Continuing on from Part I, here is a close up as I began to paint the yellow and orange flowers. For the first layer of this flower I painted the darker sections and then used clear water in a damp brush to pull/feather the color out into the flower so it didn’t make a hard edge.
Yellow underpainting (click to enlarge)
For the three large zinnias, I outlined all the petals with Holbein Cadmium Yellow Light. Then I brushed a ring of clear water around the center of each of those flowers and painted a narrower ring of yellow inside that so the paint would softly spread in the water to not quite the edge of the water, producing a soft edge. When that dried I painted the flower’s very dark center with a mixture of Winsor Newton (WN) Burnt Sienna and Winsor Violet. Then I painted the gold ring between them with WN Cadmium Orange mixed with Daniel Smith (DS) New Gamboge.
Painting one petal at a time
I began applying mixtures of WN Cadmium Orange, WN Permanent Rose and DS New Gamboge to one petal at a time while avoiding painting over the yellow outlines on the petals,. You can see the juicy puddle of color I like to put down. I’m careful to let it dry without shifting the tilt of the paper to avoid backwashes.
Orange flowers completed
I worked all over the paper, turning the painting sideways and upside down instead of reaching across, to complete all of the yellow and orange flowers. Some of them will get touch-ups before the painting is completely finished.
Next time: more greens, the dark background, and the finished painting. Meanwhile, I’ve been assigned the next painting to do: a lovely orchid which I will approach in a completely different manner.
I was given permission to post some of my work on the upcoming book, “Must Paint Watercolor Flowers” (Quarto Publishers, London) for which I’ve been commissioned to paint three floral watercolors. The painting is the easy part; taking the photos, correcting them in Photoshop, and writing about each of the steps takes much more time and isn’t nearly as much as fun. I thought I’d break this into a few posts so they won’t be too long.
My first step after being given my choice from a couple dozen excellent photos (which I’m not permitted to post) was to do some rehearsals in my sketchbook. I used several pages to experiment with how I wanted to approach the metal pitcher, mixing colors for the leaves, the buds and the yellow-green flowers (above). Then I experimented with color mixtures for the orange flowers and the large amount of darks (below — combinations of Winsor Green and Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna, Sap Green and Sepia, Winsor Green and Winsor Violet).
Rehearsal - Sketchbook p. 2
Next step was to transfer the photo to my watercolor paper. Initially I was going to make the painting small enough to fit on my scanner but decided to use the maximum size the publisher allowed since it was such a complex painting. I chose a 12 x 16″ Arches 140 lb. cold press watercolor block (block is easier to set up for photographing). If I’d been given more time and/or if the photo wasn’t so complex, I probably would have transferred the image by drawing freehand or using a “gridding up” method but with a two-week deadline I used a quicker method.
Transferring the photo to watercolor paper
I enlarged the photo in Photoshop and printed it in sections (before figuring out I could have more easily used my copier to do the same) and taped them together. Then I placed a sheet of Saral Transfer Paper on top of my watercolor paper and laid the enlarged print on top of the Saral. Using a ballpoint pen, I traced over the shapes of the flowers, leaves, stems and shadows which transferred graphite lines from the Saral paper onto the watercolor paper.
Cleaning up the drawing
See what I mean about how complicated the image is! I’d left too much of an overlap on the tiled together enlarged photo and some areas didn’t get a good transfer so had to freehand some of the drawing, clean up some lines and darken others. This is my new favorite mechanical pencil, the Papermate PhD Ultra.
Masking near the pitcher
I wanted to paint the pitcher wet-into-wet and so I applied Winsor and Newton Colourless Art Masking Fluid to some of the shapes around and projecting into the pitcher to make it easier to paint wet into wet more freely. I used a cheap disposable brush to avoid messing up my good ones. I prefer Cheap Joes Golden Fleece rounds for watercolor and even though they aren’t expensive, I don’t want to ruin them with masking fluid.
Detail: Pitcher painted, removing masking fluid
I like pulling off the mask with the rubber cement pick up tool. I think it’s made out of the same stuff Vibram shoe soles are made from. The pitcher and the table have had their first washes. Next step is starting on the flowers and that will be in the next post.
Tuesday night sketchcrawl met at Miyuki Japanese Restaurant on Solano and it was a feast for the eyes and the stomach. It took tremendous willpower to sketch and paint each morsel before eating them. I started with the miso soup, delivered with steamy wash cloths to clean our hands before dining.
Edamame (soy beans), ink and watercolor
They brought edamame to our table while we looked at the menu. I sketched and ate them after the delicious miso soup. We sat at the sushi bar and had fun watching the sushi chef. He seemed to enjoyed watching us sketch,e specially Cathy’s sketch of him.
Maguro sushi (tuna), ink and watercolor
Next was the maguro sushi on a wooden plank. Spectacularly fresh and delicious. Then it was time for the star of the show, the Country Roll, stuffed with perfectly crisp asparagus and covered in spicy and slightly sweet seaweed salad.
Country Roll Sushi (seaweed salad & asparagus); Ink and watercolor
For “dessert” I ordered Unagi (grilled eel with a teriyaki-like sauce.
Unagi sushi (grilled eel), ink and watercolor
The waitress couldn’t quite make sense of us but since the restaurant wasn’t too crowded they didn’t mind us sitting there for two hours sketching and eating. And we left a big tip.
Miyuki Japanese Restaurant, Berkeley, ink and watercolor
All of these were sketched and painted on site except for this last one, which was sketched in the dark from across the street when I first arrived. I took notes about the colors and added color when I got home. I highly recommend Miyaki. The food is always fresh and beautifully prepared, the staff friendly, efficient and helpful and the prices very reasonable. It’s spacious so there’s never a wait and it’s not too noisy. And it’s a great place to sketch on a Tuesday night!
Hydrangea in Cow Glass #3, ink and watercolor, 9x6"
I just needed some peaceful time at my watercolor table tonight to unwind. I’ve been admiring this hydrangea that’s been on my dining table in a little cow glass, the last remaining from a bouquet I’d picked. It’s soft pinks and greens were inspiring so I put on a book on CD and sketched and painted and listened to the story unfold.
Above is the third one, drawn first with a Pitt Artist Pen Sepia Superfine and then painted quickly with watercolor.
Below is the second one, painted directly without drawing first except with my brush and paint.
Hydrangea in Cow Glass #2, watercolor
And here is the first one, drawn first with pencil, then I wet the flower area, dropped in different colors and when dry painted a bit over it. This one got a bit overworked but had some nice moments along the way:
Hydrangea in Cow Glass #1, graphite and watercolor
You can see my notes in my sketchbook about never being able to remember the name of these flowers. I always go through a list of wrong names first and then have to look it up. It’s like the spot on my mental hard drive that once held the name “Hydrangea” has been corrupted and I just can get there anymore. But then I never really learned the name until a few years ago; we always called them “popcorn ball plants” when I was growing up.
I hope the colors look OK. I updated my computer to Windows 7 last night (finishing the final steps this evening) and things look a little different. Windows 7 is fantastic so far and the upgrade process was almost flawless. (Just one glitch with my graphics card driver that got resolved pretty easily.)
This afternoon I went for a hike with Jessica and Mariah in perfect autumn weather and then J made tacos for dinner. After dinner Mariah (age 10) plopped her sketchbook, watercolor pencils, and Niji waterbrush on the table, pulled the bowl of fruit over in front of us and said “Let’s sketch.” How could I resist!
Mariah’s sketchbooks are such treasures. When we first started sketching together a couple years ago she preferred drawing from her imagination but now avidly draws what she sees too. Watching her abilities and understanding of what she sees grow is such a pleasure. Especially since she’s around the age when many girls stop drawing when they realize they can’t do it perfectly.
I also really admire how she has many pages of “just practicing” as she called them in her sketchbook (pages someone else might tear out thinking they were “failed” drawings). She doesn’t fear leaving them there or “wasting” the page. They’re just practice. Sometimes there are three pages in a row like that. No big deal. Such wisdom. I wanted to post her fruit sketch too but she turned the page while it was wet and it got all blurry. She just couldn’t wait to start the next sketch: the box of taco shells she said she really wanted to draw but didn’t know why.
I’ve managed to squeeze in a few other nothing-special sketches in the middle of a two-week, too-busy period (work, family, life!) and here they are:
Subway Ladies, ink and watercolor
Friday night my watercolor group came over and we painted together. I did a couple quick sketches of them while we sat around the table. Judith had a new shorter haircut.
Judith, ink in Niji waterbrush
Sharon worked in water-soluble oils instead of watercolor and somehow got yellow paint on the wall that wouldn’t come off until I tried my Magic Eraser and it came right off.
Sharon, ink in Niji waterbrush
We were all so tired after a long week but it was great to get together and paint. By request, I demonstrated how to get a good “bead” of juicy paint when making a flat wash and everyone took turns doing a few rows of the wash down the page. Together we created a really nice even page of purple.
A few more days of craziness and things start settling down again. Can’t wait!
Better Bowl of Fruit, Watercolor on paper, 7" x 10.5"
I’m so much happier with the way this watercolor of my bowl of fruit turned out than the one in my sketchbook. It makes such a difference to use Arches 140 lb cold-pressed watercolor paper. It also helped that I was painting consciously and taking my time, instead of rushing through it, half asleep as I had been when I made the sketch.
Even more fun is that I made the the large porcelain bowl when I was a potter and had glazed it with two of my favorite glazes…and now I was “glazing” it again, in watercolor.
I enjoyed every bit of the process, from planning the composition, to drawing (see below) from life, to masking the whites, then painting one shape at a time, using juicy washes, adding color wet-into-wet, as well as glazing over dried washes, then removing the mask, softening the highlights and some edges.
Fruit bowl pencil sketch on watercolor paper
Since I’m teaching a watercolor class right now, I tried to also pay attention to my process so that I could better explain to my students how and why I did what I did. I surprised myself with the range of techniques I was actually using in one painting. Even though in class we study them as separate techniques (flat wash, graded wash, wet-into-wet, etc.) you often need them all in one painting and sometimes in one passage of a painting.
(Boring technical stuff follows…read at your own risk…) For example, after the fruit, bowl, and shadow were painted I did a flat wash of Ultramarine Blue mixed with Burnt Sienna for the neutral background. Then it felt like the table top, which I’d initially left white with just a light blue shadow, needed paint too. So the first layer was a pale flat wash of Cadmium Yellow. When it dried it didn’t feel warm enough so I glazed over it with a flat wash of Permanent Rose (so that the whole table top was the pale apricot color now only seen on the right of the table top). It still wasn’t warm enough so I did another wash of Permanent Rose mixed with a little Cadmium Yellow and let it fade out 3/4 of the way across. I liked the way that looked but now the shadow was too pale. So I glazed over over the shadow a couple of times and then softened the edges of the shadow where it meets the table top.)
It’s been such a busy week that I haven’t had a moment for my blog until now. When my work week ended Friday afternoon it was time to prepare the studio for my watercolor class that started today. I’ve converted a second room to studio space for the duration of the class and I think everyone fit comfortably.
I feel so privileged to have such a great group of wonderful women artists in the class. And what troopers they were today, so determined to get the hang of doing flat washes, graded washes and glazing. By the end of the class everyone was doing beautiful, abundant, juicy washes.
I’d put out a couple of bowls of fresh fruit for class but nobody was hungry. So now I get to paint (and eat) all those yummy pears, apples and pomegranates.
After all the work on good paper today, I got frustrated by sketchbook paper that quickly muddies and doesn’t allow reworking. But I was so tired tonight it was either a quick sketch or nothing and since there’s been way too much nothing on my blog this week, here, at least, is something, as funky as it may be.
Tomorrow, rested up, I will try again on good paper.
The transition from work week to painting week is often difficult for me. I supposedly work only half a day Fridays but it usually turns into a whole day. So last night, to prod the transition along, I took a nice hot shower, put on my jammies and made a cup of Peets Downy Pearls Jasmine Tea.
The tea leaves come wound up into cute little balls a bit bigger than capers. As it steeps, the tea transitions too, from little balls to long spiky, stringy tea leaves that expand tremendously.
So I put some dry “pearls” in one plate, the ones that I’d brewed for my tea in another and my tea on the table and sketched and painted it, to reboot and ease into my art life. I just wished I’d drawn with pencil instead of pen since my drawing brain wasn’t really warmed up and ready to go.
Sunday I got into one of those funks where no matter what I was doing I felt like I should be doing something else. It was a beautiful day: I should be out painting plein air. But there were paintings in progress in the studio that were calling to me. And then there were shoulds about the medium to use: I should be painting in oil, no acrylic, no watercolor…I was driving myself nuts!
So I sat myself down at the drawing table and just started writing in my sketchbook journal all the shoulds I was hearing in my mind (but who was saying them–aren’t I the only one in there?). When all else fails I default to flowers. I picked a hibiscus, stuck it in a little bottle and started sketching. I got it wrong. I drew with a pen dipped in ink, I added wax crayon, watercolor crayon, rubbed it with a paper towel, rubber stamps, more ink, more crayon, and just kept angrily abusing the page, trying to dump the shoulds.
Attack of the Shoulds #2, Ink and watercolor
I wrote on the page: “Accept that it is all impossible.It will be wrong. It will be bad. It is pointless. And do it anyway. Because you can. And doing it badly is better than not doing it. Break the cycle. Stop the nonsense!” When there was nothing more to do the first page spread I started on the next, feeling freer. I tackled the hibiscus again, and did #2 above.
Attack of the Shoulds #3, watercolor and ink
For #3 above, I sketched with pencil, added watercolor and then outlined everything afterwards with a Pitt Sepia F pen.
Attack of the Shoulds #4, ink & watercolor
It was almost time to go to a dinner party but I squeezed in one more, which I mucked up a bit with too heavy outlining so added some fun scribbly white pen. The good news is that I did break the cycle, got over the shoulds and got back to having fun in the studio today.
Agapantha Fireworks over Hydrangeas, watercolor, 9×6″
In honor of Independence Day I spent the day quite independently, doing a little gardening, a little cooking, and then starting the first of a series of autobiographical paintings in acrylic on canvas.
I skipped the picnics and fireworks (except for hearing them boom in the distance and having to comfort my stressed out cats, and again just now, after 11:00 p.m., they’re illegally exploding somewhere in my neighborhood). So I thought I’d sketch these agapanthas that looked a bit like fireworks exploding over the hydrangeas.
I like the idea of celebrating independence day with flowers rather than the sound of “bombs bursting in air” anyway.
Jana Bouc, Artist 