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Every spring I start to anticipate my departure for Maine. The reunion with old friends, plenty of subject matter to paint, and just the mere trip there with stops along the way start my pulse going a little bit faster.
I also look forward to conducting my annual workshop in Boothbay Harbor. It is headquartered at the Lions Club, an old building converted from schoolhouse to a big, open meeting space. It's on a quiet side street only a couple of minutes from downtown. There is plenty of space to spread out on a rainy day, but also handy to other favorite painting locations: the Harbor with all its boats, lighthouses, rocky shorelines, tree lined coves, and quaint streets. These are the sights that I've loved for 36 years.
This year's workshop will be held from August 29th - Sept. 2nd. Tuition remains steady at $400 for the five day workshop. Just down the block from the Lions Club is Beach Cove Resort, perched high on a hill overlooking West Harbor Pond. Many students choose to stay there because of its convenient and quiet location. My favorite Inn in Boothbay Harbor is the award winning Topside Inn. Their full breakfasts change daily and are abundant beyond belief! The décor is stunning, as is the view of the whole bay from the top of McKown Hill. On the quiet side of the Harbor is Brown's Wharf, featuring a fine restaurant on the property, an up-close view of yachts, lobster boats and sailboats. You can also check out the Chamber of Commerce's website for more lodging options.
The workshop is fun and informative. The focus changes from year to year, and this summer I will focus on translating strong, clear values into vibrant colors. A small sketchbook will be very useful.
So reserve your spot and make your lodging reservations soon. This will be a vacation and a painting experience you'll long remember!
For more information email me at caroljessen@yahoo.com
Sometimes the reality of a scene contains natural compositional aids. In this case, all lines lead to the crane and the tugboat. The tower in the background also leads downward toward the boat. The shoreline forms another pointer as does the reflection in the water.
If pointer lines do not occur naturally, think about ways to invent them.
I spotted this statue titled "Perpetual Mourner" in St. Louis' Bellefontaine Cemetery. After doing the value sketch and the drawing on the watercolor paper, I looked at it for hours, trying to decide which colors to use. To convey the mood, I decided against using warm colors. Then suddenly it occurred to me that black and white would communicate the mood and the grief better than any color could.
I also abstracted and softened the tree shapes in the background. Local color would have called for green, but continuing the use of grays was imperative to maintain the unity and mood of the painting.
The mysterious figure hidden within the shroud is ambiguous about its gender. Grief is grief, no matter the sex of the mourner.
"I see a red door and I want to paint it black..."
One of the more difficult things for beginning watercolor painters to do is to paint a dark shape with confidence. To hit the paper with enough paint to make a bold statement with a dark value is a hard step to make.
If you are timid with a dark in the first wash, and discover that the dark you thought was dark enough, you will try to go back and make it darker, only to discover that the area becomes muddy. Too much water is usually the suspect. Darkening an area requires a bold application with lots of paint.
Oftentimes, the paint is applied on the first go around, and then when it starts to dry, the artist goes back in when the paper is still damp. Try to be patient and wait until the area is completely dry before trying a second wash. Better yet, go darker than you think the area should be on the first application to insure its freshness.
As Ed Whitney said, "If it looks right when it's wet, it's wrong." More paint and less water will result in purer darks and movement in the paint if applied quickly.
Monhegan Lighthouse
The problem of where to cut off the parts of a structure can either bring the viewer's eye back into the composition or direct it off the page. If, in the painting, I had chosen to depict the top part of the roof, it would have formed an arrow straight out of the painting. Likewise the right part of the roof would have attracted too much attention if the whole rooftop had been squeezed into the composition.
.Also the little pine trees on the left are cut off in order to divide the sky and the lawn into more interesting shapes.
I suggest that you think about cutting off parts of structures or natural elements to favor the shapes, lines and directions in your painting.
One of the principles of art is contrast. Contrast of color is at work in this painting of an old bridge in Toledo, Spain. The warm color on the land and the bridge contrast with the blue in the sky and water, with the warm dominating. There are also contrasts of values. The focal point of the bridge is where the highest contrast occurs, thus directing your eyes to that point.
By limiting the palette and using the dominant warm color, the painting emphasizes the warmth of the land and the sun. Be conscious of the choices you make concerning color, and ensure mood of your painting when choosing a dominant.
This is another in my ongoing series of bridge paintings.
When translating the values in my previous post into color, I decided to go for a very limited palette of muted colors. I hoped that the values would tell the story. Using very vivid colors would create a completely different emphasis.
That said, I might try this scene again with a more colorful palette to see what that might produce.
Watch this space!
Bad Kreuznach, Germany
More and more, I take great pleasure in preparing to paint. Value studies are one way to ramp up my confidence and enthusiasm for the painting ahead. Pencil in hand, I can make decisions about how to guide the viewer's eyes around the paper. I also like the feel of the pencil against the page.
Here's a view of the little German town where I taught high school English back in the '70's. The silhouette is pleasing to me with the spires jutting up into the sky. I also enjoy thinking about how to indicate the background with very little detail. Now I can think in terms of color, trying out combinations in my head.
Take time to prepare, and your painting process will be much more enjoyable.
Keep it simple, stupid.
In this painting of sea stacks, I kept the shapes simple. The cliffs and their shadows blended into simple shapes. The differing shades of the sand were reduced to three values. The sea was one simple color broken only by the whites which represent the waves, and the sea stacks which are all different shapes and sizes.
But most of all, simplicity was achieved by eliminating as much texture as possible.
There are several ways to regain the light areas in watercolor. In this painting of a statue in the historic Village on Longboat Key, Florida, I painted the entire background first, not avoiding the area where the statue would eventually appear. When the page was thoroughly dry, I used a brush with clear water in it and applied it to areas where I wanted to regain the light. I let it set for about 10 -15 seconds and then wiped it with a Kleenex. Practically all the color is removed, almost down to the white paper.
This will not work well with staining colors like thalo blue, thalo green, and alizarin crimson. Avoid those colors in the underpainting.
This is especially helpful in regaining highlights.
Here is a photo I took on St. George Island on the Florida Panhandle. I liked the figure of the surf fisherman, and thought it would make a good painting. My first attempt was more or less a copy of the photo, and was a miserable failure. The figure was large, and the surf was confusing. I decided to de-emphasize the figure and concentrate on the surf in the second painting.
I placed the figure on the thirds and simplified the surf. I used some other source material for the surf. I also decided that the sky was too flat and formed an uninteresting rectangle, so I added some tension with the storm clouds approaching.
Lesson? Don't be tied to the composition or details in a photo. Move things, combine things, change colors, anything to aid the painting.
The lightest part of the painting is the oyster boat. The retaining walls, which are a muted pink, and the pink in the larger tree, contrast with the green foliage and the green boat. The darks surrounding the light banana leaves punch them out.
Study the compositional lines and shapes in this painting as well.
Here I am, in Apalachicola, Florida. Last night we had a terrific storm; lightning, high winds and downpours. The sun came out this morning, but the wind persisted, so I was once again forced to paint in my room here at Sportsmans Lodge.
I looked through my photos of this fall and found one of a famous bakery/restaurant on the Hill, the Italian section of St. Louis. Amighetti's is a well known landmark destination in a section of town where Yogi Berra was born, as well as Joe Garagiola. The green awning and the building across the street with its cupola appealed to me, so I decided to paint that famous corner.
Take your camera with you to your favorite section of your hometown, and photograph the buildings there with an eye for the composition.
In my last post, I explained the approach of alternation which featured a mainly monochromastic value system. Today's painting takes that same approach but in color.
Also in this painting, two other contrasts are present: soft edges vs. hard edges, and complementary colors (blue and orange).
Interestingly, I had a gallery owner tell me today that she thought this painting was an illustration. Any thoughts on that?
In this painting of a dock in Eastpoint, Florida, I concentrated more on values than color. I used basically three values and alternated them. I tried to place a dark value next to a midtone which is next to a light value. This checkerboard effect is also enhanced by making some dark shapes larger than others. It is the midtones that hold the painting together while the darks and lights help cast your eyes around the surface of the painting.
This technique is harder than it sounds and requires planning. The first step is to establish the lights by painting the midtones. The darks are then placed strategically so that the three values are contiguous.
Practice this technique a few times as an abstract design to get the hang of it. Try leaving large whites, small darks, and anchoring midtones. Then try midtones that isolate small whites alternated with darks. Practice, practice, practice.
An accurate silhouette can eliminate the need for details in the interior. Additionally, if the silhouette is an interesting shape, it will interlock with the negative space and create more interesting shapes there.
Trace your finger along the edge of the tugboat shape and you will see that it avoids straight lines and static shapes. Circles, rectangles and triangles don't interlock with the background and become boring shapes that create more boring shapes.
Also the shape of the tug is extended into the reflection in the water.
Most of my value studies also concentrate on a silhouetted shape of some sort.
This is the Catholic Church in Apalachicola, Florida. But I love the old live oak in the foreground.
Again I've used the red-green contrast. The red-orange tiled roof is warm with the rest of the painting fairly cool by contrast.
Say hello to the New Year by getting out your paints and starting fresh. Resolution? Paint more in 2016!
Happy New Year, everyone!
If you want to achieve depth in your landscapes, I suggest overlapping planes and value differences.
In this painting of a canyon in Turkey Run State Park in Indiana, the darker foreground overlaps the lighter, steep rocky wall in the distance. The overlap and the receding values emphasize the coolness of the canyon before it opens up into the light.
A third way to achieve a feeling of depth is to have the distant tones become more cool as they fade into the distance. However, this painting gets warmer in the background which opens up the vista.
Think of values first and color second. Overlapping is a great tool to accomplish the sense of distance.
Linking darks is one way to create more interesting shapes. It can also help lead the eye around the painting as well as stop the eye.
In this painting of another Parke County bridge, the foreground shadow leads into the dark reflections in the water. That takes you up to the reflection of the bridge and then to the dark shape of the bridge. Linking the bridge to the dark trees prevents the shape from becoming a boring rectangle. It also tends to stop the viewer's eye, sending it back to the bridge.
I've become more aware of the importance of darks in my compositions. Students have a difficult time committing to darks or using enough paint to achieve a dark value. In watercolor, the old ad that said, A little dab'll do ya does not apply!
I've travelled to Parke County, Indiana several times. There are more covered bridges in this county than any other in the United States. In my series featuring bridges, I've shifted my attention from Acadia to Indiana's covered bridges.
Not only has the form changed, but the textures have, too. Acadia's bridges are made of stone; covered bridges are made of wood. The textures in the Acadian forests have been replaced by more simplified shapes in the landscape of Indiana.
The complementary colors still apply, though. Pink has given way to barn red which is a nice foil to the different values of green.
I love bridges!
In the continuing series of the Bridges of Acadia, I decided to change the season from summer to winter. I put most of the scene in shadow to cast a spotlight on the bridge and the foreground trees.
Look at some of your old paintings to see if they could benefit from a change of seasons.
And Happy Thanksgiving!
Verticals portray stability and formality. Horizontals convey peace and harmony. Obliques (some call them diagonals) create tension and interest.
I try to incorporate obliques in some portion of most of my paintings. Once in a while it helps to include a shape that zig-zags through the painting. This not only creates tension; it can also be a pathway to various points of interest around the painting.
The light shape in this painting leads the eye from the lower right to the little falls back to the figure and then up to the pink rock wall. Several verticals stop the eye and return it to the zig-zag shape.
Compositional considerations are the components of good picture making.
There are advantages and disadvantages in painting in a series. Advantages include not having to decide on a subject. You can concentrate on composition. Color becomes less of a problem because you can draw on choices you made in the previous works. In the series The Bridges of Acadia, I was able to explore the contrasts of the complementary colors red and green. Using pink helped set off the dominant greens.
Disadvantages also come with repeating those two colors and the subject. As you become more comfortable with developing color choices and applying them to your subject, there also comes the risk of becoming rather formulaic. So deciding when to end a series will keep you on your toes and lead you to new explorations of color as well as subject matter.
Still, I like to paint bridges. Maybe next I'll attack the trite subject of covered bridges.
I continue to say it: Plan your watercolors with a value sketch. Know where your lights, midtones and darks will be so you can plan your painting strategy. Here's another carriage road bridge in Acadia National Park.
Here's another in my series of paintings of Acadia National Park. One of the unique features in the park is the carriage roads built by John D. Rockefeller. The stone bridges are a charming focal point of the roads. This one is at the northern end of Bubble Pond.
Value, color and overlapping planes help achieve the feeling of depth in this painting. The distant trees are light and cool, forming a shape with very little texture. The nearer trees are well defined and darker silhouettes. The bridge is overlapped by the birch tree in the foreground.
The pinkish tones of the bridge and the road contrast with the cooler tones of the woods, pushing the structure forward.
The shadows across the road keep your eyes on the area under and beyond the bridge. And of course, looking past or through something always helps to create a feeling of depth.
In this depiction of shoreline flotsam and jetsam, the focal point is the driftwood and small tidal pool. I decided to use line, color and values to lead the eye to that area.
Examine the lines first. The small foreground rocks, the seaweed, and the shadows all lead to the driftwood. The warm color in the seaweed, as well as its darker value, also draw attention to the log and the little pool of water. The values in the distant rocks serve to emphasize the big flat light rock. The foreground shadow in the lower right hand corner helps direct the eye to the lighter area of the beach.
Design with purpose!
In this painting of a lake in Acadia National Park, the fall colors are an obvious subject. However the scene becomes a compositional challenge which I solved through the use of line, specifically the obliques.
Study the lines that point and link areas. The birch tree trunk acts as a stop sign (see previous entry).
Sometimes we inadvertently include lines that point off the painting surface. Our eyes need a stop sign to keep them from wandering over to the edge of the page.
In this painting of Otter Cliffs in Acadia National Park, I wanted the emphasis to be on the breaking surf and the flat rocks catching the light. On the left the vertical rock formation stops the eye as does the foliage. On the right the tree is the stop sign. Also to keep them from forming a "goal post" look, I angled one of them inward toward the center of interest.
When I have time, I like to do value sketches. That gives me a road map for what I need to paint first, second and third. Here are some value studies from my trip to Acadia National Park.
Warm colors advance, cool colors recede. The rocks in this painting reflect that time-honored maxim.
The first wash was very simple in shape. The second wash defined the rocks. Still, the underpainting defined the warm foreground and the cool background shapes. I mixed the colors on the page rather than on my palette.
Also, there were contrasts in the verticals and horizontals.
This coming weekend I'll be in Acadia National Park painting these very rocks! I can't wait!
"The Sunken Garden"
Of all the colors on a watercolorist's palette, it seems that greens give us the most trouble. Oftentimes, I see my students produce repetitious greens that are dull and lack life.
Many times I will begin foliage with a wash of yellow. That will be the base light wash. On top of this you can place blues (because blue and yellow make green), mixed greens, warm greens, and violets.
It also helps to find ways to gradate the foliage from light to midtones to darks. Study the upper right hand corner of this painting and you'll see what I mean.
If you are balancing two masses of greens, it is helpful to make one side dark and the other lighter; make one side warm and the other cool; and one side larger in shape than the other.
And don't forget that the complement of green is red. The pinkish tone of the brick sidewalk provides a perfect foil for all that green.
The Clark Cottage
A straight, unbroken line is boring. I look for ways to interrupt the line to provide variety and create a shape that interlocks with its surroundings.
For example, look at the top and bottom of the tree shape. The top line is broken by popping up some trees and varying the intervals between them. If it were a straight line, it would also create a sky shape that is a triangle.
The bottom of the treeline is broken by the houses which also avoid forming a straight line.
The houses themselves break both at the top and especially at the bottom where the largest cottage protrudes from the rest.
Also study the rocks and you'll see that I broke lines there also.
"Leading the Parade"
For the past few months, I've been concentrating on the first stage of the painting process. Wet-into-wet in the first stage provides a contrast to the hard edges to come in the second stage. When soft, wet-into wet areas predominate, the hard edges stand out in contrast, providing a focal area. You can also use brush stroke directions in the wet-into-wet areas to indicate movement. In this painting of a tug boat leading the windjammers into the harbor, the brush strokes are mimicking the obliques of the sails. The water is also gradated with the wet-into-wet technique. Some of the sails are described with hard edges while others are 'lost' in soft edges.
I used to use a large brush to achieve the wet-into-wet technique, but now I use a small natural sponge to pre-wet the paper. The paint seems to soak in better once the sponge removes the sizing on the paper. The second stage must be applied when the paper is completely dry to accomplish the hard edges.
Rocks at Grimes Cove
To get the feel of sunlight, you have to paint the shadows. In this painting of the rocks at Grimes Cove on Ocean Point, I started with an underpainting that described the basic shapes of the rocks while varying the colors from orange to blue, contrasting and complementary colors. On the second pass, I placed emphasis on the contrasting values. The shadow sides of the rocks and their cast shadows contrast with the lighter tones on the beach. The dark reflections in the water also contrast with the light, sunny area of the beach.
This scene never gets old because I love the challenge of using it to explore different goals.
Yesterday I found a photo I took during my trip to Jackson, New Hampshire that I thought I would paint. The unrelieved area of trees, however, made more of a static, rectangular shape. Since the stream is in the White Mountains, I decided to leave a portion in the upper left to help identify the location.
I also moved the rock that was in front of the fly fisherman.
Here is the photo and the painting.
Barrett's Park
In this painting done in my workshop last week, the subject is the red canoe. Leading the eye towards the craft was the challenge.
First, I chose to make the canoe red, a color that always draws attention. More important, I had several elements that pointed to the canoe: the treeline, the wall, the shoreline, the clumps of seaweed left at the high tide line. Looking over something is another way to frame a composition so that the viewer's eye will be directed to the focal point.
I know this spot well, but didn't paint it on-site due to a rainy day. I felt free to devise strategies that would frame and point to the canoe. So, don't always depict what's there.....Use your compositional skills to subtly lead the eye to where you want it to go.
"Knickercane Island"
A landscape painter should be fairly well versed in how to paint trees.
Learn how to overlap simple washes to create a feeling of depth in background foliage masses.
Silhouette nearer trees.
Highlight foreground trees with color, size and texture.
Study other landscape painters you admire to see how they render trees.
My annual Maine workshop is over. We had a great day yesterday at Knickercane Island painting....what else? Trees!
This is my annual workshop week here in Boothbay Harbor. The weather hasn't been very cooperative, so we've been painting in the studio. One of my students brought some photos she had taken of rowboats. I was particularly drawn to one with a dark cast shadow on the beach. Since I had just given a lecture about clearly stating dark values, I chose to paint that rowboat. But, I invented the rest of the scene: the bottom of a fish shack, rocks, the two buoys, and the schooner out in the bay.
After years of painting the Maine coast, I have a repertoire of items that I can draw upon to add to a scene that needs a little jazzing up for compositional reasons. Keeping a sketchbook to record objects and lighting effects has helped. Practice your drawing!
This past weekend I was invited to be part of an outdoor exhibit at the home of friend and fellow artist Jan Kilburn. Before I left home, I decided that I would paint the barn across the road from Jan's house and gallery, but I needed some chickens in the foreground so I sketched a few from photos.
However, once I arrived at Jan's to begin the paint-out, I spotted a red wheel barrow, and it immediately brought to mind a poem I learned my senior year of high school:
So much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
----- William Carlos Williams
So, I painted a poem!
Every year, I anticipate the special light of August here in Maine. The shadows lengthen and seem to deepen. I begin to see familiar scenes I hadn't noticed before because of the way the shadows fall on and around them. For instance, this scene is one I see every day when I go to the East Boothbay Post Office to pick up my mail. But the day I went to Popham Beach, I saw it in the early morning light with the shadows falling on the white houses. I quickly snapped a photo before my long drive south.
I've said it before and often: Sunlight is best defined by the darks. Be bold in the first wash. Don't be fooled by the white of the paper into thinking it will be too dark; you can always go darker in the next washes.
1. The Sky: I wetted the surface of the paper thoroughly with a natural sponge. That kept the area
wet longer. I painted the clouds and their shadows first, then cut around them with a variety of blues.
2. The Beach: In both the sandy part of the beach and the grasses bordering it, I went from rough textures to smooth. The only detailed grasses are in the foreground; then
individual clusters of grass, and out by the buildings, the grass was one big shape. As I painted the grass, I was constantly switching from warm to cool, wet in wet.
3. The Buildings: I left the white paper on the sunlit side of the buildings. Study the shapes there, and you'll see that there are a variety of shapes: triangles, rectangles, and a backwards "L" shape. I also left a bit of untouched white paper on the beach to help it relate to the buildings.
Popham Beach is a great place to visit even if you are not a painter.
"Popham Beach" 15" X 22"
Capturing the feeling of sunlight is sometimes difficult, mostly because of our fear of committing to dark values. It is the contrast between these light and dark values that is the best way to convey sunlight.
In this painting of some buildings in Popham Beach, Maine, the cast shadows on the roof and from the building on the left explain the direction of the light. The cast shadows on the road also create a shape of light values that begins on the side of the building and then flows down to the roadway. Squint your eyes and you will see that the light shape is an interesting pattern that interweaves with the dark values of the shadow areas. It is this contrast that is central to creating the feeling of sunlight.
While having breakfast early this morning, I looked up and saw the long dark shadows crossing my backyard lawn with the light in the cove beyond. This is the view I see every morning, but now that August light has arrived, it seems much more crisp and dramatic. I got out my sketchbook and quickly mapped out the values. Then I did the line drawing, and after lunch, it was off to the races!
Learning to see in values takes practice. That's why the value sketch is so important; it helps you to see how to compose the scene with values first and color second.
I took great joy in sketching this scene this morning, as well as looking with joy at the light falling on the foliage. This scene is so familiar that I could have dismissed it as too familiar. Paint what you love!
Many times I arrive at a location that I know well, and may have preconceived notions about what I will paint and how I will paint it. But other times, as I told my students yesterday, I will wait a bit and see what happens or what shows up before deciding what the real subject in the scene will be.
At this location a couple of years ago, it was a woman walking her dog when a flock of geese flew by overhead. Yesterday, I was setting up to give my students a lesson when who comes wandering by but Carlton Plummer who lives just up the road and around the corner from my summer cottage. Carlton set up his easel on the rocky beach and began to paint, so at that moment I decided that I should paint him into the scene.
Figures often animate a landscape that would otherwise be rather lifeless and bland. Don't rule them out as an intrusion into the beauty of nature; rather include them as an element that gives scale and interest to the locale.
In the last entry, I posted two sketches of my cove. Here is the painting I created using one of them.
The value sketch is the place to figure out where your light, midtone, and dark areas will be. It makes decisions easier about what to paint first, (light areas), second, (midtones) and last (dark areas and accent details.) Don't confuse a value sketch with a drawing. Drawings focus mainly on lines, not shapes of lights, midtones and darks.
Value Sketch
Line Drawing
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