Jamaica II

There was a hammock hung right at the edge of the beach, and one afternoon I went there with my sketchbook. After I studied dozens of waves, trying to understand and draw their structure, I lay back and what I could see was my leg resting the length of the hammock (the other was bent, supporting the sketchbook). So I sketched what I could see and call it a "self portrait". Just up the beach was a fishing cooperative and many of us walked up there to take photos and sketch.

Jamaica I

We have been home for a few days from a week in Jamaica. A warm, sunny week filled with painting, swimming, eating, laughing, eating some more and then even more. We stayed at Calabash House, a guest house in Treasure Beach on the south shore somewhat east of Black River. The south side of the island has some gentle beaches, one of which was across the back yard from our house, and is less touristy. We went with our friend, Jane Miluski, who teaches watercolor here at our local art center, and 4 other women from this area, two of whom we paint with regularly. It was an extremely compatible group, enhanced by Elizabeth Seltzer, the owner of the house, and Dawn and Tricia, the Jamacian cook extradinaire, and her assistant. Dawn cooked all of our breakfasts and half our lunches and dinners, and were we to go again, we'd arrange for more meals by Dawn because her cooking was wonderful and there were only 3 other places to eat within walking distance. Most of the mornings, Jane did a demonstration, then we sketched and painted until siesta time, taking time out for lunch. Many of us continued to paint after the siesta break. In the late afternoon, we swam, then broke open the beer and wine while we watched the fabulous sunsets. Some of my photos are in Picasa, http://picasaweb.google.com/janefranphoto/JamaicaWithFranAndJane. One day we hired a van and went to the market in Black River. One day Dawn invited us to her house to see her garden and to drink coconut water, the liquid in coconuts before they're ripe. We were all very reluctant to come home!

I'll include in this entry the sketches I did the first day we were there. When on location, I particularly like making ink sketches and then putting in watercolor washes. I draw with a fine, brown, Sharpie pen which has permanent ink so the water doesn't smear it, and which lasts longer than the more expensive drawing pens. Most of those are done in my sketchbook and are about 5" x 7". This trip I also did a number of more careful pencil studies for painting from later.

Snow Shadows

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I chose to paint from this photo because I liked the composition, the way the dark water leads the eye back to the trees. To plan the painting, I first opened the photo in Photoshop and "posterized" it with 4 levels of value. There wasn't enough light at the back of the creek, so I added some more. Then I did a 3-value, rough sketch in my sketchbook. Finally, I started the actual painting by doing a 3-color wash all over, keeping the blue at the sky and the yellow where I knew the white would be. Then I drew and painted the scene after the wash dried. By then I knew the scene very well so it was easy to paint.

Composition Class - 2

More notes, not necessarily in a coherent order.

• the center of interest is often the place with the most contrast

• When you have a painting with strong direction, it's important to have something there when the eye arrives. For an example of a painting that has nothing, or not much, there when you arrive, look at Hopper's "Chair Car." 

• when you have a painting with a strong directional movement, remember to put in a "stop" so the eye doesn't go off the paper. 

• a basic shape, repeated throughout the painting, sets up a rhythm

• It's easier to resolve the composition of a painting if you plan it before you start, using small value sketches and possibly small color sketches. That way you can evaluate variations without investing a lot of time, paint and paper.

• what goes into a painting, among other things:

the shapes

the negative areas

the paint itself: the application, stroke direction, random color spots

• if you have one odd shape/color, repeat it somehow.

• within a particular value in a painting you have lots of leeway: texture, color, objects, etc

• powerful paintings often use lots of dark

• horizontal lines are generally calm, vertical are stable and sturdy, and diagonal are active

• to make an element stand out (be the center of interest)

value contrast

color intensity (bright rather than dull)

size

hard edges

texture

complementary colors around it

Composition Class - 1

The title of the class is "Composing the Page." I seem to be taking sort of random notes which I'll transcribe here without trying to put them in much of an order. There's a lot of discussion which is not in my notes, so some of these statements may sound more arbitrary than they did in class.

• Composition helps the artist know what to say with a painting or reinforces what the artist is trying to say.

• When the elements of a painting don't touch the edge anywhere, they're not really connected with the world. They make a doughnut (or the hole therein).

• Dominance is one aspect of the painting standing out with the other aspects supporting.

• elements in a painting need to help move the eye around

• when a composition works, the negative space works as hard as the positive elements.

• eccentricities are elements in a painting which are not repeated (but repetition needs to have variation, too)

• when looking at a work, among other things, ask if it feels complete. Do I say "ehh" or "mmm"?

In this first class we were given sheets of printer paper plus some black paper and some brown, kraft paper and asked to arrange pieces of them in a pleasing way. For homework, we were to take one of the many resulting compositions, our own or anothers', and reproduce them varying the color schemes. My favorite of these compositions (not done by me!) is here, along with one of the possible 6 variations. This was done, roughly, my me on the computer from a tiny, rough sketch in my notes, so it's not really like the original but it will give an idea.

" . . . And This is My Oldest Grandchild."

I haven't done a watercolor in ages and I don't aspire to be a portrait painter and I would love to have suggestions for improvement. The photo I was working from was taken with a flash which doesn't make for good shadows, so I tried to change the lighting a bit which added to the challenge of painting this. I used a grid to make the drawing.

Something Different

It's still pastel, but certainly different from woods. A friend gave me "Watercolor by Design" by Marianne Brown for Christmas and last night I started reading it. It describes a dozen different composition schemes, using many non-objective paintings for examples. This morning when I woke up I had the beginnings of this painting in my mind. Now, which way is up??

Woods . . . again

I guess I'd better call these my "woods series" since that seems to be what I'm drawn to painting these days. Maybe because I'm frequently in the woods walking the dogs. I love it when they can run free. This is a pastel. There's a person (not me, I'm behind the camera) and a dog. It was sort of an experiment in putting a small amount of light values in a mostly dark painting. I'm always open for comments and critiques.

Frosty Morning

Pastel. I painted the whole sheet of white Wallis sanded paper a bright, red-orange (then made sure it was all dry) before I began using pastels on this. I chose the underpainting color to be more or less the complementary color of the final painting. If you look closely, you can see where the orange peeks through, giving the whole painting a liveliness. I love the intense blue and gold through the middle of this with the cooler, frosty green in the foreground. The long shadows give the sense of early morning, too.

Sunflower

I started another pastel of woods the other day and it wasn't going well at all, so I ran the paper under the faucet and washed out all I had done. This is Wallis sanded paper and it's pretty sturdy. When it had dried, I grabbed a photo of a sunflower I had hanging around and painted that instead. I forgot that the size paper I was using needs some cropping to make it a standard size, so if I frame this it will be expensive, but I like all the colors.

More autumn trees

Am I in a rut, or what? But I'm much happier with this painting than with the last. This time I concentrated on putting down the shapes until I had the paper all covered. Then I smeared the whole thing with my fingers and sprayed on some workable fixative. I tried to keep the texture and detail to the foreground leaves, although I did refine some of the edges of the previous shapes. The tree trunks and the branches went in practically last. The result seems to have more depth and is less busy.

Yellow Trees

Pastels again. I like the way the pastels feel on the paper, especially the softer ones (they're all the "soft" or chalky pastels). And I like the way it's so easy to add light over dark, although I still tend to work from light to dark, a watercolor habit, rather than dark to light as one would with oils. That's probably why I get all the white speckles in the painting which you see better if you click on this painting to the right to see the larger version. I may do this again with some sort of underpainting. This painting is done from a couple of photos I took while walking the dogs.

Sunflower

One of Fran's clients brought her a bouquet of flowers, including a sunflower. I painted it in pastel today, on a scrap of paper 5" x 9.5". Odd size, which will be annoying to frame, but it works for this single blossom. I love the feel of the pastel on the paper but I find it difficult knowing exactly where the line will be, unlike a pointed, round watercolor brush. It's much easier to do bigger work than this for that reason. I learned today that layering a dark color under another dark color gives an even darker and richer color than either of the originals. Fun.

Woods Light

Back to watercolor! I painted this from a photo I took the other day while a friend and I were walking in the woods . . . with the dogs along, too, of course. She had her camera with her and I grabbed it to take this picture. The leaves are gradually changing here, after a record-breaking, hot October and the woods are gorgeous. I think they're gorgeous any time of the year, actually.

The painting and the photo of it are brighter than this Blogspot-generated size. This looks better if you click on it and get the bigger version.

Zinnias and Mums

A fellow painter brought these flowers in the beautiful, glass pitcher to our studio group this morning. So this is painted, with pastels, from "life,"