Flow

"Flow" is now finished. It took a while to get the balance just right, but this is very close to what was in my mind as I worked on it. Balancing the cool colors with some warm pinks and oranges was a big part of this piece. Sometimes blues and grays can fall flat with this type of composition. Balancing cool and warm canoe crucial.

More Stones and Water

"Ebb" 22" x 30" watercolor on Arches 

More stones and water. The challenge in this piece was to get the feeling of water flowing away from the stones leaving reflections and small pockets of water in between stones. I am pretty happy with the results. My connection with the landscape comes from, partially, growing up near and spending a lot of time as a kid exploring the woods. This image was inspired by the shore of a brook very near where I grew up.

Sketch Book and Working Out Ideas

This is one of several watercolor notebooks I made myself. It's the only way I have found to have a watercolor notebook in various sizes with exactly the type of paper I want and be relatively inexpensive. 

It does take time to bind, but it is worth it! When I began thinking about making my own, I researched online and found this tutorial teaching the coptic stitch for single sheet bookbinding (look up DIY Single Sheet Bookbinding Tutorial by Sea Lemon).  

The book lies flat and can be completed fairly quickly, any size you want or need. 

This notebook is 10 1/2"  x 11 3/4" (paper size is 10" x 10 1/2") and holds 14 sheets of Arches Cold Pressed watercolor paper. I painted a scrap piece of cardboard black then glued a copy of a photo I took of dense birches near my home to the cover, inside front and back covers, and the back using mod podge matte glue.

These notebooks are great for working out ideas for my larger paintings. The third picture is a watercolor of stones - I'm trying out brighter colors and techniques such as using salt to help define moving water. Here's a few more:

I've discovered that I don't even have to bind them as long as they have sturdy covers and I keep a thick elastic holding the book together. This is especially convenient when out doors; the book cover acts as a drawing board and you can put your sketches in any order you like.

The last picture is a quick watercolor sketch I did looking at a pile of branches, sticks and leaves. This is just about shape and color and placement. I didn't worry - as you can see - about making the image look exactly like branches sticks and leaves. I thought about shape, color, tone, shadows, what shapes were in the front and which were receding and where to place those shapes and colors. I need to do many more of these.

These small paintings are so visually interesting or at least I think they have the potential to be very visually exciting. I'd like to practice some more, really exploiting the transparency of the watercolor in a larger image.

Thanks for looking and until next time!

Large Watercolor Progress

I've got the entire surface taped as you can see. The watercolor is 52" x 52", the squares are approximately 6.5". There is no need to be exact but I do like to get the squares fairly close in size so the image is close to what I want. 

Using a utility knife and a 3/4" roll of blue painter's tape (it does not damage the watercolor paper surface and can be removed and replaced easily), I cut a long piece of tape into about 4 pieces (about 1/8"), and keep taping until the surface is completed.

I don't draw every detail at this stage, just the main basic shapes; in this case a lot of different sized branches. I can work on details the further I get into organizing the piece. The second picture shows the bottom right hand corner; lightly drawn branches that are coming toward the viewer. There is a myriad of leaves and darkness behind and underneath these branches but there is no need to detail that now. That can be done in stages.

Once the drawing is completed I will begin working from the back to the front, and from darkest to the lightest. The more the background is detailed the more the foreground will pop out toward the viewer. 

Completing the drawing will take about a week. Then I'll dive into the painting and hope it works out to my satisfaction! Let me know what you think about this process or if you have any questions I'd be happy to talk!

Until next time.

Large Watercolor

I finally decided on the subject for my first oversized watercolor - a wonderfully complicated pile of fallen branches. I've had a roll of arches 156 pound watercolor paper from Christmas 2016 just waiting for me to use it. A subject was very difficult to decide on - though I knew I wanted to continue my theme revolving around the overlooked subjects in landscape; small, quiet moments a landscape painter would not typically choose for a "beautiful" or oversized image, but that I notice on my walks in the woods around my home.

This watercolor is 52" x 52". In order to build the base to hold the paper I bought some lumber from Home Depot, some corner braces, screws and made the base in about 2 hours. It was very similar to assembling a large canvas from stretcher bars. I also purchased some super strong magnets to hold the paper to the frame (where the metal braces hold the wood together) which worked beautifully.

Here is the frame from the back. I stapled a plastic/paper drop cloth over it help protect the watercolor paper. 

The first image shows my reference photo (approximately 14" x 14") against the paper. I used painter's blue tape to "square-up" both my photo and the watercolor because while the blue tape sticks, it is very, very easy to remove and does not leave any residue. 

As you can see in the second and third photos, I've squared off areas that directly correlate to the squares I taped on the photo, making it easier to enlarge the photo to the large scale watercolor. I love details so I really like to get even the smallest shapes recorded. It doesn't have to be perfect but part of this painting will be about organizing and figuring out this huge array of information - in a way that correlates to life, don't you think?

Flattening the Paper

Because of its large size, 52" x 52", flattening this cut from the original roll wasn't easy! I needed a large flat surface so I grabbed two large pieces of oversized mat board (you can use any flat surface you can find, a table, floor) put them next to each other and lined them with freezer paper to keep the wet paper from buckling them. I took the dry curled paper, sprayed water from a plastic bottle over the surface until it absorbed fully into the paper using a paper towel to help dampen the entire surface. Once the paper was wet (not too wet, just damp is ok), I spread some paper towels over the surface, weighted it down with heavy books, and let it sit overnight. In the morning it was dry and fairly flat - flat enough to work on, though not perfectly flat as the pictures show. 

I will keep you posted on my progress and am excited to finish the drawing and get to the painting. This is a big challenge for me; I've never worked this large before, but I know it will be a great learning experience. I'm taking care in every step so as not to rush ahead of myself and waste all the hard work that's come so far. 

Until next time.

"Pebbles" (Study in Orange and Blue), 30" x 44", watercolor on arches

I loved this image as soon as I saw all these small stones on a Cape Cod beach. I thought it would be a challenge and wasn't sure I could get the look I wanted. With such a complex and all-over image where all the stones are more or less alike, I wanted to simplify the color to keep everything congruent. I chose orange and blue because I could get some varied grays, blue-grays, browns, oranges and gray-browns with those two colors alone. I still think it might need some work but I'm happy with the image as it is - at least for now! The bottom image is the first stage and was posted earlier in this blog.