Tag Archives: Watercolor

AIX WORKSHOP

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After a week in Paris we flew to Marseilles to meet up with the people on our workshop. It was great to catch up with friends from previous workshops and meet up with the new students. A coach took us to our luxury hotel, Le Piggonet, on the outside of the old town of Aix en Provence.

The hotel was a beautiful old building set in magnificent gardens. We could have happily spent a week painting in the gardens, but the town of Aix had a lot to offer so we split our painting time between the hotel and the town.


Le Piggonet


Hotel Gardens


Painting in the Hotel gardens


Dining at Le Piggonet


Flower markets Aix en Provence


Street Markets

We were introduced to some fantastic restaurants in the town. One of our students lived in the country side not far from Aix and had a great knowledge of all the best restaurants. This was one of our favorites – Le Patio, a small family run restaurant with a great atmosphere, good service and fantastic food.

The little town of St. Remy is not far from Aix en Provence. We spent a day there, painting and visiting the Asylum Van Gogh spent time in. We were privileged to paint in the garden of the asylum, where Van Gogh would have often sat and sketched.

Although the asylum surroundings were idealic, life inside must have been horrific. These bath tubs were filled with cold water into which troublesome inmates were immersed and trapped under these wooden boards.

In the town of St. Remy, the main square provided a quiet, spacious area surrounded by ancient stone walls and wooden shutters. We spent an enjoyable afternoon painting there before heading back to our hotel for drinks under the plane trees.

Blue Shutters – St. Remy

Cassis is a small fishing town on the Mediterranean coast not far from Aix. The busy harbour and backdrop of old buildings made a great painting subject. We shared the park across the harbour with the local boules players, cigarette smokers and baguette eaters. Under the shade of a grove of casuarina trees, we painted the changing vista of the harbour.

Cassis Waterfront

Paul Cezanne lived and painted in Aix en Provence. His house and studio have been made into a museum, crammed with his old coats, umbrellas, paint boxes, skulls, bones and still life props that feature in his paintings.

Cezanne had the house built to his design – living area downstairs, large studio upstairs.

The studio ceiling is about 5 metres high and the Northern wall, almost completely glass. The walls are painted a mid tone, neutral gray and there is a 4 meter x .5 meter corner hatch to remove large works from the studio. It’s a fantastic studio, unfortunately no photographs are allowed inside. Below is the front door to the house.

WATERCOLOR CANVAS

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While we were in Italy one of the artists in our group, Lety Herrera, from Mexico, asked if I had ever tried Watercolor Canvas. I hadn’t, and she suggested I should, so when I arrived home I picked up a pad of small sheets. I was amazed how good it was to work on and how well the washes reacted to the primed surface. I did a couple of small paintings then ordered a roll of the canvas.

It needs to be stretched or mounted securely to a board before you paint on it or it will buckle and twist badly, making it impossible to work on. The paint tends to sit more on the surface than it does on paper, and can easily be washed back to clean canvas. This may sound like a problem, but you soon get use to gently working over underlying washes so as not to disturb them. Eventually, the ability to easily lift off pigment becomes an advantage, allowing tones to be adjusted and whites to be retrieved at any stage.

You may wonder why work on watercolor canvas when there are so many excellent watercolor papers. For me, the big advantage is not having to place the finished painting under glass plus the option to work on a larger surface. Once finished the paintings need to be treated with a suitable varnish.

Palermo Geraniums

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Sorrento Breeze –  Marina Grande

I still love the feeling of painting on watercolor paper but this watercolor canvas offers a new way of working and different way to present your work. I see it as an extension to the traditional format of watercolor on paper. Acrylic, ink and pastel can also be incorporated into these paintings.

Fredrix Watercolor canvas is acid free, 100% cotton canvas, primed with a patent pending, specially formulated Gesso for all water based paints. It is available in pads, boards and in a 58″x 3 yard roll.

PAINT RECYCLING

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Do you have a collection of dried up paint tubes you just can’t bring yourself to throwing out?

Here is a way to bring the paint back to life.  I found a small pestle and mortar hidden in the back of a kitchen cupboard. It turned out to be the perfect device for grinding the contents of all those dried out tubes into a fine powder, ready to be brought back to life.

The first thing to do is cut open the tube and empty the dry lumps of pigment into the motar

Next step is to grind them to a fine powder. The pigment sticks to the pestle, so a metal palette knife is handy to scrape and loosen the pigment.

Once the pigment is a fine even powder, slowly stir in some water. Just enough to make a thick, creamy consistency. Keep grinding the paste for a few minutes to make sure there are no small, unbroken lumps left.

The final step is to scoop the recycled paint into a container. These little plastic sauce containers come from the local Thai restaurant – a couple of dollars for a plastic bag full. A piece of masking tape with details identifying the brand and color is a good idea before you throw away the empty tube.

WARNING

Some pigments contain heavy metals such as Cobalt and Cadmium (check the warnings on the tube). Be careful not to breathe in or swallow the dust off these. Wear a suitable mask if in doubt.

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NEW TOYS

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I’m a sucker for an Art Supply Shop. I just can’t walk past them. While we were in Hong Kong an assortment of pastel pencils, water soluble crayons and colored inks became absolute necessities. Things that I couldn’t leave the shop without!

I have drawers full of such items. Essential in the excitement of the moment, but once in the studio and tested, they become just another unnecessary distraction. Fortunately, this bout of impulse buying resulted in some really useful new toys.

The inks are Winsor and Newton Calligraphy inks – Brilliant primary colors

The pastel pencils are a Dutch brand I have not tried before – Bruynzeel. Fine textured and good colors.

I have used the Caran d’Ache water soluble crayons before, but fell for a pile of new colors.

Red Shoes – Sketched with a charcoal pencil then colored with a red, orange and pink crayon. After the crayon was applied, a wet 1/2″ brush was used to dissolve and blend the colors. Finally a few red ink lines were drawn on and sprayed with a mist of water.

These Lemons were painted with a mixture of crayon ink and pastel pencil. A gesso wash was scrubbed over the foreground before the final yellow crayon marks were applied. Before the Gesso had dried the lemon was carefully sliced and dropped into a Gin and tonic.

WALLS AND DOORS

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It’s good to be back in the studio again after our Italian workshop break. Over the next few months I will be kept busy working on an Exhibition for late October. These first few paintings of architectural subjects will probably find their way into the exhibition. They will also be used in an article on The Illusion of Accuracy for International Artist Magazine.

“Notes on a Door” – Watercolor, Ink and Gesso on Arches 300gsm paper

“Medievalness” Watercolor and Ink on 300gsm Arches paper

“Village with lake and Olive Trees” mixed media on 300gsm Blue Lake Paper

WATERCOLOR CHICKEN

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Over the past couple of months I have been busy working on a new book, which means I am madly leaping from one subject to another. Somehow I ended up choosing a chicken to demonstrate the different qualities of watercolor and Gouache. I hope to have the book finished before the end of the year. A step by step guide to painting this chicken will feature in book. It combines clear washes of watercolor and the opaque flatness of gouache to get that fantastic contrast between glowing transparency and flat, velvety gouache.

This type of subject is a lot of fun, I love the contrast between fine detail and loose abstraction. The face of the chicken leaves nothing to the imagination, but as the eye moves down the neck, things get a little out of control – just like a chicken tearing around in a chicken coop.

French Ultramarine Blue, Permanent Alizarin, Windsor Red, and Quinacridone Gold  with White Gouache provided all the necessary colors.

A few one stroke brushes and a rigger took care of the detail and the 1/2 inch bristle brush made all the mess.

The book should be available towards the end of the year. As soon as it’s out I will put a link on my website

TRIAL AND ERROR

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When writing magazine articles, I usually try to have a nice clean start to finish demonstration, free of  problems or corrections. With this painting, however, I ran into a period of indecision and confusion. Rather than put it aside for something else, I decided to make the eventual solution to the problem the subject of the article.

This article will appear in the next issue of International Artist Magazine.
Sometimes a painting will happily sail along to a certain point, then, seemingly without reason, grind to a halt.  An indecisive moment perhaps, not enough planning, a lack of concentration, who knows? What ever the cause it can be a frustrating and time-consuming experience. Short of putting the painting aside and forgetting it, the best solution sometimes is to plough on fearlessly and see what happens.
This painting, of a small Tuscan farm, was going well right up till it was almost finished. For some reason I was not quite happy with the result. I was unsure where to go.  After looking at the painting for a couple of weeks I still could not put my finger on what the problem was. The only solution was to try out a few options – play with it till something started to emerge.
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Mixed Media on Canvas  1200×1200
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My rough thumbnail sketch certainly was rough, but I was happy with the composition. The old Fiat tractor eventually snuck its way in, off to the left of the farmhouse.

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Initial drawing was done with a charcoal pencil and the first big areas of paint were roughed in with a 2″ brush
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A little more modeling took place, then a few dark shapes were added. So far, so good!

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Perhaps this is where things started to get confusing. Too much color too quickly. I threaded some strong green through the top of the painting then, rather than trying to subdue it, attempted to counter the green with strong reds and pinks.After much head scratching I decided to knock back the pinks and put more light into the large foreground. The single dark shape in the immediate foreground was causing distraction and not really saying much. It needed a little more definition and a stronger link to the main focal point.

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The foreground was broken up with the suggestion of grape vines. Not too much detail – just enough information to add some meaning as the eye moves across the foreground. The line linking the foreground to the focal point was also strengthened. The pink roof was changed to a more terracotta color just to see the effect.

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Not happy with the warm terracotta roof I decided to go back to the cooler pink. After much trial and error, I finally found a balance between the pink and green. Working the pink from the main focal point down the curve of the road and into the foreground.

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This detail shows the vegetable garden put in with a combination of fine acrylic lines painted with a rigger brush, charcoal pencil marks and areas of colored acrylic. Although many of the details are repeated, I have varied their color, shape and tone to keep the detail interesting.

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The building detail shows how the loose, spidery charcoal lines add a sketchy quality to the areas of detail. The small patches of cool green and blue add interesting relief to the areas of warm color.

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Next to the masked roof of the shed is the old Fiat tractor, barely suggested with roughly scribbled charcoal pencil.

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JOIN ME FOR A WORKSHOP IN ITALY THIS MAY.

Discover the spectacular beauty of Sicily and Sorrento
MON. MAY 17 TO SUN. MAY 30, 2010

This workshop offers 14 days of painting and adventure. Starting in spectacular Sorrento, the entrance to the Neapolitan Coast then traveling to  Sicily, Italy’s most historically cosmopolitan region surrounded by the beautiful blue waters of the Mediterranean.

Click here for details

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