The Second Coat

More watercolour expertise coming your way! Watercolour often needs a second coat. It dries quite a bit lighter than the initial wash no matter how strong it might be. The first layer of colour is a lot of fun. When I am doing a large block of dark I mix a base wash as intense as I can without it becoming cream which tends to sit on the surface instead of being absorbed into the paper. To this intensity I add even stronger colour straight out of the pan, again with enough liquid to be absorbed. The colours run together and I have minimal control. I let it dry in interesting patterns. The first photo shows the result of such a powerful first round. For the second coat it is all about negative space and creating the illusion of complexity. As you can see, I am very selective about where I place the darker shapes and how they are formed. There does not have to be a complete inventory of every leaf, rather a suggestion is much more pleasing to the eye. In fact I left the top leaves alone. Letting the eye imagine the complexity within the first patterning beckons the viewer into participation. Life is so good.

The Great Yellow Pipe

I should have known… Not everyone is aware neither of what a gallery consists, nor for what it might be used. I did tell all those involved that although it looks like a garage it is really a studio/gallery. Sigh. I wish I could say I handled this with “quiet conviction” as Richard Rohr would suggest. I am not quite at the peaceful heart part that would have avoided the tirade. The contractor and I had just put on the finishing touches to my magnificent space the day before. I came home to see my new heater installed in my workshop and then I saw the neon yellow snake crawling up the gallery wall, across the ceiling and through the wall… I managed to ask, “Can I paint it?” The answer was ‘no’. By the next day, when I phoned the man in charge of the plumbing company, I was no longer thinking of paint. The fateful words, “It’s just a garage,” triggered an avalanche of words about putting such monstrosities through living rooms, etc. I apologized the next day for dumping forty years of frustration on him… Sigh again… Indeed, the pipe will be removed. I will patch up the holes and repaint. Life is still good.

Transfers and Collages

I am working on a new piece called “Invitation: To Proceed”. There is no one photo that captures what I wish to express. Often I will combine several photos into one image. The perspective is tricky at times; it is much simpler with one person or two as long as they are not too far apart. In this case I chose a lonely figure who was walking at a slightly different angle to the one I needed. So there were two problems to solve: angle and proportion. I decided a thumbnail sketch was in order so I could determine whether or not he should be dressed in dark or light clothing. The sketch gave me the tonal value and the proportion, now all I needed was the angle. With difficult problems such as this a preliminary sketch is a must. Trying to draw a perfect figure onto the watercolour sheet with all the necessary changes and without making any errors comes down to wishful thinking. It is much easier to make all the mistakes on a cheap piece of paper then using a light table I can transfer it by tracing. I cut a chunk of Mayfield to the correct size and began to draw. Changing the angle of the shoulders, hips, legs and feet proved not to be as challenging as I had first imagined. I am very thankful for all the hours I put into life drawing. They put flow into my work. Life is so good.

Preserving the Light

 This is really about negative space again. My initial washes are sloppy. I like soup and allowing the paint to do its own thing. Then I experience control issues… Developing lighter grasses against a darker, watery background contains several challenges especially if one wishes to include some sparkle in the water. Once the first layer of grass has dried I add strokes in different colours to encourage the illusion of grasses and reeds. I then take the colours of the darker water and carefully open spaces in the solid lighter areas to create thinner stems and seed heads. It is important to use the same value of the background and maintain the line of the stems. It does not have to look like the photo. It has to look like grass…. The glittering water requires a more horizontal approach reducing the white spaces sometimes to a few points, more often splitting the lighter area in two so there are two fine sparkles instead of one big glob. One has to be choosy. It is so easy to overwork this. Step back often and ask the question: is it working? If the answer is ‘yes’, leave it alone. Enjoy!

Clean Wet Brushes

So what did I mean by clean wet brushes, large and small in my last blog? These are essential tools to anyone doing watercolour. A large moist brush without any pigment in it can smooth out a hard edge, graduate colour into another area and sop up unwanted liquid. The handy paper towel keeps the brush moist rather than loaded, a quick wipe and the excess is gone. A good rinse in a container full of clean water helps to reduce any surprise additions of colour in the wrong place, again with a quick wipe on the towel. In the photo above you can see how a puddle of colour had accumulated in one corner of the area in which I was painting. If left to its own devices during the drying process a bloom would eventually occur. A bloom is like a small bush-like spot that has a pale interior with a very hard, dark edge. What happens is the excess water leaches the colour towards the drying area and collects the pigment on the semi-dry edge as it evaporates. Sometimes this is useful. Usually it is not. Dipping a dryish clean brush into the puddle siphons the water and the pigment away. Several applications of the brush leaves just the correct amount of water on the surface and it dries evenly. The small clean wet brush is very useful for filling in small areas along edges and perfecting the strokes. So much fun! Life is good.