Water's Edge, Watercolor on Aches #140 Cold Press Paper, 5"h x 7"w, 2014 #19
Buy It Now from My DPW Gallery ($95)
Leslie Saeta's "30 Paintings in 30 Days" Challenge for this September is officially closing, and I sort of fell off the wagon again in the past few days due to preparation for the start of my atelier's new semester. I will be starting to paint in oil this coming semester! I am so excited and terrified at the same time... Luckily, I have you guys -- my wonderful artist friends who are veteran oil painters! Well, be prepared... I will be bugging you guys with tons of questions (many of which very silly I'm sure... :-P)
I experimented with this water lily painting on how to most effectively paint shapes that has only very subtle color variations and next to each other -- I tried to paint some petals one at a time, carefully model the roundness of them by adding deeper and deeper reds when I was painting each petal; some other petals are painted as one shape with slight warm/cool variations of reds, then crevice darks are added between petals after the underlying colors are dry. I tried both and wanted to find out how to avoid leaving a very harsh, dark edge at the border between two petals, which is the result of wetting an area then adding dark colors wet-in-wet. I find when I paint one petal at a time, it is easier to clean the edge of each petal buy running a damp stiff nylon brush along where the dark pigment accumulates, then blog the area slightly with tissue. When painting multiple petals at once, the petals painted at the same time have better connections and looks more natural, yet the edge between sections painted at one time and another always looks quite harsh. I am still struggling to find a good method and make the connection of areas painted sequentially more natural... If you have some good tips, please share with me, my friends!
Enough rambling for now! I should really get back to my watercolor table... In the mean time, if you have an image of a beautiful landscape, or a flower you like, or anything you might want to see painted, please email them to me at arena.shawn@gmail.com. I will paint them and post them here. From every 10 paintings I make from them, there would be a random drawing, and the lucky winner get to take a original back home for free! Interested? Then send me your photo!
I experimented with this water lily painting on how to most effectively paint shapes that has only very subtle color variations and next to each other -- I tried to paint some petals one at a time, carefully model the roundness of them by adding deeper and deeper reds when I was painting each petal; some other petals are painted as one shape with slight warm/cool variations of reds, then crevice darks are added between petals after the underlying colors are dry. I tried both and wanted to find out how to avoid leaving a very harsh, dark edge at the border between two petals, which is the result of wetting an area then adding dark colors wet-in-wet. I find when I paint one petal at a time, it is easier to clean the edge of each petal buy running a damp stiff nylon brush along where the dark pigment accumulates, then blog the area slightly with tissue. When painting multiple petals at once, the petals painted at the same time have better connections and looks more natural, yet the edge between sections painted at one time and another always looks quite harsh. I am still struggling to find a good method and make the connection of areas painted sequentially more natural... If you have some good tips, please share with me, my friends!
Enough rambling for now! I should really get back to my watercolor table... In the mean time, if you have an image of a beautiful landscape, or a flower you like, or anything you might want to see painted, please email them to me at arena.shawn@gmail.com. I will paint them and post them here. From every 10 paintings I make from them, there would be a random drawing, and the lucky winner get to take a original back home for free! Interested? Then send me your photo!
You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:
Your waterlily painting is stunning! So beautiful! You do great work. Have fun with your oil painting classes
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