Sky’s the Limit - Watercolour Workshop

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I spent a fun day working with a new student called Allan yesterday.

Allan in full flow painting his seceon ever sky - which was fab - as was his first one!

Allan in full flow painting his seceon ever sky - which was fab - as was his first one!

We covered watercolour basics as Allan wanted a refresher after many years away from painting and so we chatted about paper weights and types, tube paints versus pan paints and the value of having a place to leave all your painting gear out so that you can go to it whenever you fee l like.

If you want to paint skies well I feel tube paints win hands down! Pans are just not going to allow you to load up your brush sufficiently or quickly enough!

Turns out that Allan is simply a brilliant draughtstman and can draw fantastic imagery from his mind and can cartoon like a pro!

Like so many of us though he was advised not to pursue art as a career as there was little money or security with it.

How times have changed!

A moody sky in the making where wet paper and tube paints are your friends...

A moody sky in the making where wet paper and tube paints are your friends…

Some of the skies that we did are shown below.

A wet into wet sky. 7×10 inches - using only 2 colours - French Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber - Artists quality of course! Don’t waste your time with student grade paints.

I always wet my paper before painting a sky and the reasons are these:-

1 It opens up the cotton fibers of the paper and makes it accept your washes more readily.

2. It gives and instantly soft and amorphous look - perfect for skies!

3. It gives you more time to think and when paper is damp you can lift out mistakes much more easily.

Moody witching-hour sky - again painted in a brown and a blue - a simple line of trees completes the painting. Less is more!

Why not explore wet into wet technique further - try this link below to get you started:-

1 Wet into wet search- https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wet+into+wet&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb&gws_rd=cr&ei=jNoFU8bICaqJ7Abj6oGACQ

- or search on Youtube from this selection!

2 http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wet+into+wet+sky&sm=3

LEARN TO PAINT SKIES!

For further details on how you can go forward with your watercolour with my Art Blossoms Painting Days please email me at eastwitching@hotmail.com or call 01443 791532. Courses are held here in my home studio in Pontypridd.

The Fox Vanishes - Game 4 - Deadline for Entries Sat 22nd February

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Welcome to Game 4! Please see how to play below and deadline - good luck!

In this game I will be placing a faded out fox (here he is below at full strength) on a certain animal print in my online gallery at Eastwitching (www.eastwitching.etsy.com).

fox june cropYou will need to scour the selected items (usually about 12) that come up when you click the link I will provide each game. PLEASE USE the ZOOM feature when you search.

When you find the faded fox image on the animal image in question DO NOT SAY WHERE IT IS in comments on this post.

Simply convo me with your ANSWER at alisonfennell@hotmail.co.uk or convo me at Etsy if you have an account there.

THEN leave a comment ON THIS POST saying WHICH PRINT you would like to receive if your entry is selected.

Selection is made randomly using RANDOM.ORG two weeks after the game is announced.

WANT TO PLAY? - GAME 4 of The Fox Vanishes.

How to play …

1 Click on this LINK and start searching all of the animal images that come up. On one of them there is a faded out fox like the bold one in this post above.

2 Convo me via Etsy or email me at alisonfennell@hotmail.co.uk with your answer

3 Come back to this post and say which animal print you would like to win from my gallery HERE - you can choose ANY print and shipping is free worldwide too!

4 Deadline for entries is MIDNIGHT GMT Saturday 22nd February

5 Winning entry selected on Sunday 9th February and new game announced that same day.

To start hunting the fox click HERE! Good luck:)

All Holed Up with No Place to Go - Watercolour of a Log Cabin - in Stages

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For the last 3 days I have been RIVETTED by the book I am reading. It is called The Call of the Wild: My Escape to Alaska but it is not the one by Jack London.

Instead it is written by a modern-day mountainman called Guy Grieve who like many people felt the pull of the wild and upped sticks from an office job in Edinburgh to go and live in the Alaskan interior for a year.

51rkvmqFZyLThe book barrels along and what strikes me is Grieve’s brilliant and masterful style as well as his colourful descriptions of both the snowy landscape and the characters that inhabit it.

I am nearly halfway through and feel I am there - a true sign of a brilliant book!

What has all this got to do with a watercolour demo you ask? Well - I am doing a demo for Pentyrch Art Society tomorrow and they very kindly have allowed me to pick my own subject to paint. I was going to do another animal but them hit on the idea of creating my very own log cabin - in the spirit of the book I am reading. After a quick hunt on some photo ref sites I bough the image that moved me and then set about painting it.

Below are the 6 steps I took to create it.In the next few days I’ll add text to the photos to explain my process should you want to paint along:)

Colours used are French Ultramarine, Cobalt Blue, Winsor Green, Winsor Blue, Burnt Umber, Raw Sienna and Alizarin Crimson. Paper is Saunders Waterford 100% cotton rag NOT 140lbs

log cabin sequence

 

 

Tonal Studies - Not for the Faint-hearted!

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Well we all love colour and detail and texture in paintings but that is all just decoration and frippery compared to the big boys of painting - the tonal masses!

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DEFINITION of a TONE (or VALUE as they say in the USA)

: A tone is the relative lightness or darkness of an object irrespective of its actual colour.

If you, at the outset of planning a painting, can boil down your subject into broad blocks of tones ranging from lights to mids to darks , then you are on to a winner.

Omit this step at your peril and you’ll be left floundering amidst a sea of colour and detail that is going nowhere and defining nothing - giving your viewer no readable pattern to enjoy…just a rectangle of visual noise.

Today I spent an enjoyable few hours explaining the power and necessity of tones to pupil and friend Jude.

Jude thrashing out her tonal study bEFOR launching into a watercolour of the same subject

Jude thrashing out her tonal study BEFORE launching into a watercolour of the same subject.

Once you establish your tonal pattern all you then need to is translate those tones into colours and you are on your way to painting a satisfying and believable work of art. This requires attention and practice. Do not let the colours distract you - try to SQUINT your eyes and compare how light or dark they are in relation to the colour next to them.

You can achieve this by:-

1 making a simple outline of your subject

2. using only three tones to create a readable/distinguishable pattern of the elements in your subject with just 3 tones (lights - mids - and darks). This stops you fussing and getting distracted with detail at the wrong time.

3. translating those tones into similarly tones colours (using a tone finder tool is good for this - click here to make one - MAKE A TONAL SCALE

Another tack is to scan in the image you want to paint then convert it to grayscale and reduce the tones to just 3 or 4 and work from that. You will also need to keep in mind that you may change areas of tones that do not contribute to the overall INTEGRITY of the painting - this is where you use your artistic license to alter according to your taste.

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I have learned the hard way over the last 23 years by reading books, watching DVD’s and experimentation.Here are some of the best books from which I have gleaned vital tonal information.

Note - In the USA they use the word “Value” instead of “Tone” - but it all boils down to the same thing.

Tony Couch - Watercolor: You Can Do It!

Steven Quiller - Color Choices

Joseph Zbukvic - Mastering Atmosphere & Mood in Watercolor

Richard Scmid - Alla Prima : Everything I Kkow About Painting

Working on tones is a way of limbering up your seeing and discriminating skills which is a major part of creating art - I hope that you will spend some time genning up on it if you feel your work lacks punch or vitality - good luck!

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The Fox Vanishes - Game 3 - Deadline for Entries Sat 8th February

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Welcome to Game 3! Please see how to play below and deadline - good luck!

In this game I will be placing a faded out fox (here he is below at full strength) on a certain animal print in my online gallery at Eastwitching (www.eastwitching.etsy.com).

fox june cropYou will need to scour the selected items (usually about 12) that come up when you click the link I will provide each game.

When you find the faded fox image on the animal image in question DO NOT SAY WHERE IT IS in comments on this post.

Simply convo me with your ANSWER at alisonfennell@hotmail.co.uk or convo me at Etsy if you have an account there.

THEN leave a comment ON THIS POST saying WHICH PRINT you would like to receive if your entry is selected.

Selection is made randomly using RANDOM.ORG two weeks after the game is announced.

WANT TO PLAY? - GAME 3 of The Fox Vanishes.

How to play …

1 Click on this LINK and start searching all of the animal images that come up. On one of them there is a faded out fox like the bold one in this post above.

2 Convo me via Etsy or email me at alisonfennell@hotmail.co.uk with your answer

3 Come back to this post and say which animal print you would like to win from my gallery HERE - you can choose ANY print and shipping is free worldwide too!

4 Deadline for entries is MIDNIGHT GMT Saturday 8th February

5 Winning entry selected on Sunday 9th February and new game announced that same day.

To start hunting the fox click HERE! Good luck:)