Advancing with Watercolor: Immersion : The Waters Edge

A New Subject

The Waters Edge - This might not be your first choice in subject matter but I have always found interesting compositions along the waters edge. It is a small world along the waters edge but when you stop to observe there is a lot of interesting subjects. I will show you some of the things. I begin with shapes -the subject is complex with lots of trees and leaves - so I squint and try to find a few larger shapes that hold my interest….this is the first step into my painting. The I begin to paint these shapes in the form of a notan at least in designing and quickly develop a two tone notan - Each painting possesses some challenges and this week I look to edges to help me sort out all the visual noise.

Last week I talked a lot about gradation, and it’s role in painting, to create interesting transitions. At the heart of gradation is the technique of wet into wet where we use water to help shape and blend the painting. And in today’s work we’re going to extend our knowledge of working wet into wet And soft edges can generate the feeling of atmosphere and soft light. This is particularly useful in painting, distant areas or backgrounds or parts of the painting that we want to be more passive. Wet and wet is one of the more difficult techniques because we have to concern ourselves about timing, and the thickness of the paint on the brush. To become more fluid in this technique, we exercise it in the form of sketches and drills. This week will will use a single color to practice wet into wet with or subject….

This weeks study

This week we start with a Notan on good paper 6 x 12 - I am attracted to this format and it seems to suit the cropping I have made with my image.  I have played with the image a bit through cropping and adjusting the exposure - theses adjustments give me new inspiration with this image as the initial view was too green.

A technique for finding a notan in your subject is through squinting.

This is where I start today creating a Notan that focuses on a few shapes of light swimming in a dark midtone. After this start I want to experiment with edges

Where should I use hard edges - where should I use soft edges??…

Sometimes it is nessecary to go through the process of painting the same subject in a few ways and that’s what we do today. I try two more studies one using only soft edges and one using a combination of soft and hard edges…

What will you need this week

I am using 3 sheets of good paper cut to 6 x 12 roughly. And the final painting is more like 12 x 20. I tape the paper to a board so that I can manipulate the flow of color

Brushes

A large flat 2” and a 1 inch flat, a couple of sabelette rounds large and small..

Tape, spay bottle, paper towel, hair dryer

Color

Sepia for the studies

Quin Gold, B Sienna, Prussian Green, Cad Yellow, Ult Blue

You can see images of the studies below with smaller windows to give you an idea of my working surface and brush “posture”