Another Peter Sheeler tutorial… definitely the style I find simplest to attempt! I’m happy with this one.
Day 180 (Thursday 6/29) watercolor clouds
Tag: sky
Day 98: (Sat April 8) One last try at the light study
I purchased a mop brush, the Silver oval mop seen here on Amazon, to try the background off these paintings one more time. I like the brush a lot, but I may still try to get a hake brush sometime. I think the shorter, but still very soft, bristles will work better for what I’m trying. I liked this one. It hasn’t shed any bristles for me, (contrary to the Amazon review), BUT…. when it is wet, it stinks to high heaven. No lie. This is some serious goat hair here. It holds a ton of water, though, and I’m hoping after a few uses it will smell like nothing for me. This brush does handle the large wet areas of wash better, but I still had trouble here (like not letting the background dry enough before I laid in the first layer of land) Still, I think it is progress.
Also, my paints are granulating, I think, which means they separate some as they dry. See the effect?
I like the granulating effect but I think for this particular piece I’d rather have it flat and smooth. (like the yellow part is) which means (I think??) I’ll need to use a different blue. I’m not sure if I need a different brand or a different shade. (So maybe I’ll try it one more time with my prima paints?) The clouds are made by just touching a crumpled tissue to the paper to lift the color. Some colors won’t allow this, but these colors lift nicely.
Day 97 (Fri April 7) More light studies
Still following Steven Cronin’s tutorials, here are a couple more.
I tried a cheap acrylic brush for this first one because I didn’t have the hake brush he used, but it absolutely didn’t work. Left stripes everywhere. It is very stiff and bristly feeling and (turns out, after a moment’s research) the hake is very soft. The mountains are supposed to have three layers so you see distance, but the first layer was too wet and bled too much. The second layer too dark, so the third also too dark. I like the way he lifted a tiny sail out of the paint on the mountains to show boats in front of them. The rocks in the bottom right worked better today that yesterday. But not like his. They were scraped away with a bit of plastic gift card.
This second tutorial used the same hake brush (!!) which I still didn’t have, but a different technique. He dried the whole painting, then wet the whole thing again, adding another wet layer, dried it again, added another layer. So I learned that if I wet the whole thing evenly I can rework it a bit. I’m happier with the light here, but the red I added to the clouds didn’t want to lift, and my little foregrounds on the right are too symmetrical. Still, it’s a light study, and I learned about light:
Using a very limited palette, three colors, on Arches cold pressed block, with Daniel Smith watercolor paints. I like the way dried pans feel better, but I think Daniel Smith tubes might be better quality than any dried pans available.
If I crop it this way, I really like it a lot better:
Day 94 (Tues April 4) Light studies
I wasn’t satisfied with ANY of these, particularly, but I did learn about keeping the light in a dark sky or water. I didn’t even finish some of them. And now that I look at them, I want a reflection of the land in the water (but that was’t in the tutorial.) I do like elements of most of them, though.
Also, the first two used m graham watercolors, the next used daniel smith. I liked the daniel smith better, but in the end, I don’t see much difference, really.
I really had trouble keeping the paper wet enough, but not too wet, controlling the color, etc. I enjoyed using my new Arches cold pressed block. The block of paper is sealed on all four edges so the paper stays flat, then you insert a palette knife of something in the one inch piece left open and slide it all around, removing the finished page. It’s so much nicer than using a book for a very wet painting! And taping edges isn’t required. Although, I still did it in some of them because I like the look. 🙂 The only down side for me is that I’m just doing studies and would like to keep them in a book. I have some rings and I’m tempted to hole punch them and hook them all together but something inside me is resisting that idea. Any other thoughts about keeping all these separate pages together somewhere?
This was a Steven Cronin tutorial. He makes it look SO fast and easy. I didn’t actually have the same colors he used, but close enough.
Day 91 (Sat April 1): Sky study 2- Sheeler
Love these stormy clouds.
Day 90 (Fri March 31): sky study 1-Sheeler
Another Peter Sheeler tutorial. 🙂
Day 62: (fri 3/3)
First attempt at a quick wet-on-wet tutorial. I had to rush because Ellis was waiting for me!! Another try another day. 🙂
Day 58: (Mon 2/27) watercolor skies
Two techniques to practice (learning from a , you guessed it, youtube tutorial! “Geoff’s Top Tips One-Part One”), wet on wet and wet on dry. So here goes!
Wet on wet:
Four attempts at this one. I like some of the results. This will make a pretty background. Technique: wet the whole area. Working quickly, mix three washes, a thin wash of cobalt blue, with a little touch of the rose madder (a TOUCH, you don’t want to turn it purple, although… mine looks purple here), then a translucent gray, again with a touch of rose madder to warm it, and finally (with a very clean brush) a thin wash of a creamy naples yellow, with a bit of vermillion added. (An interesting note: I don’t currently own ANY of these colors. So… I used what I have.)
Wet the whole page, start the yellow/pinky color at the bottom, nice and light, working it up in horizontal streaks but leaving lots of white, adding more water as you go up. The use the blue in horizontal streaks, lightly, letting it seep a bit into the pinky color as it goes lower. Leaving lots of white. Finally the gray, more heavily, which really forms the clouds. (thinner lines at the bottom) All of this must be worked quickly. And I mean quickly. 30 seconds, a minute, not much more. The paper must be wet the whole time.
wet on dry:
I like these results as well. Technique: Mix colors as you go this time. Wet the whole area. Use a naples yellow wash across from the bottom up, leaving some white, particularly in the middle, as the brightest part of the sky. Let this fully dry. Mix french ultramarine, a strong vivid transparent blue (apparently this is important, the transparency), gray it slightly with a hint of burnt sienna. Start at the upper left, make horizontal streaks across, moving down, adding a touch of water to soften it and to vary the strength. (again: I don’t have these colors, which I will use as my excuse for these not looking terribly like the tutorial sample, but really that’s not the reason. It’s a combination of supplies and experience.)
The second technique is a little more precise feeling and more difficult, but gives very different clouds so is necessary if I want thinner less puffy clouds. The first is more fun.
Day 29: more watercolor study
I really like Peter Sheeler’s style… his quick loose sketches are exactly what watercolor is noted for AND exactly what I’m worst at (I think. I may not have found my worst yet) And I love the look. I’m going to continue to try his tutorials. There’s a lot I can learn from them. (I won’t do this every day, though… I’ll try to mix things up for you!)
I am finding that my lower grade paints and papers do not react the same way his artist grade supplies do. The end result is ok, but not the same. Some of this, I know, is skill, but since I am watching what happens as he applies the wet paint, I can see that some of it is materials. They simply act differently. I’m not prepared to drop several hundred dollars on paint. Or paper. Right now. But this is something I’ll need to adjust over time if I plan to pass a certain point, and maybe purchase even one or two colors at a time of some superior line. Regarding paper, some artists recommend purchasing student grade paper on which to learn and practice (that’s what I’ve done, and it made sense to me, since some of what I produce will be useless, and none of it will be “art” I plan to display.) Steeler suggests purchasing high quality paper from the beginning, and says you’ll have to relearn skills when upgrading from less expensive to professional paper because it feels and acts differently. This makes sense to me, too. I’ll think about it over the next few days.
These were sky studies.
ThreeSixFiveArt 