Work in Progress: Hide and Seek II (Continued...)

More development on this bigger rose painting today... I worked on several adjacent petals in a group, adding more saturated warm and cool reds to the mid-tone region of petals, and lifting out some light areas when the paints are still wet. After this has dried, I flowed in darker mixtures of Alizarin Crimson, French Ultramarine and Winsor Violet wet-in-wet in the shadow areas of each petal to separate the petal shapes from one another.

Hide and Seek II, 

Watercolor on Jack Richeson Zoltan Szabo140# Cold Press Paper, 10"h x 14"w, WIP 3

At the end of the day, most petals in the peripheral are at the right color saturation and value as they need to be in the final painting. For the shadow areas with warm reflected light, I used a mixture of Alizarin and Quinacridone Burnt Orange, with a small amount of Winsor Violet to achieve a warmer brownish red. I also started to develop the petal areas near the center of the flower, using mixtures of Scarlet Lake, Permanent Rose and New Gamboge for the glowing reddish orange hue in this region. I lifted the light stamen in the flower center before this orange red color has dried.

Hide and Seek II, 

Watercolor on Jack Richeson Zoltan Szabo140# Cold Press Paper, 10"h x 14"w, WIP 4

Work in Progress: Hide and Seek II, & Beauty Queen

I did a bit of work on both rose paintings today, adding a yellow wash on "Hide and Seek II", and another varied color wash to emphasize the different color tendencies in the foliage patterns of "Beauty Queen".

Hide and Seek II, 

Watercolor on Jack Richeson Zoltan Szabo140# Cold Press Paper, 10"h x 14"w, WIP 2

Beauty Queen, Watercolor on Arches 140# Cold Press Paper, 7"h x 5"w, WIP 2

... What Is Arena Doing These Days?...

Whew!... Time flies, and before I realize there has been weeks without a new posting on this blog!!! So, what is Arena doing these days? Has she been slacking off, enjoying the rising temperature, the rare cloudless sky, the cheeriness-filled April air of San Francisco?... Well... Just the opposite! The weather here may have been more that welcoming and calling for outdoor adventures on all restless souls, but Arena has been locked in a little room with all windows covered with black cloth... And drawing =___=b......

Not that I have any complaints about it -- I have jumped on the opportunity of a lifetime (at least in my point of view) and started to attend an Atelier program of classical realism. The full-time program would ideally last 3-4 years, and each student would start from copy master drawings, then progress to drawing plaster casts of classical sculptures and live models, painting casts in limited palette, and finally to full-palette painting of still life and figures. It's rigorous -- 8 hours a day minimum, with the mornings dedicated to the progressing of projects suited to each student's level, and afternoons (sometimes also evenings) devoted to drawing from a nude model holding a long post for 6-week duration. Time slows down and each drawing is supposedly executed with extraordinary precision, and seemingly progress with infinitely slow speed. (I shall post later of my accomplishments of the first four weeks and illustrate my point.) And the whole point is to train the eye of the student to reach the point of precision satisfying enough to capture all the subtle beauty of a living figure. Although my ultimate goal is not to become mainly a figure but landscape painter, I do think this kind of solid foundation, and the ability of seeing the nuance of nature, as well as the ability to put down what you see in a simple but accurate statement, is of utter importance and would benefit me in the long run. The teacher I am training under, Andrew Ameral, studied and later taught in the Florence Academy  of Art for years, which inherited the 19th century French Academy lineage. So far, I am absolutely in love with the training, and I'm counting my blessings everyday for being given this opportunity...

But, this does mean I can only paint in the evenings of weekdays and on weekends when I am not in school, and that has significantly cut into my watercolor time -- thus the long absence from the blog since I have nothing to post! I am not happy with this, and I'm trying my best to squeeze more time into my watercolor projects. Learning time-management is the key, and comparing to Carrie and Crystal, both of whom produce amazing amount of beautiful work with multiple young kids, I shall say I have no excuses... Following their examples, I have decided to have more realistic goals regarding my blog posting -- making sure to post on Friday, Saturday and Sundays during which I can paint full-time, and at lest once Monday through Thursday. I would still like to finish at least one, and hopefully two small pieces a week, although in the midst of painting larger pieces for juried exhibitions, I may not be able to do this every week. We'll see...

So, without further a due, I will share a couple of projects I have started this week:

This is a painting of a very light pink rose with contrasting green foliage patterns behind it. My goal is to not go to detailed and literal on the foliage patterns, but paint them as slightly out-of-focus value patterns wet-in-wet, while maintain surface interest by varying the colors across  the spectrum -- in other words, not just greens for the leaves, but adding the influence of yellow, blue, purple and even pinks! I have only put down two layers of very thin washes on this one, using the method I've learned in the fabulous Jeannie Vodden's class. I'm trying hard to keep it light and airy, not to go too dark too soon...

Beauty Queen, Watercolor on Arches 140# Cold Press Paper, 7"h x 5"w, WIP 1

Same process for this tiny painting morning glory which I'd like to submit to a small work show, and has the potential of becoming a commission. The challenge here is to create the effect of back-lighting -- light filtering through transparent petals, light rings around more solid stem and leaf forms... Again, I started with a multi-colored wash of three-primary mixtures, this time Permanent Rose, Aureolin Yellow and Antwerp Blue.

Rise and Shine, Watercolor on Arches 140# Cold Press Paper, 7"h x 5"w, WIP 1

This is a larger piece (quarter sheet is large for me :-P) of "Hide and Seek" which I am trying to complete for the San Diego Watercolor Society International Juried Exhibition. I've put down a couple of wet-in-wet washes here, mostly warm and cool reds, but also New Gamboge, Yellow Ocher and French Ultramarine to map out the blurry, out-of-focus leaf forms. At this stage I'm mainly focusing on value structures, leaving the center lid portion of the rose mainly white, and putting down soft, saturated color passages for the petals in shadow. I also paid attention to the petals receiving reflected lights and lights filtering through other petals, which are warmer than the ones in pure shadow. This is indicated by varying the color temperature of reds when putting down the initial washes.

Hide and Seek II, 

Watercolor on Jack Richeson Zoltan Szabo140# Cold Press Paper, 10"h x 14"w, WIP 1

What I found out is that a larger painting is not necessary slower in its progress than a small study -- especially when I have learned my lessons from the small study! That said, I don't like doing the same thing twice so I'm trying a different paper -- the Jack Richeson Zoltan Szabo #140 Cold Press for this one. Comparing to the Fabriano Artistico #140 Cold Press I used for the small study, the Richeson paper seems to glaze well, but much harder to lift. So I may have to vary the actual painting sequence of different passages, painting light to dark in glazes instead of darker to light with lots of lifting! We'll see how that goes... ;-)

I'm also trying to wrap up some old projects. The couple of rose paintings from February are close to be finished. For this one, "Peppermint Rose", I am trying to put in all the cast shadow and crevice dark now to create a sense of 3-dimensionality, while in the mean time fighting hard not to lose the brilliance of red colors in these shadow areas. Achieve true darks on Fabriano paper is always a struggle since it's so hard to glaze, but I'm trying...

Peppermint Rose, 

Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico 140# Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 8"w, WIP 4

Finally, "High Summer Dreams" has come back from the Jack Richeson 2012 Small Works show, and I have decided to offer it for sale with starting bid of $150! It will be shipped with a 16"h x 20"w mat and foam core backing board, ready to be stick into a frame! This painting has been juried into the 2010 North West Watercolor Society's International Show and won the president award, as well as into the 2011 Philadelphia Watercolor Society Works on Paper National Juried Show, and Richeson Small Works 2012 National Juried Show. It's also one of my favorite pieces. I hope it would find a loving home through Daily Paintworks...

High Summer Dream, Watercolor on Arches 140# Cold Press Paper, 10"h x 14"w, 2012 #1

Bid at My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $150)

Work in Progress: Last Light

After painting the the estuary and fog scenes with a muted cool palette, I was itching to splash some warm, saturated colors on paper, and a sunset is always enticing to paint... Think about all the bright reds, oranges and golden hues! The inspiration of this painting comes from a business trip several years ago when I was working as an application scientist (glorified term for after-sale customer support engineer...) in upstate Maine. I remember it was the last evening I stayed there, on the way to the hotel, after a three-day snow storm, the sun finally broke through thick clouds, and back-lighting all the pine and fir woods along the road... Some dead reeds across the snow field were glowing in the setting sun as if they were lid by fire. It was such a breath-taking moment... I pulled over the country road and snapped as many photos as I could while the sun is sinking fast toward the horizon.

Last Light, Watercolor on Arches 140# Cold Press Paper , 5"h x 6"w, WIP 1

Since this is a very small painting (I may do a larger version of it after trying out the composition on this scale), I tried to keep the background woods very simple, just using upright strokes of dark and light colors to hint the trees gradually receding into distance. I have used strong dark cool colors -- blues, greens and purples mingled together for the foreground shadows, and charged thick pigments of reddish-orange for the reed heads reflecting the setting sun. I am not sure about how I should deal with the middle-ground snow field. I'd like to keep it light to indicate sun-lid snow, but I'd also want to integrate it into the dark shapes of foreground and background. Some carefully pondering...

Work in Progress: Morning Fog, Tamalpais

More landscape paintings... I have to admit that they are extremely addictive once you get into the "zone"... This one is about the fog over Mount Tamalpais again. I am experimenting with painting with thicker and thicker pigments from background forward on saturated wet paper -- as the paper dries gradually during the painting process, the pigment would diffuse less and less and therefore give more definite forms to objects in the foreground. I've intentionally left some white passages unpainted to hint the veil of the fog around the hills, and trying to keep the far-away mountains cooler in color to be consistent with aerial perspective. It is challenging to paint the conifer in consistent but non-repetitive shapes to maintain interest in the foreground area, and I was trying hard to just use one or two strokes of a flat bristle brush on its edge to hint a tree... The foggy mornings in the redwood forest of California are truly beautiful and other-worldly. I just wish I have enough skills to do them justice on paper...

Morning Fog, Tamalpais,  

Watercolor on Arches 140# Cold Press Paper , 6"h x 9"w, WIP 1

Ebbing Tide, Spring Estuary

I did a long hike on the wetlands near Palo Alto today, and came back with tons of bad reference photos of the pattern of sand bars, reeds, sage bushes and water reflections -- it's very hard to capture the scenes outdoors on the clear day using a point-and-shoot camera, since the value contrast is so huge, the dynamic range of the camera is really far from adequate. Even with two exposure settings for every scene -- a low exposure for objects in bright sunlight and an over-exposed setting for everything in shadow, the reference photos just don't contain enough color information to do these beautiful scenes justice. I tried to do a small study from them nonetheless, and since the scene is really complicated with details of vegetation and reflections, I intentionally blurred the reference photo, and made a gray-scaled version of it to paint from. I also tried a limited palette of Viridian Green, Antwerp Blue and Burnt Sienna in the attempt to capture the tranquil mood of the muted colors I remembered seeing early in the morning there.

Ebbing Tide, Spring Estuary,  

Watercolor on Winsor Newton #140 Cold Press Paper , 5"h x 6"w, 2012 #27

Buy It Now from My DPW Gallery ($20)

My main interest here is to capture the abstract patterns formed by the sand when the tide water is gradually coming in. To make this work, I intentionally down-played the complicated background foliage, using only decorative shapes of light and dark to represent different cluster of bushes, with some branch patterns painted both positively and negatively to add to the impression of vegetation. The reflection in water is also greatly down-played and only hinted with wet-in-wet dropped-in passages of darker colors , so that the eye of the viewer would be lead smoothly into the foreground. I'm quite happy with the thought process, and wanted to try it for a larger piece some day, to further play with the abstract patterns. It was a fun, searching process overall, with lots and lots of stopping time to think what to do next... A great learning experience!

More Big Sky Paintings...

More sky-centered paintings on the go... I've become braver and switched to quarter-sheet paper now, and using my 2" and 1" flats for the majority of this stage. What I found out is that sable flats have so much more characteristics while doing the initial wet-in-wet washes -- they release water with a more even rate, and deposit pigments slowly, giving the painter more control when the paper is soaking wet. However, the synthetic flats tend to leave interesting color "streaks" when carrying a denser mixture of pigments, which can create some nice effects when painting water or texturize foreground areas. 

South Wind, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper , 11"h x 15"w, WIP 1

I used mostly sable flats for the rainy clouds in the sky, but switched to synthetic flats and rounds for the foreground areas. I also tilted the paper to make color run down in diagonal directions to hint storm coming...

Stormy Weather, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper , 11"h x 15"w, WIP 1

Winter Mirage (Version 2, Finished) and Mad Dash for Big Sky Paintings!

After assessing the color and value balance of Winter Mirage (the second version), I decided that I like it slightly better than the first version -- the paper was less wet when I painted the background foliage, hence the shapes were more define and less diffused, making better contrasts with the expanse of soft field of snow. I added details here and there to finish it -- tracks on the snow filed, fence posts, ledges and windows on the snow-covered house, branches on the pine tree and bushes... And here it is:

Winter Mirage (Version 2),  

Watercolor on Arches #140 Rough Paper , 5"h x 7"w, 2012 #26

Sold!

I've also started a couple of "big sky" paintings to further exercise painting on saturated wet paper, this time slightly bigger. I floated Cobalt Blue in a graded wash from top down, then a mixture of Aureolin Yellow and Permanent Rose in a second graded wash from bottom up. When it's still very wet, I added thicker pigments of the mixture of all the three colors plus some Prussian Blue and Burnt Sienna at the snow fields in foreground. As the paper gradually dries, I switched to smaller brushes and added the cloud shapes using denser and denser pigment, sometimes going back and put even stronger pigments on cloud shapes that has diffused a bit too much. I added the dark hill shapes in the background last, when the paper is almost dry. It's both exciting and terrifying to try to get most of the picture down on the paper in one drying cycle, and I can't say I've done a great job here, but it's such a great exercise to learn about "control" the watercolor medium...

Northern Exposure, 

Watercolor on Winsor Newton #140 Cold Press Paper , 8"h x 10"w, WIP 1

Two Small Landscapes: Season Change (Finished), & Tamalpais Meadow (WIP)

I've felt a bit experimental lately and ventured out to paint more wet-in-wet landscapes, some successful, others disastrous. To manage the drying time and achieve the soft, wet, flowing look that I love about watercolor landscapes, I've shrunk my paper size significantly for some trial-runs before to attack the larger sheets -- quarter sheet for me is large at my current skill level of managing wild wet washes, I'm not greedy in my expectations :-P. And I do fall in love with some of these small jewels from time to time -- sometimes a trial run has the kind of freedom and freshness that a well-planned, well-executed larger piece lacks. There is a delicate balance between spontaneity and careful planning that I am still struggling to grasp...

This is a card-sized "experiment" I did trying to figure out how to create those fluffy white clouds   I've so often seen when travelling in the high country of Colorado and Utah. I did it in two wet cycles in this piece -- first wetting the who image with clear water, and drop in Ultramarine and Cobalt Blues to indicate the sky behind the white clouds; while this is totally dry, I rewetted the white area and dropped in a very light mixture of grey made by Cobalt Blue and Burnt Sienna. The most important and difficult thing here is to try to not let this grey flow to the edge of the white space , so that you still have some white left between the blue of the sky and the grey of the cloud that's facing away from the sun. I played with calligraphic strokes while creating the spruce tress, paying attention to increase the value and saturation of color gradually from the background trees to the ones which are in the foreground. I liked the slight melancholy and sober mood of the resulted piece, and may do a slight larger piece of a different format of it in the future.

Season Change (High Country Snapshot I),  

Watercolor on Arches 140# Cold Press Paper , 5"h x 3"w, 2012 #25

Bid at My DPW Auction

This is another piece I've started in the same fashion, trying to find out how to find fog-covered coastal hills. It's a view I so often see and marvel at while hiking in the Mount Tamalpais State Park in winter and spring mornings -- while the entire view ahead is veiled by beautiful silver fog, there would sometimes be a patch of meadow cleared of fog because it is not covered by oak and redwood trees (the respiratory action of these trees actually create huge amount of vapor in the air, and therefore make the fog denser). I'm struggling to recreate the quiet, moist, fresh air in my memory on paper in this one, and so far I've only done one wet cycle on the paper, painting from background forward as the paper gradually dries, leaving more and more obvious brush marks on the paper, ending with the dry-brush mark of muted brown underneath the tree shape near the center of the picture. At this stage I am more concerned with color temperature relationship and the abstract aesthetics of  brush marks -- the variation of shape, size, edge quality among these marks. Glazing over dry paper and tidy up these marks can be done without much difficulty later, as they are all quite soft and diffused. I love this stage of watercolor painting -- it's both exciting and nerve-wrecking, demanding 120% of the painter's attention. I'm feeling like walking on a tight rope while doing these wet-in-wet piece, which is a good change of pace from the more carefully planned floral paintings. Time to go back to the studio. Ciao!...

Spring Meadow, Tamalpais,  

Watercolor on Winsor Newton 140# Cold Press Paper , 6"h x 10"w, WIP 1

  

Work in Progress: Petal Light II

I've started a new painting of Bird of Paradise, experimenting with orange-blue complementary color scheme. So far, the underpainting stage is going smoothly, and I really like the wonderful granulations formed by French Ultramarine mingled with Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber.

Petal Light II,  Watercolor on Arches 140# Cold Press Paper , 8"h x 10"w, WIP 1