Tom Hoffman Studies!

/

Tom's book Watercolor Painting is one of the best books I have found on the subject. The book is not about here is how you paint a tree, or a landscape or a street. Instead, the book is about taking any scene, deconstructing it to make sense of it, then putting it back together into an effective painting. It is not a book you flip through the day you buy it, be inspired for the day or the week and never look at again. It is a book you will go back to over and over again for months (or maybe years! I don't know because it hasn't been that long for me yet :) ), and still not scratch the surface. 

Everytime I go back to his book I realize that I am able to go a little farther in it, and I take it as a measure of my growth. Yesterday I read the chapter on Seeing in Layers, and today's exercise is motivated by that. 

For the exercise I chose a picture I took in our neighborhood with a simple subject and good shadows.

I did a quick value sketch to get clarity on the big shapes and their relative values. 

Next I did two studies as shown below. On the left there is the monochrome value study, based on the value scale I have identified above. On the right I did a geometric color study where the shapes are simple, and done with two layers and mostly local color and shadow color.

The next thing I did is a 'Seeing in Layers' exercise, where the picture is broken down into multiple shapes, and we go from painting the large shapes and going towards the more specific. 

If you don't have Tom's book, do yourself a favor and GET IT!!

Santana Row

/

It was quite challenging because of the crowd, not having a comfortable place to setup and paint and nervousness :-) Also, the subjects were intimidating and complex. I am glad I did it though, and even though the sketches didn't turn out as good as I would have liked, it is a start and I like to believe that they will get better.

I did a quick pencil sketch first for each of these paintings, and that helped me get to know all the elements and map out the big shapes. I am happy that I am making this a habit now, to do a value sketch before jumping into the painting.

"Anything under the Sun

/

... is beautiful if you have the vision - it is the seeing of the thing that makes it so" - Charles Hawthorne

I am always drawn to little bits of machinery. plumbing etc. with lots of interconnected parts that have interesting shapes and shadows. Even though I went out today to draw the buildings around my neighborhood (for Liz Steel's class), I was drawn to the fire hydrant and spent my time drawing it with different media. 

In this version I used a combination of watercolor pencils and watercolors applied loosely with a waterbrush. I like the surprise combination of Indian Yellow and Transparent Red Oxide to be especially efficient in depicting the hot afternoon glow on the hydrant.

It may not be great art but it was very satisfying :-)

Buildings!

/

I have been tempted by Liz Steel's Sketching Now course, Buildings for a couple of weeks now, but I tried to put it off because I had told myself I am going to focus on flowers this month and that I shouldn't be so easily distracted. However, when I saw Suhita's post, her beautiful sketches and her mention of the class, it was too much to resist. So I finally broke down and bought the class and I am so glad I did. 

I did all the exercises from lesson 1, and yet to do the exercises from lesson 2. On first look it all felt fairly abstract, and honestly a bit dry ... heavy on technique and less on inspiration. Also, the concepts seemed too simple (line, shape, volume ... duh!). I told myself to give it a chance and do the exercises anyway, and I AM SO GLAD THAT I ATTEMPTED THE EXERCISE. It is only when I tried to do the continuous like drawing, the abstracting shapes exercise for the horizontal and vertical blue striped boxes that I realized how tricky it all was and why I needed the technique before I could make beautiful, inspiring paintings. All the lesson 1 exercises were trippy, and they all taught me something about myself, the mistakes I tend to make and issues I need to work on. Gosh, so much packed into that one lesson, and yet you will not realize it unless you work through the exercises. 

The other wonderful thing that happened is that I started "seeing" buildings everywhere. I know that they exist everywhere, and I didn't need a course to tell me that ... but I started noticing the buildings now with enhanced interest. Before I used to find drawing buildings boring, they are mainly just blocky shapes, what is there to draw after a few lines etc. etc. But now I see possibilities! I am really glad that Liz chose some very simple buildings in her exercises because it gave me the idea that any building can be explored and made to look interesting! What a revelation! I am surrounded by apartment buildings with very interesting architecture. I cannot wait to get out there and draw more of them!

Anyway, all that said ... today I went to Murphy Ave in Sunnyvale to sketch with the friendliest group of painters I have ever seen, Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society Thursday paintout group. I set myself up right next to Thai basil, I sat right on the sidewalk (just like Liz) and got to work. I did some continuous line drawings to explore the scene in front of me, and that helped me resolve the elements i want to capture in my paintings. Then I moved to doing a graphite sketch, and that helped me further identify the interesting elements and how they relate to each other. Armed with all that knowledge I set about painting. 

My first painting was a little tight ... I wonder if it is because of all the expectation ... Also, I started with a little sketch in watercolor pencil, so that may have contributed to the tightness too.

I was almost out of time, and had just a few minutes ... so I decided to see if I can do something with the second scene. The lack of time meant that I had to go straight to watercolor and that resulted in a much looser and more interesting painting.

As I was painting, the owner of the Thai Basil restaurant came out to check out my sketches. He said that he saw me painting from inside the restaurant and wanted to know more about what I was doing. We had a nice chat about art, and it was so kind to offer me a very refreshing Thai iced tea :-) These lovely encounters are so memorable and add so much to the act of drawing and painting. 

I had a really good morning painting, and will definitely be back to this location soon.

Practice practice practice

/

Things are certainly no where near perfect yet, but they are definitely getting easier with practice. I did a few more floral paintings today, copying from artists I discovered recently and admire. 

While most of the time, the enormous amount of time I spend on the internet is probably a waste, but sometimes I discover artists as a result of this which makes it all worthwhile. Some such artists from the recent past are Hazel Soan, Alvaro Castagnet, Corneliu Dragan, Fabio Cembranelli. Each one of them have inspired me to try new techniques, new colors, new subjects ... and I have learned much from them.

Today I did two paintings from Fabio Cembranelli, one is a demo from his website and the other is a copy of one of his paintings. 

In this painting done from the demo, I worked completely wet in wet, trying to control wetness and brushwork, picking up excess water etc. The fuzzy look of the painting is most likely because of working wet in wet. Looks like I am yet to figure out how to make sharp edges in some places while working wet in wet.

With this one, I did a background wash of yellow and green, leaving the areas of the flowers fairly white. Once the background wash is dry, I went back and worked on the flowers. The thing I don't like about the painting is that the background and the flowers don't go together harmoniously. I should have added a few dabs of red to the background, and pulled in some green into the flowers.

And an ostrich study inspired by Hazel Soan's painting.

More loose florals

/

I spent a couple of days pouring over the paintings on Corneliu Dragan Targoviste's website. I am so inspired by his painting style, and have been learning a lot from copying his paintings. Here are a couple of his floral paintings copied. It is only when I copy that I realize how much of mastery it takes to make a simple subject look so extraordinary.

Doing these florals has given me an opportunity to try out a whole bunch of new colors that I have never used before. In the above painting I used Naples Yellow, and Naples Yellow Deep. The Perylene green has been a good addition as well!

Picchetti Ranch with South Bay Urban Sketchers

/

The South Bay Urban Sketchers met at the Historic Picchetti Ranch today for a few hours of sketching and sharing. I always enjoy the opportunity to sketch with fellow sketching enthusiasts, and this one was no different. 

I packed a ton of supplies, including my new easel, because I couldn't make up my mind as to what I wanted to focus on today. While I didn't get a chance to open my easel today, I am glad I packed a bunch of supplies because I did do a whole bunch of sketches in a variety of styles.

I got started for the day drawing this piece of old machinery at the winery. I did the first sketch in pencil, with the idea that I will get a good sense of the shapes, the composition etc. I have been trying to make it a practice to do some graphite sketches before doing the watercolor sketches. I hope that this becomes a habit eventually, but I have to make a start somewhere in order for it to become a habit :-)

I was watching Liz Steel's Edges videos recently, and I was so inspired by the juicy, melting sketches that she makes. I loved her use of watercolor pencils to do soft edges and also add texture. I tried to do something similar here.

Then I wanted to switch styles and go direct to watercolor. I still didn't have my full watercolor kit out, but I had my tiny watercolor box and waterbrush out, so I used those to do this quick sketch of the trash cans. I have to admit, I don't like using a waterbrush. I like a real brush, despite the hassel of having to carry a water container, water etc.

It was a good day of sketching, and I have enough material to attempt a few more sketches and paintings. 

Back to florals

/

I discovered a Romanian watercolorist today whose paintings immediately spoke to me. It is Corneliu Dragan! Surprisingly, there is very little on the internet about him except for on his own website. I spent a long time looking at all the paintings on his website. I really enjoyed his florals, and since that is the subject I am focusing on this month, I thought it might be educational to copy some of his paintings. They look deceptively simple, but have SO MUCH life in them.

You can find the originals on his website, here I am posting my copies.

Colors used : New Gamboge, Olive Green, Perylene Green, Prussian Blue, Cadmium Red, Carmine. 

Colors used : New Gamboge, Green Gold, Perylene Green, Cadmium Red, Quin Magenta

Colors used : Olive Green, Perylene Green, Quin Magenta, Cadmium Red, Cadmium Yellow

Crazy experiment

/

Not sure if it was the fact that I was painting at an easel, or wearing an apron or what, but I was in the mood for splashing the paint with abandon without thinking about wet-in-wet, light-to-dark etc. etc.

I wouldn't call this a "success" but it is such a departure from anything I have done so far that I actually consider it a successful experiment. How are we ever to grow if we never take risks and never experiment?

Life Drawing Tuesday

/

We hadn't been to life drawing in ages, and both my husband and I were in the mood to go. So I took a break from floral study (even though I didn't do any floral painting, I watched Jean Haines' Watercolor Flower Workshop video, and got some really good ideas!), and spent the even painting the live model at Palo Alto Art Center.

Here are a couple of 5-min drawings done with the Pentel brush pen, and burnt sienna brushed in at the end for interest.

And here is a 20-min painting that I did purely in watercolor. I tried a new combination of colors for the skin color and quite like them - Cad red, Cad yellow, Cobalt Teal!

Floral Study 2

/

My parents got me the gift of nature for my birthday. My mom cleaned out the pots in the patio (the carnage of dead plants, neglected during our recent trips) and they shopped for new plants to go in the pots. 

They looked so pretty, and the patio looked so inviting that I took the opportunity to do some floral studies from them. 

In terms of technique, I kept it loose and used a spray bottle, for the very first time, to diffuse edges. I love the effect!

floral study

Floral study

/

August has been the month of the Discardia project in our household, there was stuff everywhere you look, the house was a mess, it was all I could do to keep my sanity through it all. As a result I have not had much inspiration to do any painting lately. It has been a couple of weeks since I did any, and I was feeling self-conscious and trepidatious about starting up again. Do you ever feel that way after a break? 

Anyway, yesterday someone posted some paintings they did of loose floral studies from Youtube tutorials and I thought that it is the best way for me to get back on the horse. Just go forth and splash some color around.

I have been meaning to make it a practice to do some quick charcoal studies before doing the color studies, and that is what I did here.

And then I picked three colors that I haven't tried before - Perylene Violet, Gold Ochre, Permanent Sap Green.

This is not great art by any means, but I am happy to be back to painting and I wanted to post my creations here in the spirit of full-disclosure :-)

Hard and soft edges

/

I spend a lot of time on the internet, scouring for quality art instruction, interesting blogs, inspiring paintings, art tools etc. A lot of that time is probably wasted and better spent practicing art, but sometimes I discover things that makes all that time worth it. 

Today I discovered an interview of Alvaro Castagnet in which he talks a little bit about his process. He talks about using the push and pull of warm and cool colors, dark and light values, hard and soft edges to create interest in your painting. He talks about using charcoal sketches to design the paintings, with respect to values as well as edge quality.

I never thought of edge quality as such an important element in painting, but he is totally right. I used to paint almost everything with hard edges, and it used to sort of turn into paint-by-numbers. I am happy that I am able to break out of that mold and explore painting across shapes.

In the charcoal sketch below, I explored merging the body of the chicken into the background, and leave the head of the chicken as the focus, with the highest contrast as well as hard edges. 

When I was satisfied with the sketch, I made a quick plan of the colors I was going to use, and the process I was going to use to paint. I made a first wash painting all across the paper, around the areas that I want to leave white, but otherwise covering most of the other surface with color. With my second wash I picked out some areas and added deeper color, or added contours. Then I flooded in the color for the head, and added some calligraphic marks on the tail.

I learned a lot from this 20 minute exercise :

  • Edge quality adds a lot of interest to painting.
  • Painting across shapes unifies the painting, and makes it look less like an illustration.
  • Charcoal sketch is very useful not just to explore value patterns, but also edge quality in the design.
  • My calligraphic marks are terrible and need a lot of work :-)
  • I don't have a very good sense of what value a color mixture is, and as a result the values in the painting are quite dull. I need to practice in order to train my eye for this.

This is not a great painting, I agree. But I am really proud of it because I broke some bad habits, and did some new things. Now I just need keep pressing forward. I am especially proud of the painting because it looks so little like the original (a reference from wetcanvas) !

Watercolor value sketch

/

As I was painting yesterday, I realized how I was thinking of the painting in terms of "here is this building, here is a tree, here is the street winding away and disappearing". I wanted to think in terms of big value shapes and design, but it was not intuitive to me. It didn't help that I only had about an hour to finish my painting. (I also wonder if the fact that I was working on a small surface (7.5x11) is a factor, because there is hardly any real estate for me to think in big shapes? I am not sure about this one because James Gurney seems to be able to do such wonderful realistic paintings on his 5.5x8 moleskine.)

Anyway, I got thinking about this some more after I returned home and picked a few books off the shelf to flip through for ideas. Funnily, my previous bookmark in Tom Hoffmann's Watercolor Painting book led me to the exact thing I needed. In order to clarify the big shapes, Tom suggests breaking the picture down into large shapes (10 or less), and doing a five value watercolor sketch to understand the value relationships in the composition. 

This is the sort of exercise I would always resist doing because I am always in a hurry to do a full painting, that is a final product that can stand on its own. I realize now, though, that to take my painting to the next level I need to step back, evaluate the areas in my painting that need work, design exercises to fix these areas and execute. 

In that spirit, I did a bunch of these value exercises from some reference photos on Wet Canvas. Here is an example. I picked reference photos that already had good design in terms of shapes, so that I was only focusing on understanding the values and not worried about creating a composition.

Reference photo from Wet Canvas

I drew a very simple sketch with big shapes.

My first wash of payne's gray covered everything but the lightest lights.

Progressively I added another layer of Payne's gray to areas that are darker. Note that I added the boat on the left for interest. That area looked empty and static to me, and the boat in the reference seemed like it was useful.

And then the darkest darks. Here is the final sketch. 

Heading home

/

Today was a day of ups and downs. At once I was inspired and rearing to go, as well as rudely reminded of my own mediocrity and limitations.

The day began with watching Alvaro Castagnet work in some videos. I couldn't stop  watching him apply juicy colors and confident strokes and his sense of design inspired me to try it myself.

I have heard many artists say that it is always best to make a sketch as opposed to depending on a reference photo, and for the first time it sort of hit me how true that is. When you sketch, you are problem-solving, you are designing. When you take a reference photo, the camera captures everything it sees, and sometimes the subject that caught your eye is lost in the commotion. 

I have been trying to sketch from reference photos on the internet, and for the past few days I have found it so hard to be inspired by any of them. I spent countless hours scanning through pictures looking for something that might click and nothing seem to. Finally, I end up picking some random thing because I don't want the day to end without painting something. Artists also recommend to capture your own reference photos, because you have a sense of what interested you about the scene in the first place and you are less likely to be lost.

I am sure you heard all this many times over. I had too. Somehow it didn't hit me until now, the way it did today. 

When I was returning home from work, this scene of daily commute struck me. 

Specifically, I was attracted to the red car, and I thought to crop it in such a way as to make it the star.

Now it was time for me to design how I was going to paint this. I took a couple of minutes to do a quick charcoal sketch to map out the values.

Now, to turn this into watercolor I needed to plan and choose my colors. I thought I will try to keep everything fairly neutral and cool, and this way the car will shine. 

Honestly, I am not happy with how this painting turned out. I envisioned lovely loose brushstrokes and juicy marks like in Alvaro's paintings, and ended up with this. Of course I am disappointed with the painting, and with being struck down to face my own smallness. I think that is good though. It is good to remember that I am very much a beginner, and it takes a lot of work to make things look as easy as some do.

After I have had sometime to process all this, I am proud, though that I tried to do what I did, and I hope to keep up the practice.