Watercolor paintings, tutorials, and videos
I treated myself to some hot press paper and this is its first outing. We spent the New Year at Old Orchard Beach a couple of years ago and I snapped the pier which turned out to be a pretty nice composition.
For a first outing I’m pretty happy. No blending on the paper with hot press and with the fans and the heat the paint dries pretty much immediately. Some nice effects though.
This Portsmouth, New Hampshire painting was a bit of a turning point for me when I did it. I’d been banging my head against a brick wall for a few months and not getting anywhere. Many of my watercolor paintings weren’t working out and I just couldn’t work out why! I’d have all these great plans, lots of things went right but the end result was just disappointing. I’d pore over the results and try to work out what went wrong but I just couldn’t work it out. I’d try multiple versions with different approaches and still no joy.
Until this one!
Now you may think that this isn’t much to write home about. And, frankly, looking at this a couple of years later I agree with you. But at the time I was over the moon. I think I’ve moved on a bit from here – this Marlborough painting for instance or this Arlington Str church painting.
So what was it that made the difference? That’s the million dollar question. I’d been reading Edgar Payne’s book on composition and he mentions breaking down each scene into a few big shapes. I thought ‘why not give it a try’ so I took this scene and tried my best. I decided to give each shape a ‘mother’ value so the arrangement would be visually appealing and just vary the value slightly within each shape. There was also a fair amount of detail in this which I treated as a separate shape of its own.
And you could knock me down with a feather it worked! A lot of this was that trying to keep everything harmonious within it’s own shape made me simplify things to a much greater degree than I’d been used to. And this combination of retaining the big shapes with some variation within them for interest absolutely did the trick.
I’ve been using this approach ever since. And it’s worked well. I don’t rigidly stick to it but it’s a great starting point especially for very complicated street scenes.
I run online zoom courses regularly for both beginners and more advanced students. Please check out my workshop page.
I was rooting around on the bookshelf this morning and came across one of my favorite watercolor books: John Lovett’s Textures, Techniques and Special Effects for Watercolor.
Now I think the title is a bit misleading as it’s a first rate instruction book for watercolor full stop. Never mind the special effects. As i was feeling a little jaded I thought I’d start at the beginning and go straight through the book doing all the exercises. It’ll keep me in practice but without troubling the brain cells too much. And frankly it’s too hot for the brain cells to do anything anyway.
First up – landscapes. Start with a loose drawing :
No problem here. Trying to keep the shapes interesting and uneven without sacrificing what the subject it.
Next the sky wash :
Yeah. This was meant to be an even wash over the whole sky and I screwed this up royally. I should have my watercolorist badge stripped from me for this. But never mind. Onwards.
Light washes over the foreground to indicate some foliage and a little detail around the road (or is it a river?). Remembered to keep things pretty light and used my 1/2″ bristle brush to keep the edges scruffy. Pretty happy so far.
Distant hills in a slightly greyed purple. Nothing fancy here and it’ll be mostly covered by trees anyway.
Now the trees. It’s amazing how hard I have to try to keep the trees uneven. It’s almost as if the brush has a will of its own and physically resists me. I’m also building up the foreground a little here – again with the 1/2″ bristle brush.
We’re actually almost there now. Amazing how quickly things come together. A little shadow detail on the houses followed by some dark doors and windows. The foreground has yet another layer of detail. This time some red for interest and some dark lines for fences/grass.
The only remaining thing was to *very* delicately put in some white lines for branches in the trees. So easy to ruin everything here with some clumsy marks so less is more.
I’m liking the foreground very much. Feels good.
Back to basics with Seago and we’re now at day 20 of 30 in 30. Not that Seago is basic mind you. Far from it. But after losing my way a bit on the last Venice effort it was time to back off and regroup a little.
Up early for this one – 6am start and it was still dark so the colors were a little hit and miss but it felt good.
Purely ultramarine and burnt sienna and put in very quickly with a squirrel mop
This is the original. Beautiful yes?
This subject is the old mill in Aldeburgh and the reference came from paintmyphoto.com. I thoroughly enjoyed doing this one. I even don’t mind the bleeds and the patchy sky. I combined things I’ve learned from Charles Reid and John Lovett. I used the local color darks first Reid approach for the building and the rough brush Lovett approach for the trees. I think it came out rather well.
So Santa brought me a John Lovett Splashing Paint DVD this year and by golly is it good. Lots of ideas and advice and just seeing him put paint to paper is educational. In particular it was good to see his use of a tatty old bristle brush to give wonderful ragged brush marks. I dug out an old acrylic brush to try the same and I’m pretty happy with the results.
When I first started painting in watercolor John Lovett quickly became one of my favorite watercolor artists. He has a great website and his videos taught me a lot. John Lovett paintings have a unique quality to them that I love to this day. In particular he integrates watercolor with other media such as inks and gouache and gesso to create beautiful atmospheric effects. I actually managed to snag a John Lovett watercolor at auction and it now hangs in my office. Makes me happy every time I look at it.
On the whole it is good to use the same set of brushes regularly. You get to know how they handle, how much water they hold, and just how the weight of them feels in your hand. But sometimes trying something completely new takes you in a slightly different direction. I’ve now bought a few of these 1/2″ bristle brushes and really like them when some irregular, organic brushwork is needed. In fact I’ve taken some scissors to a couple of them and made them even more tufty and irregular. This gives an even more unpredictable effect on the paper which I really like.
I find them mostly useful on organic things like trees and bushes. And sometimes skies if some wispy clouds are needed. For other things like buildings or portraits I wouldn’t reach for these as a matter of course. But then maybe that’s the kind of thing we should be doing. Something outside our usual routine. Maybe it’s worth a shot!
The best thing about bristle brushes is they’re so cheap. Even if they get worn they still work well as we don’t mind a bit of wear and tear. Buy them at the hardware store – they’re only a couple of bucks.
I run online zoom courses regularly for both beginners and more advanced students. Please check out my workshop page.
I was rooting around on the bookshelf this morning and came across one of my favorite watercolor books: John Lovett’s Textures, Techniques and Special Effects for Watercolor. There are a couple of John Lovett artist books. The other one is this:
As the title suggests it’s a getting started book. It’s a great book and has some interesting subjects but I do prefer the slightly more advanced ‘Textures, Techniques and special Effects for Watercolor’. This seems to be out of print sadly so I’m glad I held onto my copy.
Now I think the title is a bit misleading as it’s a first rate instruction book for watercolor full stop. Never mind the special effects. As i was feeling a little jaded I thought I’d start at the beginning and go straight through the book doing all the exercises. It’ll keep me in practice but without troubling the brain cells too much and frankly it’s too hot for the brain cells to do anything anyway.
No problem here. Trying to keep the shapes interesting and uneven without sacrificing what the subject it.
Yeah. This was meant to be an even wash over the whole sky and I screwed this up royally. I should have my watercolorist badge stripped from me for this. But never mind. Onwards.
Light washes over the foreground to indicate some foliage and a little detail around the road (or is it a river?). Remembered to keep things pretty light and used my 1/2″ bristle brush to keep the edges scruffy. Pretty happy so far.
Distant hills in a slightly greyed purple. Nothing fancy here and it’ll be mostly covered by trees anyway.
Now the trees. It’s amazing how hard I have to try to keep the trees uneven. It’s almost as if the brush has a will of its own and physically resists me. I’m also building up the foreground a little here – again with the 1/2″ bristle brush.
We’re actually almost there now. Amazing how quickly things come together. A little shadow detail on the houses followed by some dark doors and windows. The foreground has yet another layer of detail. This time some red for interest and some dark lines for fences/grass.
The only remaining thing was to *very* delicately put in some white lines for branches in the trees. So easy to ruin everything here with some clumsy marks so less is more.
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