Paint out at Ardenwood Historic Park

The Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society met at Ardenwood Historic Park for the weekend paintsite, and what fun it was! The place had tons of things to sketch and paint - from cows, sheep, goats, rabbits to historic barns and buildings and farms. There is also a fair bit of opportunity to do people sketching, as the place was plenty packed.

I was excited about bales of hay in a barn so I set myself up right in front of it and painted this. I enjoyed trying to capture the backlighting. The design probably needs a good bit of work, but hey one thing at a time :-)

I then turned my attention to the sun beating down on the tin roof of another bark across the park. I liked the lights and darks and deep oranges of the barn, so I just went for it. You can see that the second painting was so much looser than the first one.

The place was actually filled with people and my only regret is that I couldn't get any human figures into the painting. 

Then we relocated to another part if the park with views of the farms. Even though the beautiful perspective lines in the farm was what attracted me to it, I looked around and was even more inspired by this fence.

I am happy with the painting but I wasn't able to reflect the light conditions as well as I wish. The last painting was mostly under an overcast sky and I wish I could have had more cooler colors in there to reflect that.

I also did a few sketches of the farm animals and fellow sketchers in my epsilon sketchbook. 

All in all, it was a great day painting. 

Study : Just a peek by Anne Blair Brown

I noticed this beautiful painting "Just a peek" by Anne Blair Brown in the recent edition of the PleinAir Magazine. I have been teaching myself to paint by studying the paintings the catch my eye, and here is today's study.

I first did a little pen study, looked at the composition and the colors carefully and then proceeded to do a simple "gouache" color study. I don't have a set of gouache paints, but watercolor paints combined with white and black gouache tubes will work just as well.

Then I moved on to a watercolor study. I did one or two laters of watercolor paints, and cleaned it up with gouache. 

I had so much fun with this exercise, and learned so much as well!

Splashing paint

I am continuing my daily art practice and averaging 3 paintings a day. It is becoming easier to do that many paintings/sketches/studies every day, especially when I have help from wonderful online instructors like Andrew Geeson.

I love watching his loose style of painting, and his approach to using fresh bright paint and do any mixing wet-in-wet on the paper. I subscribed to his paid youtube channel and did a few paintings. 

Here are a couple :

And another one :

I also did a few sheets of brush stroke/brush control exercises with my round brush, but you don't need to see those :-) I intend to do the same for all the other brushes I own - the squirrel mop, the flat brush, the dagger brush, the riggers etc. and get a sense of the marks they make and the level of control I have with each of them.

Big shapes

I am trying to make it a daily art habit to make at least three watercolor sketches. I realize that the only way to get better at something is to practice, and the only way to practice effectively is to be consistent with the effort. 

I really enjoy painting light, so I tried to enhance that feeling of light in the pictures I painted. I also tried to see the big shapes, and paint in layers to enhance the feeling of light and shade.

The thing that I do not like about the one below is that it looks very much like an illustration than the real thing. Still, I am reasonably happy with how it turned out I guess. I took Tom Hoffman's advice, did a self-critique and made notes right on the study.

Then I started doing some landscape studies in preparation to the art retreat I will be attending in a few days in the high Sierras! I didn't like the first landscape painting I did, and I was a little disappointed. I didn't much feel like it but I pushed myself to  knock off another quick painting to make my target of three. The funny thing is, the painting I did freely and loosely turned out so much better than the one I planned and overworked :-) I absolutely love the feeling of light and color in this painting of fall colors.

Warm + Cool / Light + Dark

I set myself a little exercise today to explore the contrast achieved by using warm and colors, and light and dark values. This exercise is inspired by Marion Rivolier's workshop at USK Manchester 2016. I saw a little snippet of it on Watercolor Sketching youtube channel.

I chose a photograph that has good composition, so that I didn't have to worry about that aspect. I then did a very quick value study.

I then moved on to doing the following studies :

  1. A study with all cool colors
  2. A study with all warm colors
  3. A study with warm and cool colors but similar values
  4. A study with warm and cool colors with value variation

And then finally attempted a little watercolor painting of the same subject, this time with a little more care and planning (but not too much apparently, it still looks pretty sketchy to me :-) )

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