Watercolor Reflections

                              Brown's Wharf
Why do some artists choose pastel and others, oil? What leads one to lithography and others to egg tempera?  And why watercolor?

My own journey in paint began, like so many other painters did, with oil.  The "fixability" factor played a role, plus the rich history of oil painting.  But I never quite got the hang of mixing colors in oil.  They seemed to get chalky and very dry looking.

At the suggestion of the art teacher at the school where I taught English, I made the transition to watercolor.
I immediately fell in love with the fluid feel of the strokes and the transparency of the colors.  There were headaches, too:  the muddy colors resulting from overmixing, the struggle to save the precious white paper, not enough water, too much water, and leaving too many  "popcorn" whites.

But I couldn't put the brush down.  (Well, one time I did when I dented the ferrel of a $50 brush by slamming it down on the drafting table!)  It took quite a few brush miles before I started to know what would happen before I touched the paper.  But the journey has been worth it.

One of the reasons I enjoy teaching watercolor is that I know the typical mistakes and can make suggestions as to how to avoid them.  The benefit of having made mistakes is helping others to avoid them. (Sound familiar, parents?)  So if you're just beginning in this fascinating, sometimes frustrating medium, seek out a good teacher.    And pay attention!

By Design

                           The Park Cafe

Here's the latest painting in the Watering Hole Series.  This one is a cafe in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania where I stopped for lunch on the way home from Maine this year.  The cafe owner and I had lots in common.  In college, both of us had started out in the art department, but changed majors to English.  She is also a painter and an avid reader. 

The figures fall on the upper third line.  The lights on the empty tables and the obliques lead you to the customers by the window.  There is a dominance of rectangles to give the painting a repeating shape.  Warm hues work well in interiors and give a unity to the composition. 

Use the design elements and principles to direct the eye.

Favorite Motifs

                                             The Town Square

In this painting, I've incorporated all sorts of favorite subjects:  the town square, statuary, figures, silhouettes, and gathering places.  There are "quiet" areas with not much going on to contrast the busier areas with lots of movement. 

Accumulating a body of work enables you to choose tried and true subjects that you have an affinity for. 

P.S.  I've just recently allowed myself to use Chinese white as an accent.  I would never use it to substitute for the untouched beauty of the white paper in larger areas, but the water in the fountain would have seemed a bit artificial if I had left it a pure white. 

Illinois Workshop

                            The Horse Barn at Dubois Center

This past weekend I taught a workshop at the Dubois Center in southern Illinois.  I had some enthusiastic students who welcomed and responded to me, and made me remember why I love teaching so much.

Students get frustrated and discouraged for all sorts of reasons, but two of them are totally avoidable!  First, get the best brushes you can afford.  Working with inferior equipment will only complicate an already difficult
process.  A good brush should come to a chisel or point, with hairs long enough to hold a lot of water, and be springy enough to bounce back to their original shape.  Get at least two very wide brushes.  You can't cover a half sheet with a wash using a brush that is only 1/4 inch wide!

Second, before each painting session, squeeze out a generous amount of paint.  Don't worry about cost or drying out.  Re-wetting will take care of that.  You'll never be able to get a rich, creamy dark with a miser's worth of paint!  You'll end up with more water on the paper and not enough paint.  You have to be able to dig into the paint!

Thanks to my kids for a wonderful, laugh filled weekend!  Hope to see you again very soon!

Fall

Autumn is a popular subject to paint.  This is a scene on Barter's Island, Maine. 
This weekend I'll be in southern Illinois teaching a three day weekend workshop.  I'll post from there if I can get a wifi signal.

The Blues

Most students understand pretty quickly the difference between warm colors and cool colors.  Warm colors look like fire and the sun, and cool colors remind us of ice and snow shadows.  Warm = yellow, orange, earth tones and reds.  Cool = blue and green.

So when students hear that in the primaries there can be cool yellows and warm blues, they freak out!
For example, take the color blue.  Ultramarine blue is considered to be a "warm" blue because it leans toward the red side a bit.  Thalo blue, cerulean blue and manganese blues are all "cool" blues.  The purest blue is considered to be cobalt.

Why is it important to know these differences?  Look at the painting I did of a spring house in New Hampshire.  You'll see that in the distant mountains I used an ultramarine blue because the mountains are closer than the sky.  By contrast, I used a cerulean blue in the sky.  Remember the old maxim that warm colors advance and cool colors recede. If I had used the same blue in both places, there would have been no contrast, and therefore no differentiation in spatial distance.  I could have also used a thalo green in the sky to make the difference even more pronounced.

So don't always reach for the same blue out of habit.  Know why you are choosing one blue over another.

The Hudson River School

A number of American painters have documented the Hudson River Valley, among them Frederic Church, Thomas Cole, William Chase and John Frederick Kensett.  One of the most popular locations was Kaaterskill Falls, just outside the town of Hunter in the Catskill Mountains.  Yesterday I drove through the Catskills to see some of the views that these men painted.  Kaaterskill Falls flows right down to the road and provides a close up view of this popular landscape subject. Unfortunately it was raining, so I was not able to paint it plein air.  So I took a photo. Here it is.  Maybe when I get settled in at home in St. Louis, I'll try to paint it.

My Palette

The word palette can mean several things: 1.) the physical holder of paint  2.) the choice of colors and
3.) The placement of those paints on the surface..

My choice for a physical palette is the John Pike model.  The surface is large enough to mix warm colors on one side and cool on the other. 

My choice of colors is pretty basic:  a warm and cool version of each primary, some earth tones, and a couple of exotic hues. 

The placement of my paints is based on warm and cool colors.  The warm colors and earth tones are on the left side of the palette.  I put them in a prism order, i.e. yellow, orange, red, violet, blue, green.

It's particularly useful to have the warms on one side and the cools on the other because I like to gray my hues.  As I hammer home to my students, "Put down a warm; reach for a cool. Put down a cool;  reach for a warm."  Instead of giving a list of specific colors to mix, I think the mantra of warm versus cool works better.  When the instructor is not present, the student can sometimes get confused about color choice.  Choosing a warm and knowing its complement is much more helpful than dictating two magic combinations.

Color choice is a personal matter, but knowing how and when to choose certain colors is essential.  And having them in a logical sequence is important in a medium that requires some speed.  (Click on the photo to enlarge it.)

An Early Influence

My plein air group went to a local farm last week.  While the barn and farmhouse are wonderful subjects, I've painted them numerous times.  This time I turned to the woods surrounding the barnyard.

When I first took up watercolor, John Pike's book Watercolor was a major source of inspiration and information.  One lesson concerned the portrayal of "woods trash" in which Pike showed how he came forward in value, color and size.  That lesson came in handy for this subject of a woodshed.

Body Facing

Here's the third in the series featuring local Watering Holes in Boothbay Harbor. 

In dance, choreographers are greatly aware of the direction that the bodies of the dancers are facing.  Figures can be used as pointers.  In this scene, the woman is facing inward, the man is looking downward at the glasses, and the figures at the bar are leaning into the painting or facing back at the foreground.  Everything is focused around the central figure of the man, which is also where the brightest color and biggest value contrast occurs.

The placement of figures and body facing can be used to focus the viewer's attention.  When composing them, be aware of this as a focal point determiner.

Watering Holes

The painting in the last post inspired this one.  The best thing about painting in a series is that you don't have to search for a subject, so you can concentrate on color, design, mood and contrast.  The values and warm hues around the bar focus attention on the figures and the glossy bar top.

I have a hunch that the best part of this series is going to be the research!

Roomscapes

Being aware of spaces that you find pleasant can provide you with unexpected subject matter.  This bar at the very nice Landing Grill House restaurant in Yarmouth, Maine seemed so inviting that I just had to paint it.

Painter, Know Thyself.  If you respond to certain colors, you can say it with paint to express a mood.  If you like being in certain interiors, paint, not just the space, but your emotional response to that room.  When you see the light on a landscape that moves you, paint the light.   Name what delights you, and you'll find plenty of subjects. 

What's On Third?

In this painting of a churchyard in Edgecomb, Maine, the cast shadow on the old bell held my attention.  It defines the bright light and helps to describe the curves on the bell itself. 

The rule of thirds applies here.  The bell is the obvious focal point, so I placed it on the third.  The secondary shapes of the monuments in the church cemetary were also placed on another third.  The size of the bell tells you the subject of the painting, but the monuments provide balance.  The oblique line out where the cemetary begins is also on the upper third of the paper. 

Although placing things on the thirds is not obligatory in every painting, certainly it should be considered. 

A Local Favorite

This is the East Boothbay General Store, owned by friends Liz and Dom.  It's the best place on the peninsula to have a pizza or grab a great sandwich.  I painted it quite a few years back, and you can probably tell the change in my style since then.  Also, Liz and Dom have spruced up the place with flowers and plants that the old owner didn't care about.  Still, it is a pretty good building portrait. 

 In this case drawing skills are very important.   All the angles and perspective problems were a challenge.  Still, it's fun to document the most popular sites in our small village.  I guess I'm getting a bit nostalgic about nearing the completion of another summer in this quaint and special place.

Complementary Colors

Fall colors--yellow, red, and orange--can be intensified if placed next to their complement on the color wheel.  In this painting of an oft-painted scene on Southport Island, Maine, I painted everything a pale blue except the white side of the houses and the red fish shack .  This is the unifying underpainting.  After it was dry, I painted the orange-red colors right over the blue.  The orange was dark enough to still retain its hue.  By leaving some of the blue next to the orange, both colors seem more vivid.

The mud flat was grayed down on the first wash.  I began the darks around the red shack and underneath the dock, extending them to the cast shadows of the boats.  From there I worked outward, gradating as I went to keep the high contrast around the focal point. 

I've said it before.  Avoid painting pieces of the painting in a coloring book fashion.  Give the painting a unifying color before putting down the midtone wash and then the dark wash. And use complementary colors to their full advantage.

Damariscotta

Here's the first painting that resulted from the drawing I did in the last entry.  The greatest contrast in values is right around the focal point which is the cafe and its umbrella.  I could perhaps have made it a bit more colorful, a task I might take up the next time I try this scene. But the interlocking shapes and the values were my first concern.

Look around your town for interesting restaurants, cafes, and architecturally interesting buildings.  If you're shy, take a photo, or if you're brave enough set up en plein air!

Procedure

When you have an interesting idea for a painting, and then do a good drawing, there's still the matter of executing the painting.  How to procede and what order to paint things becomes a big part of how the painting will turn out.

I'm a traditionalist when it comes to procedure.  With the values, I paint from light to midtone to darks.  In many cases that means painting the sky, the far distance, the middle distance and the near areas in that order.  With color, I usually choose cool neutrals in the distance, and as I work forward, I warm things up a bit.  But colors are usually grayed somewhat no matter how close they are, unless I want to attract your eye to a particular object, in which case I use a purer color.

Here's the drawing of the painting I'm going to paint this afternoon.  I'm posting it first to give you a chance to think about what your procedure and color choices might be.  An instructor can show you what she does, but that is never a substitute for thinking out what your procedure will be once you're on your own with your own subject matter.

Complementary Colors

When looking for subject matter, it is helpful to know what makes your heart go pitti-pat.  In the past couple of years, I have been drawn to objects that have a lacy look against the sky.  In this street scene in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, it was the lamp posts and the telephone poles. 

It was a rainy day when I visited, so the photos I took were all gray.  That turned out to be an advantage because I could invent any colors that would come in aid of expressing the mood.  I chose yellow and violet to express the feeling of the brightening sky and the wet pavement. 

Placing complementary colors side by side intensifies both colors.  It is important to consider color choices that help establish the mood and express the feeling of light.

Hurricane Earl

Thank goodness, Earl went out to sea. It rained overnight, but now it's a bright sunny day!  The best part of these storms that go by is that they kick up the surf.  It's a spectacle not to be missed!

Painting surf in watercolor is difficult.  I've used up many a sheet of good watercolor paper trying to depict its force while trying also to capture its grace.  Too many hard edges will make the waves look cut out.  Too many soft edges and you've got cotton candy.  The only suggestion I can make is to study the repeating waves.  Watch what happens along the top.  Then study the fold of the wave.  Look for shadows in the foam.  Make many drawings before even attempting a painting.

Frustrating as it is to paint wild surf, it's worth the struggle just to be able to witness the power and beauty of a breaking wave.

Figures

Adding figures to compositions not only adds interest, it also can extend a shape into an otherwise boring area.  In this painting out at Ocean Point, the figures help to break up a straight unbroken line and jut into a large area that, without them, would be very static. 
Practice painting figures so that including them is not labored and out of character with the rest of the looseness of your painting.

Sunday Drive

Many tourists fail to discover that inland rural Maine has a charm all its own.  Yesterday I took an old fashioned Sunday drive and ended up in the little hamlet of Sheepscot, a place that time forgot.  I set up my easel under a big old maple tree and looked across the meandering river at the village church.  It was such a lovely idyllic scene that I'm afraid I was in danger of the painting becoming trite.  But it was so relaxing to be in that environment that I took my time and savored the sunny late summer day.  A mother and her young daughter were swimming under the bridge, splashing and laughing happily in the reversible falls.  Later the little girl presented me with the gift of a milkweed pod. 
Plein air painting, more than a result and a product, is a process and an experience.  As Hemingway once advised another writer, Just go out and see what happens to you.

Plein Air Decisions II

A friend wrote me to ask why I hadn't included the red-orange tree in the painting I did a couple of days ago in Newbury, New Hampshire.  She thought it would give the painting a fall feeling.  It's a good question.  Here's what I was thinking.

I wanted the church and the strolling couple to be the focal point.  Accurately reporting the scene with that one orange spot would have immediately drawn attention to it since brighter warmer colors attract the eye more than cooler, neutral colors.  Furthermore, it would have been an isolated color among all those blues, greens and neutrals.  A good painting features repetition, so I would have had to repeat that orange somewhere else in the painting, further distracting the viewer's eye from the focal point.  Finally, it's a summer scene!  I wanted to report the day that I was there.  A fall scene would have to be a studio painting, and I'm mostly a plein air painter.  

So, artists really do think about line, color, direction, balance, texture, placement for emphasis, and that means making decisions to support a unified work. 

Plein Air Decisions

Here's the scene I painted this morning in Newbury, New Hampshire.  I'm including the actual scene and the finished painting.  It's self-explanatory what was left out and why.  One adjustment was made to the background mountain's height.  I wanted the steeple to stand out against the sky, so I had to raise it above tree level.  I painted the entire church first, letting the paint flow out into what would eventually be covered up by trees. Then came the background trees/mountain.  Finally, the dark overlapping foreground trees.

Watch for ways to connect objects to make shapes.  Careful planning went into the placement of the figures so that they connected to the dark pine tree, but their highlighted heads and shoulders separated them from the darker background. 

Light to dark.....sky, church, background trees, foreground trees.  And remember, light doesn't always mean white.

Travel Paintings

Several of my paintings hang in the New London Inn, New Hampshire, one of them over the front desk.  I come here every year for medical treatment at Dartmouth Medical, another half hour away.  It's nice to be in the mountains for a few days as a change of pace.  But I also take advantage of the opportunity to paint landscape that is different from the seacoast of Maine.
Here's the Town Hall that is on the town common.  The building in the background is the New London Inn.

Overlapping for Distance

To show depth in a landscape, try overlapping planes as you come forward.  The darkest and most textured area is around the focal point which is the dock.  The next plane is the profile of the building which I've painted in a grayed blue.  In the far distance, I wanted to give the feeling of sunlight, so I made that plane lighter, but to look sunny, I painted it in warm tones. 
To further emphasize the different planes, I used the masts of the sailboats to overlap the distant shores.  This brings you back up to the foreground.  Also the building on the right keeps your eye up front.
Overlapping three planes will provide a feeling of distance and space.  But be sure to think of ways to look through and around objects in the foreground to keep your eye from resting in the distance.

Populating Paintings

Pemaquid Point Lighthouse is one of the most dramatic spots along the Maine coast.  People make the 15 mile trip down the peninsula from Route 1 to see the cliffs, the surf and the old lighthouse.  Painters show up daily to capture the scene.  Yet most of the paintings I've seen of the lighthouse have removed the people.
Figures can give life to an otherwise static scene.  Reconsider their inclusion in your work.

P.S.  I've tentatively scheduled a workshop for Boothbay Harbor next year-- September 12 -16.  For more details,
email me at :    caroljessen@yahoo.com

Apologies

Sorry that I've been offline for nine days.  My computer has been at the hospital, but I think the problem has been fixed.  I hope I didn't lose any followers or new visitors during this time.
Meanwhile I kept painting.  You'll notice that I've begun to add figures to the scenes.  Some subjects just need human activity to be accurate.
Thanks for visiting!

Turnovers

No, this hasn't turned into a cooking blog.  A few days back I described the frustration with a tight, hard edged first painting, and the freedom I felt when I flipped it over and just let go.  I've been struggling of late with dull color and hard edges, so I decided to attempt the same composition without drawing it first to see if that would loosen things up a bit.  It certainly got lots more colorful than the gray, dull first attempt!  And I eliminated about half of the hard edges.

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose...."

Mood

Although this isn't the best painting I've ever done, it does illustrate something that is very important in painting:  establishing a mood.  Mere reporting of fact doesn't get the blood flowing.  You need to say what it felt like to be in that location, how the light affected you, and if possible, even how it feels to be alive and seeing, not just looking.  Art can make that statement better than words sometimes.

Painting the Overlooked Familiar

Six days a week in the summer, I go to the East Boothbay Post office to pick up my mail, and catch up on the latest news from Linda, the postmaster.  This week it was a lost 9 year old autistic boy, who gratefully, was located the next day, full of mosquito bites, but safe.

We get so used to some scenes that sometimes we fail to see them as possible subject matter.  Keep your eyes open for intriguing shapes, lacy textures against the sky, deep shadows, and gathering places.

Here again, I've used the silhouette to say most of the scene.  The good people of East Boothbay village are the subject, with the post office the secondary subject.  Lost and found edges are extremely important in this depiction of a place where "everybody knows your name."

Wednesday Plein Group

Today the Plein Air Painters of Maine went to Boothbay Shores to paint.  It's a beautiful scene.  A causeway leads out to a small island called Ocean Island.  There used to be a restaurant out there, but now it's a private home.  Plenty of ocean boulders and ledges, and today the surf was up.

Still it can be a rather dull painting subject.  In the last few years I've livened it up with figures.  Today I invented a couple of fishermen.  I surrounded them with darks and put highlights on their heads and shoulders to make them stand out from the dark surroundings.  The Saunders rough paper I've been experimenting with made indicating the rough textures of the pebbles easier.

Question

I'm thinking about organizing a workshop here in Boothbay Harbor for summer of 2011.  Anybody out there interested?

K.I.S.S.

I love dark lacy things against a bright sky.  Although this old iron bell buoy, now gracing the shoreline in Rockland, Maine, may not seem lacy, nevertheless it has a quality of lacy holes that made it appealing to me.

The old adage "Keep It Simple, Stupid", is often mysterious advice to students.  In this case the simplicity involves a limited palette.  The reddish-brown undertone unifies the landscape and makes putting the darks down simpler.  Not having to duplicate local color limits thinking to values, always an element of paramount importance.  To keep things simple, try a limited palette.

A Workshop Experience

This week I've travelled to Rockland, Maine to take part in a workshop with Uraguayan artist Alvaro Castagnet.  It has been an exhausting week, physically, intellectually and emotionally.  Among other things, it has re-sensitized me to the student's dilemma in a workshop situation. 

Alvaro is a painter who teaches, not a teacher who paints.  Oftentimes that left the class baffled by some of his statements that didn't exactly appeal to the logical, analytical, information-gathering role of the student.
Talk of maxim impact, personal vision, intuition, mood and developing a philosophy of painting is not easily described or absorbed.  But like pornography, you know impactful art when you see it.  Whether it was his bold use of reds, his impossibly dark values, or the creation of depth within his paintings, I found myself impressed and inspired.  His outrageous personality took some getting used to, but it was all part of the energy he brought to his painting activity.

So I return home to Boothbay with an impression rather than pages of notes:  his brush flying every which way, his shouting as he attacked the paper, the effort to connect the darks and soften the edges.  All of these images have been burned into my brain, and I'm sure will seep into my consciousness in the days of painting to come.

Here is his last demo.

Goldilocks

Too little, too big; too hot, too cold; too hard, too soft.....And then there's just right.

How do we know when to stop painting and call it done?  It starts with the concept.  If you are trying to duplicate a scene splinter for splinter, petal for petal, you will probably wind up with too many details and not enough clear shapes. Some painters go for the details way too early, and they end up with too much texture everywhere in the painting.  Other painters haul out the darks too early and have no midtones to tie shapes together.

One way to avoid these two pitfalls is to force yourself to stay with the biggest brush you have for as long as possible.  The minute you reach for a smaller brush, stop and ask yourself if it is indeed time to start with the details and textures and small shapes.

You can also question whether you are naming objects to be painted instead of shapes. "Now I'm going to paint the trim on the windows" can be replaced with "Have I defined all the major shapes and values in this painting?" Only then should you think about details.  If you begin with the details because you are impatient to get to the important stuff, you will nearly always end up with a scattering of textures that do little for the rights of the overall effect you want to achieve. 
As a fellow watercolorist says to his workshoppers, "First bake the cake; then you can decorate it."

Breaking the Rules

A couple of sailboats, a couple of people, a couple of umbrellas, a couple of rowboats, and a couple of staffs. 
I've always heard that you should use objects in groups of odd numbers.  I deliberately decided to defy that "rule" in this painting.  Every once in a while an artist should think about the purpose of a rule, and then ask when it is appropriate to break it.  This just seemed like a good time.

Ignorance, however, is not a justification for rule-breaking.  The conventions, elements and principles serve a time-tested purpose and should be in the arsenal for creating and judging fine art.  But the groundbreakers in the arts have always been the ones who questioned the validity of rules that are seemingly written on stone tablets. 
So know and use the elements and principles, but if working outside the rules makes for more interesting art, then, by all means, become a rebel.

Zoom In

When looking at a landscape possibility,  your eyes are capable of taking in a 180+ degree panorama, but including that much subject matter in one painting is not only daunting, it is probably a design and focal point killer.  If you try to include everything in your painting, the painting idea will almost certainly be lost in a forest of details.

The best solution is to zoom in on one area to focus your viewpoint and the viewer's attention.

This painting of a tug illustrates a decision to eliminate much of the vessel in order to create a "T" design.  By omitting the background and rest of the tug, the wheel house is clearly the focal point and the subject of the painting. 
Zoom, Zoom!

Frustration

About five years ago, I was painting over at the Sea Pier, trying to do a most accurate rendering of the dock scene.  It was a total flop.  In frustration and some anger, I flipped the paper over and just started throwing paint around.  Then I started to "find" buildings and signs in the color field.  With nothing to lose, I had gained the freedom to just enjoy the paint and the possibilities. 


The resulting image had no resemblance to the real dock.  But I liked the colors and the freedom I felt while painting.  It had taken me to a new level of expression.  That began a series of paintings in which I rediscovered color and imaginative approaches, and replaced realistic landscape portraits with design and color ideas.  Hard edges also started to disappear.  Painting was fun again.


So if you're frustrated or even have a temper tantrum as I did on that day, use it to your advantage.  Let the brush fly.  You can always impose discipline and design on your next paintings.  But once your brush experiences true freedom, it will want to be let loose again and again.  And I say, Let her rip!

P.S.  I have enlarged the print for easier reading.  Let me know if you like the change or not.

Variations On A Theme

Revisiting a favorite painting spot can result in repetitious, even boring paintings.  The trick is to figure out what first drew you to the site, but then find a way to vary your depiction of it. 

For me, this dock on the eastside of Boothbay Harbor was interesting because of the shapes and the roofline.  The first few times I painted it in a rather realistic manner.  After that, I had to rely on variations to create interest for me and potential viewers. 

Things to try:

Vary the dominant color.

Substitute an abstract underpainting for a realistic background. 

Add elements that aren't really there.  Figures, signs, doors, barrels, etc.

Emphasize the sky and make the buildings a silhouette.

Vary the size of the darks or the size of the lights.

Try a checkerboard effect. (Alternation)

Enlarge one object beyond what it is in reality.

Zoom in on one area.  (Using a viewfinder helps in this.)

Change the actual color of every object or area into its complementary color.

Paint the entire scene in black, gray and white.

Here are two variations on one of my favorite spots.

The Midtones

Most watercolorists paint from light to dark.  Usually I see that my students are able to paint the first wash in a very clean and fresh passage.  It's when they get to the midtones that problems start occuring.

Some helpful things to consider:

Do a value pattern with three or four clear values.  Know where the midtones are going to be. 

When painting the lights, most of the time you can paint through areas that will eventually be in shadow. Some students think they must stop the light wash when they get to the shadow area. This results in piecemeal work.  Paint the entire object and then paint the midtone on top of the first wash.

  When laying down the midtones, test a small area to see if it is dark enough.  The biggest problem with midtones is that they aren't dark enough.  Also remember that when it dries, the midtone will often be lighter than when it was wet.  Err on the side of painting it darker than you think it should be.

  Paint the midtone lightly.  Don't smoosh the brush into the paper to make it darker.  That will disturb the first wash. Use more water and more paint so that the brush glides. 

Resist the temptation to put in any dark values until the big passages of midtones are complete.

Remember that midtones are crucial in holding the painting together.  Make sure they can be identified as distinctly darker than the lights. 

The Not-So-Sunny Day

Not all days are sunny, so why should all landscapes  make it look like they are?  Is it because in the midst of a long stretch of rain-soaked days, we like to look up on the wall and see a bright sunny day? On the darkest, coldest, snowy day, do we want to be reminded of how long it is until spring arrives?

I have a good friend whose paintings of snow scenes are filled with light and color.  But even she says that snow scenes are a hard sell. Still, she is compelled to find beauty in the snow covered landscapes of our cove.

Finding the beauty you see in weather that is not the perfect sunny day is a challenge.   Maybe we need to change our attitudes and find loveliness in the perfect rainy day, or the perfect snowy day.  And, come to think of it, that is just the job for an artist.
www.andreapetersart.com

Happy Flags

Holidays can be causes for subject matter.  Here is a painting that celebrates the Fourth of July.

My reason for doing the painting, however, was more of an experiment with the underpainting. 

In order to achieve the bright, happy colors of the occasion, I decided to go around the color wheel to create a kind of rainbow effect.  Fewer grays resulted in an upbeat, lively atmosphere that caught the spirit of the day.

So try going around the color wheel to keep your colors purer.

Green, Green, It's Green They Say

Summer is the season of green, so learning how to keep foliage and grass from becoming monotonous and muddied is a worthwhile study.
First, think about varying the values of the foliage masses.
Second, try to create warm greens, cool greens, and even non-greens.
Next, mix the greens on the paper instead of mixing up an homogenous green on the palette and then using it everywhere. Use a tube green, modified with one yellow, then another yellow, then burnt sienna, then a blue, then a red.
Finally, think in terms of shapes, not textures. Be aware of the shape and create
textures at the edge of the shape, not in the interior. Some indication

of textures in the foreground will create interest and variation.
This is the local swimming hole at Lobster Cove.