The Paul Foxton rose still life oil painting is not finished but a long way along. This was the final session in the workshop and it’s been the best one so far. The painting is almost at the end point. I can probably finish the painting after another session. Phew!
We’ve been on this workshop for 8 weeks and we’ve done various aspects of the full painting before spending the last 2 sessions on the final thing. We’ve done a value study, a color study, a close-up of the roses, and a session on painting cloth which I didn’t post about for some reason. The first session didn’t involve painting but Paul took us through how he sets up and lights a still life. My interest in this a year ago would have been pretty small. However, the setup is an extremely important part of the painting. If your setup doesn’t work well the painting never will.
In progress
Michele Clamp oil painting easel setup
I try and keep a tidy painting station as far as possible. I’m used to painting with watercolor and it’s easier to keep the paint under control (on the palette if not the paper). The paint does wash off (mostly) but with oils it can get everywhere if you’re not careful. A near mid-value gray on my glass palette makes it easier to judge the values of mixes. Probably due to my watercolor background I try to use only a few brushes which does mean I have to clean them as I go. The upside is cleanup at the end of a session is pretty quick.
This rose still life oil painting has been my most ambitious oil painting to date. Paul has done a lot of the heavy lifting of course. His setup was fabulous and he took us through all of the mixing and the brushwork as we went along. I highly recommend him as a teacher. His knowledge of color and mixing is worth it alone.
Penguin watercolor sketches and a complete watercolor penguin painting. Ideas for how to make penguin painting easy.
Watercolor penguin study
So penguin watercolor sketches are the topic for today. The reason for this is that I’ve had a commission on the todo list for a while now. Specifically it is for a panoramic penguin painting featuring multiple species of penguins. James has requested it and the final painting will hang in our main living room. It’s going to be a challenge.
Are Penguins Good for Beginner Watercolor Paintings?
Penguins are great for beginners watercolor painting. They are fairly easy to draw and quite forgiving if you don’t get complete accuracy. When it comes to the painting the penguin coloring really helps us. They have wonderful white bellies with very dark wings and back. This high contrast helps us when painting – we don’t have to hit really accurate values to get a convincing penguin painting. So if you’re looking for beginner watercolor ideas (or even if you’re a seasoned pro!) penguin watercolors are for you!
Watercolor Supplies Needed
You don’t need too many supplies for a basic watercolor kit. Some paper, a brush and some paint. However there are a lot of options to choose from. Below I give you my preferences and some more budget options for a beginner watercolor set.
Watercolor paper for our Watercolor Penguins
First and foremost we need some paper. It’s the most important thing to make watercolor painting easier. However the best watercolor paper i.e. 100% cotton paper is not cheap. I tend to use Fabriano Artistico 140lb cold press. It’s a great paper and you can get some good deals on it from cheapjoes.com or Jerry’s Artarama. A lot of people swear by Arches watercolor paper. It is a great paper and especially if you’re beginning watercolor painting. However it is a little more expensive. For the sketches a student grade paper is fine. I like the Fabriano ‘fat’ pad which is 25% cotton and takes paint reasonably well. I also use a Strathmore watercolor sketchbook which, although not as good as the Fabriano, is a good choice.
Best Watercolor Brush
Brushes are the next most important thing for your penguin watercolor. The absolute best watercolor brushes are made from Kolinsky sable and are eye-wateringly expensive. However, all is not lost! There are a number of really good synthetic brushes available that come close to that sable experience. For the best synthetic watercolor brush I like the Princeton Aqua Elite and the Escoda Reserva brands. I’ve also recently used the Silver Black Velvet brushes which have a nice feel to them.
Whichever brand you go with you’ll need around a size 10 round and it should come to a good point when wet and hold a good amount of water.
The watercolor paint you use is less important than the paper. Pretty much any quality artist watercolor paint will work well and most of the student brands too (e.g. Lukas Studio, Winsor & Newton Cotman). Even something like the Artists Loft watercolor tubes will be fine for some sketches.
Colors needed:
Ultramarine Blue or cobalt blue watercolor paint.
Cerulean blue (not absolutely essential but I like the way it granulates)
Burnt Sienna
Cadmium orange (or a red and a yellow so you can make orange)
First things first – start off with some sketches to see how the different penguins look.
Miscellaneous Watercolor Supplies
Mechanical pencil for the penguin drawing
Masking tape to tape our paper to a board (not needed if you’re using a watercolor block)
Spray bottle to keep our paint moist.
Palette with large white mixing areas (a white plate can suffice in a pinch).
Water and water pot
Paper towels.
So that’s the watercolor painting kit dealt with. Let’s get back the penguins!
There are many different species of penguin
There are apparently 18 species of penguin. Some are more visually attractive than others so sorry, but the little Australian penguin probably won’t make the cut. Of them all the rockhopper sketch came out very well as did the gentoo sketch. I also found out that I’ve been painting king penguin watercolors and they’ve been painting an emperor penguin watercolor all this time. Silly me!
My approach was to pick a penguin and quickly get down the main shapes. I tried not to dwell too much on the drawing accuracy (within reason of course). Keeping the lines and shapes interesting was more important than accuracy. I took a couple of liberties with the penguin feet drawing. Not all penguins have orange feet but I like that pop of color so orange they were. One of the sketches that wasn’t quite as successful as the rest was the ‘unknown penguin’. I really liked the pose with the outstretched wing but the penguin plumage itself wasn’t particularly interesting. I may transplant the pose onto another species and see how that works.
I was painting these fairly small (around 4 or 5 inches) in a Strathmore watercolor sketchbook. This isn’t the worst paper to paint on in the world but it’s no Arches or Fabriano Artistico. The paper is fairly substantial but not very absorbent. The paint dries quickly and blending is hard. This means that you have to work fast and not noodle over things too much. But it lends itself to a very loose and energetic style which I like for a watercolor sketch.
Next Steps for Our Penguin Watercolor
A watercolor penguin sketch makes for an enjoyable afternoon’s painting. The next step will be to compose them so they look interesting and not just pasted in a line.
Panoramic Penguin Watercolor Painting – The Study
The final study for the panoramic penguin painting
The next day was time to get back to the penguin watercolor painting. I had a piece of paper ready cut but it had curled too much to paint on. So while I was waiting for it to flatten out overnight I used the offcut to do a quarter size test study. This is 6″x17″ and the final thing will be 32″x11/5″ which will be a pretty big scale up.
I’d done some sketching out of the composition on the ipad a couple of nights ago and was pretty happy. Everything is out of my head and from experience of previous paintings. I’m still wondering whether a few extra penguins will make their way in there but it hangs together pretty well so far.
penguin ipad study by Michele Clamp
First the drawing.
Penguin drawing
Looks ok so far. The shapes are good. There’s lots of overlapping shapes and the background cliffs tie everything together horizontally.
Now into the painting.
Penguin painting first stage
The sky went in ok. I was thinking of maybe masking the cliffs but in the end it wasn’t an issue. The darks of the penguins look good. Not a lot of detail here. All the work is being done by the shapes.
Penguin painting second stage
I’m pretty far along here. Everything went pretty straightforwardly. Just goes to show what a bit of planning can do. I’m still wondering whether to add in a couple more penguins on the right. And those two wings in the center two penguins are a little too similar so that might change.
And the final thing again
Penguin watercolor painting – final study
Vidoe of an Easy Watercolor Penguin Tutorial
If you’re interested in painting an easy penguin watercolor have a look at my youtube penguin painting tutorial below. It’s designed as a beginner watercolor tutorial so, if you try it, please let me know how you get on. And please subscribe to my YouTube channel if you’d like to see more demos in the future.
It’s been a while since I’ve done any portrait painting. Getting warmed up by doing some Asarohead practice. Very useful to have the planes clearly shown. A bit like painting a very complicated cube.
Online Asaro Head
There’s a great online 3D head by William Nguyen at Artstation. It’s not an exact Asaro head but has the main planes and is very similar. You can rotate it using the mouse and the lighting moves around the head so you can pause the video at the exact pose and lighting setup you need.
Enough with the apples. Let’s get back to some watercolor. I’m really enjoying the street scenes recently. They need a lot of tweaking to design them into something that works. But you also have to keep the sense of place in there. And also make a decent painting out of them. It’s tricky – but rewarding.
So this is the reference image
The tower is great of course. But there’s a lot of space in there not doing a whole lot. I toyed with keeping this in – maybe a wider format – and making it more of the subject. But after noodling with some value studies in paint and on the ipad I plumped for compressing the road and keeping the tower and the car as central. Of prime importance are the light roofs leading down to the car. Great arrangement of darks and lights.
Those three lights and the car on the left hand side hold everything together. Well that’s the plan. The initial washes went in ok. Some light and dark but I’ve still got half the value scale to play with so a long way to go.
Vermont Main Street watercolor by Michele Clamp
Well here he is finished. I managed to screw up at the last minute (not telling where) but on the whole I’m pretty happy with this. Time will tell of course.
This is the apple color study – session 2 (session 1 is here). After the struggle with surfaces last time this was never going to be a masterwork. But it’s been interesting (never thought apples could be that interesting). The painting is never going to hang on a wall but I wanted to work more on this and really try to get the colors as close as I could. It’s really good training in mixing but more importantly in just looking. Getting closer I think.
Munsell Chips to the Rescue
Munsell chart 10YR and oil painted copy
A couple of years ago I was really struggling with color in my watercolor painting. After googling a little I found Paul Foxton’s site learning-to-see.uk. He is an oil painter and, after a workshop with Anthony Waichulis weeas a convert to using the Munsell classification for color. He found it transformed his color work and, I’m now a convert too.
I won’t go into details here. If you go to Paul’s site and/or youtube channel he has a lot of free videos describing his process. It has been a godsend for me. I’m now able to see, mix and use color much better. I can now be much more accurate in my mixes but that’s not the main thing. The fact that color identification and mixing is no longer a lottery for me I can now be *much* more expressive color-wise. Gaining a skill in this area has increased my powers of expression through paint and is much more enjoyable as a result.
I will likely go into more detail about Munsell and watercolor in upcoming posts.
So I used Munsell chips extensively in this apple painting. You can buy (at great expense sadly) a large book of 1600 painted chips which cover the gamut of all the colors you can reach in paint. Identifying the colors you need in you setup you can then pluck out the relevant chips and mix to those.
Thanks to Munsell chips the apple study – session 2 was a success!
Yes I never thought the title would be ‘oil painting surfaces- a cautionary tale’. Today was supposed to be a set of apple studies with different types of brushwork. It turned into a sorry saga of unsuitable surfaces. With pretty horrible results.
Strathmore Canvas paper – too absorbent for oil paint
As this was just meant to be some studies I first started with a quarter sheet of Strathmore canvas paper. I’ve used this before with good results but what I forgot was that I gessoed the surface first before painting on it. And this time I didn’t. Ugh! The paint just sinks in, you can’t blend it, and it somehow darkens and goes matte on the paper. After struggling for an hour or so trying to get the paint to cover the surface (it soaks in and in!) I gave up. Here’s the result:
Blergh. Almost no form on that left hand apple even though I was *so* careful with the values.
Not all ‘gessoboard’ is the same
After a quick stomp around the studio I fished out a small 5”x7” Ampersand gessobord. *Gesso* board so this surface must be ok yes? Hmm. Well it was better but boy so slick! The paint just rides around on the surface as there’s no tooth to speak of. It was definitely better than the paper but only just. Here’s my chunky block-in.
Apple still life oil painting study color block in
Kinda okay. I had a lot of trouble getting the chroma right on the light side of the apple. I was using Munsell chips but was still struggling. Will try and tweak that tomorrow and see if I can get it right. It has a certain charm but nowhere near what I was aiming for.
Finally I blended some of the edges and beefed up the darks a little. And that was it for the day. 4 hours – 2 apples! I have to get back to watercolor.
Apple still life oil painting study softened edges
