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 Made the Difference?
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 it Worked! Portsmouth New Hampshire Painting Success!
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.
Two tries today. Both of the Boston skyline. The intention was to keep the colors muted and the values subtle. Not too much detail but enough to suggest buildings. The first one above was definitely the most successful but even this one suffered from some bad brushwork in the water. Nice in parts though.
Here’s the second:
Boston skyline watercolor painting take 2 by Michele Clamp
Stepping it up a bit today and completed 4 paintings. All are from Zbukvic originals. I was hoping that a fast turnaround would speed up the learning process and consolidate some things into muscle memory.
Before the pictures a summary. None of these came out as paintings. They’re obviously sketches or studies but I started to soak in a few things.
Shapes. A few big shapes, more smaller shapes. Make sure the negative space is also an interesting shape.
Values. Keep the values even in the big shapes (with a little variation for interest) and you only really need 4 or 5 to make the picture work.
Color – ugh. Still need to work on this.
Texture. This was hard. Mr Zbukvic has lots of lovely slight variation in his washes which I really struggle to get.
Drawing – Surprisingly simple to draw out these paintings. Lots of simplification has already been done by Mr Z.
Anything else? I think I improved as the day went on and was making the paintings more mine than copying the original. No great breakthroughs but definitely worthwhile.
So to the paintings – in reverse order :
Zbukvic practice watercolor sketch copy
This was the last and I think the most successful. I’d got used to the sequence of washes – lightest in sky and the sunlit parts of the buildings. Second the background and shadows on the buildings. 3rd – cars and dark recesses. 4th and final – people and the foreground and other bits and pieces.
I’d also started to get used to some of the wet in wet for windows and background mistiness.
Next one – number 3 :
Zbukvic practice watercolor sketch copy
Struggled with this one. The original has lots of variation in the darks which I just wasn’t getting. The strong composition makes this one – especially the foreground shadow – which is of course all Mr Z’s doing.
Next one – number 2
Zbukvic practice watercolor sketch copy
This had quite a lot I liked. The color came out well. The combination of dull orange and the purple shadows worked without being too in your face. The center of interest has nice lots of choppy darks and lights which read well without specifically being anything. So not great but not too bad.
Finally – number 1
Zbukvic practice watercolor sketch copy
Again this didn’t come out too badly. I was feeling my way at this point and you can see the background washes are a bit muddy. Nice choppiness in the center of interest and the combination of darks and lights worked well.
So it was a busy day. As usual I’m too close to things to really assess whether it was worthwhile. It’s certainly a different beast copying paintings rather than scenes. The simplification and composition has already been done for you which are two things you don’t have to worry about. Once the drawing is done it’s a case of identifying which value wash goes where and trying not to get too fiddly. I think after another day of these (I have nine in total to have a go at) I’ll concentrate on extreme simplification of some of my own scenes.
After yesterday’s rather glum conclusion it was back to basics again today. I was having a lot of trouble with pretty much everything. The values were either too different or too similar. The colors were not cohesive. The brushstrokes were too heavy handed. The only thing that really held up was the drawing which is one less thing to worry about I suppose.
So what to do? After spending an hour last evening riffling through pinterest I went back to one of the masters – Joseph Zbukvic. His style is deceptive. It looks like he just dashes things off but that masks a mastery of drawing, composition and above all value. Copying one of his paintings is not for the fainthearted but I was ready and had a plan.
Plan :
Do a preliminary thumbnail sketch and work out the big shapes and values.
Draw carefully but not too rigidly detailed. Make sure all the shapes work – especially the negative ones.
Work out the large shapes ahead of time and values they are
Lightest = sky
2nd = sunlit portions of the buildngs
3rd = shadow portions of buildings and parts of the cars
4th = foreground
5th – cars and middle portion of the picture
6th and darkest = foreground buildings at the sides and the poles/wires
Phew – that turned into quite a lot of values. Was only really planning on 3 or 4.
Keep the values fairly close. No stark changes and keep the highest contrast in the middle area of the painting
Keep an eye on color. Use a restricted palette (ultramarine, perylene maroon, yellow ochre)
Don’t rush!!! Simplification doesn’t mean slapping the paint around willy nilly.
And here’s the original I was using to paint from :
Zbukvic original reference
Okay off we go.
First the thumbnail :
First value sketch
Well I’m not sure what I learned here. Was it worth it? It didn’t really feel like it at the time. Well actually it did help. It made me remember to keep the sunlit portions of the buildings pale and mark in where the shadows fell across the buildings. This got lost in the sketch and it shows.
Second the drawing and first washes :
Drawing and first washes
Fairly happy at this point. Drawing is fine and the first washes are light but have some color. Frankly it’s hard to go wrong for this part.
Next is the tricky bit and I think I learned quite a bit here. The plan was to go to the next darkest value and put in large even areas of the same wash. At this stage this means the roofs and the shadow portions of the buildings. However there is a wrinkle. A lot of the sparkle in Mr Z’s paintings come from the twiddly bits. The little dots and dashes and also the small pieces of white left in between brush strokes. In addition his washes aren’t uniform – they have variation in color and texture and maybe have a couple of layers.
I had to remember all this so I went about it as follows :
Mix up a big purply wash and use a squirrel mop to block in the larger areas but leaving some gaps and not filling in the wash to the edges
Using a smaller synthetic brush (escoda perla) use the same wash mix to put in the edges but giving them some interest and dottiness
Use the small brush to also put in shadow pieces and windows on the sunlit parts of the windows.
After the buildings I had a first pass at the cars. Things to remember about cars :
Keep those horizontals really horizontal. No scrappiness there.
The highlighted portionsof cars need to be really quite small.
Don’t be too accurate about the rest of the car once the windows and the wheels are in.
Shadows under the cars are essential for the brain to read something as a car.
Don’t go too dark too early. Good advice in general.
Things were looking fairly good so I then put in the foreground. It was too light to begin with and I had a couple of goes at it. It’s still a bit light but I felt I’d fiddled too much already. I made sure to get a rough brushstroke at the top where the shadow ended.
So at this point this is what I had :
Second pass and starting the darks
Frankly I was pretty chuffed at this point. There’s reasonable variation in the washes. The brushstrokes nicely indicate the window and shadows on the buildings and the cars definitely read as cars. A little scrappy in the foreground but you can’t have everything.
Now I was getting worried I was going to screw everything up. All I had left to do was to put in the right hand side darker buildings, the people and the lampposts and telegraph poles. I almost went too dark with all of these but sponged off the worst of it. The final thing has a lot to recommend it :
Learning from Joseph Zbukvic
So what did I learn? Let’s make a list :
Take your time over those twiddly bits. They look dashed off but they’re not. Why do I never remember this?
Remember the big shapes – keep the value within a small range in these. This is painting 101 – why do I have such a hard time remembering this?
Kepp those large washes moist by spraying them and add in color/water to add some variation but not so much it changes the value too much.
Don’t go too dark too early. A small value change over a large fraction of the painting reads so much better than chopping and changing from light to dark all over the place. I think this is the thing that I mainly took away from this piece. I can also see the regions where I strayed from this concept and they suffer.
Horizontals are horizontal. Verticals are vertical. Should be covered by following point one really.
A restricted palette really helps.
Now all I need to do is to carry this over into my own paintings.
Small paintings made from a larger painting are pretty unusual. The more common way of doing things is a smaller study as prep.
A Show for Small Paintings but I have no Small Paintings!
I don’t usually do copies of paintings but I was in a bit of a bind this morning. The deadline for the small works exhibition was today and I had absolutely nothing of the right size to enter. As time was short I settled on painting one of my favorite subjects (the First Baptist Church in Marlborough) in recent months in a 5×7 format as opposed to a 11×14. Turns out it takes as much time painting a small painting as it does a big one – with extra fiddlyness.
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Now this is a bit unusual for painting. Usually we do smaller studies and then make them bigger which has it’s own problems of course. But going in this direction from large to small was new to me. And to be honest I wasn’t sure if it was going to work.
However, as it turned out I shouldn’t have worried. Time wise it took just as long as a large one but it was definitely more pleasurable to paint. Partly this was because, well, I’d done it before. I’d worked out all the problems, the value changes, color scheme etc. But partly it was that the small scale just doesn’t allow you to noodle around with things. You can’t indulge in painting killing detail as there just isn’t room! And all this simplification really helps the painting hang together.
I’ve been working larger on the last couple of paintings. Having seen my sunflowers up on the wall at Post Road Art and visiting the North East Watercolor Exhibition I can certainly afford some more paper real estate.
Going large has it’s own problems. Getting too tight and detailed is one. Not using a big enough brush and ending up with lots of little dabby strokes is another. Also the larger space allows you to put in much stronger color. In fact it needs it otherwise things look very washed out.
So this eagle looks pretty good to me. I may revisit and soften up some edges but it’ll depend what it looks like in the morning.
Edit: Great news! This won the People’s Choice award at Marlborough’s Post Road Art Center Open Exhibit. A nice Christimas present for me and I’m sure I’ll be stocking up on supplies from them with the prize money. Many thanks to all who voted and Randi et al at the Center.
