card, a coaster? and possible grocery list! (I'm just kidding... I'll pitch it before I go to all that hassle.)

The poor composition and design made the painting a loser from the start, and that circle of the roses was my fatal mistake.

Although I really liked the way the paint hit the paper 'loosey juicy style,' the overall painting just didn't happen. Got the title right, though:-) Since it's overly sweet, it's appropriately named "COTTON CANDY," on 140#CP Arches, and presently about 14 x 20" - from the archives.

QUICK STUDY

Painting loose and free is natural for many watercolorists, but I find it very challenging. For me, to paint loosely, I must 'think long and look slowly,' then paint deliberately with a sure stroke. No fussing.

Knowing what to put in and what to leave out is part intuition and part design knowledge, just like color choice is. Being aware of each shape's edges then adding variety with soft, lost, and hard edges helped me create movement in the painting.

The range of darks and lights established focal and restful areas, depending on how close together they were located. The placement of small shapes with hard edges helped emphasize a focal area more.

Developing the unpainted areas so that each space was a different shape and size also added interest to this study. It may look like a quickly dashed off painting, but there were lots of subtle decisions made before the paint ever met the paper, and plenty of on-the-spot decisions were made while my brush was moving. It's fun and it's nerve wracking! And I love to paint:-D

"MAY DAY GERANIUMS" Transparent Watercolor on 140# CP Arches 7 x 9" COLLECTED

YUPO LEAP TOWARD THE CHALLENGE

It's LEAP YEAR, and today's February 29th. The artists in my classes have 'leaped' at the chance to grow beyond their comfort zones by taking Myrna Wachnov's first artist challenge of the year.

On her blog in January, she suggested that we select a reference photo to be painted several times. We were to make each painting have dominance of one of the seven elements of design. Each of the seven paintings also had to have a different unifying color throughout every part of the painting, and each had to be created with its own specific compositional design, selected at random ahead of time.

These are my final three paintings of the seven. My other four challenge paintings plus the reference photo are posted at the end of this post, as well as in late January and early February posts on this blog.

The top painting, my Week 7 painting, was based on a SHAPE-IN-SHAPE composition with SHAPE as the dominant element of the painting. It was great that I drew those two together, because it made things a little simplier to figure out.

To make this a shape-in-shape, I liked the idea of taking the people off of the street they were on and placing them in the train station - or wherever you think this might be. The window happened by chance. I'd designed an open archway, but closed it up, making the shape-in-shape composition possibly stronger. This was done with transparent watercolor on YUPO and is about 11 x 15". (Quinacridone Burnt Orange was the unifying color, but I forgot to put it in the clothes on the people :-(

For Week 6, the element I drew to be dominant was DIRECTION, and the composition I had to use was HORIZONTAL. These two also went together nicely, but the problem I faced was how to make vertical people shapes have a horizontal dominance.

Remember those paper dolls some of us cut out when we were kids? That gave me the idea to 'stretch' out the line of people so they looked like there were lots of them. I still used my photo reference, but I duplicated the people, reversing them, too.

I miskited the figures to keep them white. Applying the strokes of fluid acrylics horizontally and letting it flow by tipping the paper sideways helped create a stronger directional dominance. Adding the small, thin lines increased the dominance, too. I really liked the little figures that showed up in the negative spaces between the people shapes.

After removing the miskit, I flowed more color horizontally across the people shapes, then added a few details to specific areas on their bodies and around their feet. This was done on Arches 140# CP with Fluid Acrylics and some Transparent Watercolor and is also 11 x 15." (Unifying color was Quinacridone Coral.)

Week 5 was a CHALLENGE for sure. The element to make dominant was COLOR, so ... "piece of cake," I thought. And then I drew STAGGERED for the composition. Ugh. I cut up all the people and staggered them into a design that I thought would work and began painting, thinking 'color, color, color!'

I used color - everywhere - and in pure doses except for the unifying color I'd added in, which was Hansa Yellow. I ended up with a "It'll hurt your eyes" ugly painting. Too much garish yellow and oranges, too many colors everywhere. So I started knocking them down, neutralizing them, graying the intensity of most areas.

After lots of critique considerations and many corrections, this is the result. I'm not sure it comes off as staggered, but I do think that COLOR gets attention in those pure spots that are left. It's growing on me, I guess. Let me know what you think. It was my worst one but may end up being my favorite one. Weird.

This is done on Arches 140#CP with Fluid Arylics, Transparent Watercolor, Caran D'Ache Crayons, and Conte Crayons and is smaller since I cropped a lot of it off... probably about 9 x 12."

Samples of my previous challenge paintings are below - - - - -


Week One - VALUE and VERTICAL composition (Raw Sienna to unify) --- Week 2 - LINE dominance and CHECKERBOARD composition (Transparent Pyrrol Orange to unify) --- Week 3 - TEXTURE dominance and CRUCIFORM composition (Burnt Tiger's Eye to unify) SOLD --- Week 4 - SIZE dominance and ASYMMETRICAL composition (Quinacridone Violet to unify)

- My photo reference for the challenge paintings, taken in London, England in '06.

Painting from the same photo seven times and being challenged to make each painting specifically different was invigorating. I learned a lot and stretched beyond my normal painting habits.

Most of my students are also working on their own seven challenge paintings, and you can see a couple of them by checking their blogs - Chris Campbell's floral paintings and Rhonda Carpenters' challenge paintings of two different themes, the most recent some old time pottery. See the side bars on the right hand side of my blog to go to their sites.

Some of the works I've seen in class simply astound me. Artists are SO creative! And we can thank Myrna for the challenge she gave us ... or maybe some would blame her for the misery it is to push beyond our comfort zones. Surely not.

Happy Birthday to David! February 29th! ...... the only person I've ever met with this birthday.

STRETCHING THE TRUTH

I've been participating in a weekly challenge from Myrna Wacknov, and this is week four's painting. Using the same photo that I started with early this year, this time I had to come up with a way to make 'size' be the important feature or element in the painting - so I stretched the people and gave them raisin heads (a Carla O'Conner ploy.) Plus, I had to use some sort of grid in the background with an assymetrical balance of the subject. Challenging, for sure.
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First I glazed the whole sheet with a pale glaze of Quinacridone Violet to help unify the entire painting. From there, I began to develop the background areas, not caring if they had depth or dimension to them. I was going for more of a design quality this time, with flat space, not depth.
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I painted rather timidly for a while because I felt unsure about the grid/asymmetrical compositional thing. I made the colors match, etc., instead of taking my usual liberties with color choices.

After a class critique (Thank you, Tuesday's class,) I moved in with flourish and added color and value where it was weak. I liked the results and think this is my favorite of all of the paintings of this subject that I've done. Thanks again, Myrna. And there are 3 more paintings to go. Can't wait to see how they turn out. The next one is a 'STAGGERED' composition, new to me.

"STRETCHING THE TRUTH" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches 12 x 17"

CALL IT A DAY WITH YUPO

Here I go again. Same picture but I think a much better composition than the demo I did last Friday night - see January 12th post.

The large dark cruciform design shown here goes off the page on all four sides and is connected. I like this painting the best of all five that I've done. I'll send it to Myrna Wacknov as Week 3 for her challenge.

I'd drawn 'TEXTURE' (YEAH!!!) as the dominant element of design to use plus the 'cruciform' design (easiest one for me to do,) so painting this after designing it was very freeing.

It was done quickly with no fussing or fiddling, mostly relying on instinct and intuition. And it's on YUPO, too. That made it seem even more spontaneous and fun to do.

Colors I used = Burnt Tiger's Eye, in every color to unify the painting, as well as Ultramarine Turquoise, Cobalt Teal Blue, Quinacridone Violet, Quin Magenta, Transparent Pyrrol Orange, Raw Sienna, Perylene Green, and Indanthrone Blue, all from 'Daniel Smith/Seattle, WA' Watercolors.

"CALL IT A DAY" Transparent Watercolor on YUPO 11 x 15"

LINES AND CHECKERBOARDS

California artist Myrna Wacknov recently started a weekly blog painting challenge which intrigued me enough that I finally jumped in. Her challenge goes something like this:

First you select a photo reference to work from - one you LIKE a lot.

Next, you randomly (without looking) select one of the seven elements of design - line, texture, shape, size, direction, color or value.

Then, randomly select one compositional design motif to use to design the painting. These include a vertical or horizontal compositional design, or a cruciform shape, or a pyramid shape, a bridge shape, a 'T' shape, or an overall pattern, a checkerboard pattern, a spiral, a radial design, frame-in-frame, or medallion shape, etc. There are many to choose from, depending on what you read. Marianne K. Brown's book called "Watercolor by Design" teaches about them extensively, and Gerald Brommer does a great job explaining various design compositions in some of his books.

The final thing to do before painting is to select one color to mix somehow throughout every bit of the painting. Myrna calls this the mother color.

Once these four selections are made, the challenge is to paint a picture and make your selected element be obviously dominant in the selected compositon. Each week, a new painting is completed, using the very same photo reference, but selecting a new element, a new design composition, and a new mother color.

I like doing this so much that I am passing Myrna's challenge on to my classes with a few variations to the challenge, (with her permission and blessing.) So far, everyone's really enjoying the challenge, as well as discovering that they are no longer in their comfort zone.

The painting posted to the right is Week Two for me. I randomly selected LINE as the element to dominate the painting and CHECKERBOARD as the design composition, with TRANSPARENT PYRROL ORANGE as the mother color. It was challenging and fulfilling to play with the concept, especially with the conflict that line and checkerboard together presented. I think the line here needs to be more dominant and broken so that shape doesn't play such an important role in this painting. I may have to break out the Caran d'Ache crayons for some more line work, and I'm already looking forward to the next painting.

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Week One (left side) incorporates the same composition as the YUPO demo done on Friday night. My Week One's selections were VALUE, VERTICAL DESIGN, & RAW SIENNA, easy ones to handle because I use them a lot.

Each painting is 11 x 15" on Arches 140#CP. You can see the reference photo which I'll continue to use at the end of yesterday's post. And, no, I do not ever get tired of painting from the same photo, especially with all the diversity that's happening with this challenge.

To see Myrna's blogspot and website, check the side bar info on the right of this blog, titled, "PLACES I VISIT." Thank you so much, Myrna, for so freely sharing, teaching, and encouraging others. You are an inspiration!

TREASURE HUNT

Done on watercolor paper, this painting includes both torn rice paper collage and tube acrylics, plus a lot of rubbing alcohol used to rub off some areas of pigment to reveal colors and textures underneath. The idea was to create a weight or tension between the top large shape and the bottom band of color.

Using rubbing alcohol to lift areas of dried ACRYLIC paint creates surprises and textures that I could not get any other way. It's like a treasure hunt to see what's been hidden away.

"FULL MOON" on Arches 140# CP 15 x 11"

PORTRAITS AGAIN

I was taken by the elegance of this woman. She was having lunch with a friend and oblivious to my taking her picture. I've changed her features just enough that it really doesn't look exactly like her.

This portrait is painted with much more control than the one I posted on Oct. 22. I find it much easier to paint like this than to paint loosely the way the other one was painted.

"COFFEE TALK" on Arches 140# CP 22 x 15" TRANSPARENT WATERCOLOR