Keeping in Touch

Painting in our Garden

I'M SENDING MY VERY BEST WISHES TO YOU FOR ALL GOOD THINGS TO COME YOUR WAY DURING THESE LOVELY MAINE SPRING DAYS

I just got an email from a motivational group that I don't seem to be able to unsubscribe to - but they do have a nice daily quotation that is often enjoyable.  

Today it was for a program that would "change my life if I signed up for a set of CDs", and the question was "what are you lacking, what do you want more of, what is missing in your life"?

Once I thought about it, I was really surprised to realize that actually, the answer to all of those questions is NOTHING. Of course we could all use more money, more time, etc. etc. but really and truly, I have everything I need.    

And I want to tell you that you are a very big part of this for me. I never imagined myself as a teacher of any sort.  And it's become one of the most enjoyable and rewarding experiences of my life. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.. 

I'm flying away to Ireland in a couple of hours, and I will be thinking of you every step of the way, and wishing that you were there too.

Irish Recycling

There's a group of eleven artists coming from Maine, Sweden, Toronto, California, Michigan, Guam - all gathering at Anam Cara, a sweet retreat center overlooking Coulagh Bay. on the Beara Peninsula.

While I'm away, I hope that you will be finding time to enjoy your painting time. Most of all, I wish you a subject that really excites you; one that makes you lie in bed at night thinking of the colors you'll use, how you'll plan the composition and just how you'll go about it. Enjoy the anticipation! Love  the process, and allow yourself to take as much time as you need. That's what it's all about.

I'll be in touch.

Evelyn

Cupcakes. Pink or Gray?

HOW COLOR HELPS TELL YOUR STORY (or - betrays you!)  

Here's my set-up for a still life studio class. At our local grocery store I ordered cupcakes loaded with icing, sprinkles and a cherry on the top.  Then I arranged them on a cake stand and put birthday wrapping paper around the whole thing.

I thought it was a very happy image and the artists in the class created such great paintings that I was really pleased.

I think you can imagine what colors dominated that subject matter!

Fragments of a Woman's Life SO WHAT HAPPENED?  I always emphasize to my students that having a "story" or a "concept" for a painting is very important. Sometimes I have a title before I even begin a painting and I love it when that happens! Then I can see clearly what colors will help to set the mood. Here's an example: in a small village on the east coast of Newfoundland I walked by an abandoned house that had all of the windows boarded up except one. And in that window was a collection of fancy hats on a hat rack. I was so surprised; what woman had lived in this house and left all of her hats behind? As I looked through the window, the sky and trees behind me were reflected in the glass. I immediately had a "story". This painting was done completely in opaque pigments. Their particular characteristics made it possible for me to create the textures of crushed velvet cloche, a fuzzy knitted bag and felt hat. When you see the painting in real life, you can almost feel the fabrics. Do you see how the soft, muted colors contributed to the overall mood of the painting? I love this painting because of the story that I have in my mind about the woman and her life, even though it is a melancholy image. Imagine that painting done in transparent, glowing pigments of bright, saturated color. It would be an entirely different story. And that brings me back to cupcakes.   During our conversation at the end of the class, I was talking about how the colors we choose can help to support our "story."                                                                                               Happy Birthday by Andrea Galuza           Here's an example of one the paintings done that evening. I am sure you agree that the chosen colors are a huge help in expressing the lively subject, and evoking a feeling of a celebration. GRAY?  As we looked at each painting, I realized that one of them had been painted with a neutral gray background. I do not have a photo of the actual painting, so I've used Photoshop to put gray all around the cupcakes on the cake stand so you can see what the effect was. It was striking. I could almost feel my heart sink when I looked at that gray color all around the brightly colored cupcakes. Later, with the artist's permission, I asked the class what message this painting sent to them. Someone said: "I gave a party, and nobody came". What do you think? Compare the two images and ask yourself how you can use color in your next painting to really make your story come alive. Leave me a comment or a question. I'd love to hear from you. Happy Painting! Evelyn

Great News! The World of Watercolour Competition

I am so excited to learn that two of my paintings have moved to the third level of judging in the World Watercolor Competition sponsored by "The Art of Watercolour", the watercolor magazine published in France. I wanted to share this with you, and so I thought that it may be interesting to you to see the steps in the creation of these paintings.  

My First Reference Photograph   I decided to put the set-up on a mirror. These are the two photos that I used for my composition.     I began the drawing with the central tulip. I knew that if I got the size of it correctly, I would be able to relate all of the others to it. I decided to paint the colorful facets of the vase and the fabrics around the vase and tulips first. This would frame the tulips and I thought it would be helpful in judging where to go next in the painting. Green was introduced into the negative spaces around the subject. I knew that using the complement of the rose and reds of the tulips would set up a "color interaction" between the reds and the green.

I continued with the patterns on the fabric. Perhaps you can see the value changes in the folds of the fabric. I painted the shadows in the folds using a wet in wet technique, and after that was dry, the stripes and flowers, and also the geometric patterns were added; I was also careful to change the colors and values of the strips as they moved from the light into the shadowed areas.

 

I'll continue this demonstration tomorrow. Please leave me a comment if you have thoughts about it.

Learning to Love Greens!

I remember when I first started painting, I told someone that I really did not like painting trees and rocks. The response was "you live in Maine! You are in big trouble!"

Almost every green pigment that you purchase or any green mixture that you make yourself will require a tiny bit of red or rose in order to make it look natural. Just try it.

Greens found in the landscape are often more "neutral" than they are painted.

Here's a suggestion: set aside an hour three times a week. Mix each of your blues with one yellow (i.e. use cobalt, ultramarine, cerulean, phtyalo and aureolin yellow). Make a 3" square. Label each one. Then, change the yellow (i.e. cadmium yellow) and then continue through each of your yellows, and using the same blues, mix new greens. Be sure to lable each one.

Next, try each of these mixtures with a touch of one of your reds and see what results. 

You can also take each of your tube greens and modifiy each with a bit of your reds or roses in the same way. Adding a little rose madder will give you a very different result than using cadmium red or alizarin crimson.

If you label each mixture, you will have quite a library of greens to use in your next painting.

This sounds like a lot of work, but I can promise you that it really doesn't take that long!

 

This plein air painting was done over a period of four mornings as the light and shadows changed by 9:30 am.   

Notice the variety of warm and cool greens in this painting

Let's Begin with the Greens that are Far Away

We know that cooler colors will stay back while warm colors come forward.

(there are exceptions to everything, but as a general rule, this works).

So in order to set the stage, I mixed some cool greens using aureolin yellow and cerulean blue, as well as viridian plus a bit of aureolin and a wee touch of permanent rose and cobalt blue. By varying the amount of yellow and red you can get several varieties of green. Just remember to keep them "cool" so don't add too much yellow.

The sky began with cobalt blue graded to cooler cerulean and then to naples yellow behind the trees.

Look at the pale cool greens that were painted into a sky wash that was still damp.  

I think you can see the progression of cool to warmer greens as the trees came from far away to nearer to my line of vision.

The sun-lit grass area by the gate was very bright and was painted as a warm yellow-green. Varying amounts of green and blue were added as I painted into the shadowed areas.

The dark cyprus trees also included some warm and cool variations. Always observe the angle of light; it will help create the dimensional form of the tree.

We have barely scratched the surface of all the ideas and ways to make greens a beautiful part of our paintings. But progress begins with small steps and I know that just having a "vocabulary" of three warm and three cool greens as well as some complimentary shadow colors will make a world of difference in your paintings.

Sea, Sun and Sand - A Limited Palette

Does the term "limited palette" leave you confused and wondering what it REALLY means? It seems obvious, doesn't it.......a painting with just a few colors. Until you start to plan the colors for your painting and then you end up holding your head and wishing for the "painting fairy" to arrive with some answers!

The painting that I finished today was inspired by the unusual colors that turned up in my photograph. There were actually just two colors: a very unusual "pea green" and violet.

I have listed the colors that I chose that would fit into a limited palette with those two pigments in the next paragraph.

First, let's look at the "green". It is so unusual that I knew I wouldn't be able to mix it.  I remembered that when I made the 3" color charts of all 279 tubes of Daniel Smith watercolors, that there was a green that might just be right.  I pulled out my color charts. Sure enough! There is one called Duochome Pearl Green that was very close to the color I wanted to use for the light struck areas of the beach. Here's where you find it: http://www.danielsmith.com/Item--i-284-640-040

 

                                                         "Sea, Sun and Sand "

                                                              22 x 30" image

My two major pigments were Daniel Smith Duochrome Green Pearl  and  Dioxazine Violet

 http://www.danielsmith.com/Item--i-261-570-029.
The other pigments that I used were:

Greens:   Viridian Green, Sap Green, Cobalt Teal

In the Violet "Category" - meaning that they are all on the "RED" side of the color wheel, and near each other:  Quinacridone Burnt Orange and Cadmium Red Light.

And one other pigment: Holbein Verditer Blue. You can find it here:
http://www.cheapjoes.com/holbein-artists-watercolor-verditer-blue-15-ml.html

I used this opaque blue with a touch of cadmium red light to mix a neutral mauve for the shadows of the rocks. I wanted to keep the rocks back in the distance.

And so, I actually used 8 tubes of pigment. But the overall color dominance is violet with green as the secondary color.

For this painting I used a full sheet of Arches 300# cold press paper.

First I mixed up large puddles of the green and violet, making sure I had more than I thought I would need.

I wet the entire sand area with a large hake brush. i made sure the entire surface of the paper was really wet and then I brushed vertically and horizontally with the brush to remove the excess water. This resulted in the 300# paper being thoroughly damp all the way through.

I loaded my 3" Golden Fleece brush and painted the shapes of the Green Pearl pigment on the sand first.  Then I put down the violet shapes, letting the edges of my strokes meet the green shapes so that they merged. I wanted the effect to be  changing areas of wet sand, with natural looking edges.

The violet was a little too intense for my liking and so as soon as I put it down, I quickly added a light wash of viridian green - right over the wet violet wash. I did not lose the violet color, but the green neutralized the violet a little so that it was not as "bright" and was more pleasing to my eye.

While the sand was still wet, I reenforced the values of the green and violet by "wet glazing" a few wide strokes of pigment on some part of the original washes. I really needed the sand to be the correct color and value as I wanted to add the dark shapes of seaweed while the paper was still damp and so there would be no going back in again once I had added those shapes.

By painting the seaweed and debris with a brush loaded with thicker pigment (less water) applied to damp paper, the forms "sit into" the paper and look natural. If they are painted onto dry paper, they can have a "pasted on" look which isn't appealing to me.

If your paper dries too quickly and you have missed the moment for the wet on wet application, let it dry completely, and then dampen the paper again and start anew.
I think it's important to add little dark marks of the beach debris in patterns that look spontaneous and "natural" (I've used that word three times, quite deliberately as I feel it's most descriptive of the effect that I want in this painting).

I've also included some violet and orange in the seaweed. The pigments were allowed to mix on the paper so that when you look closely, you can see the different colors sitting beside each other. This gives a lively surface even thought the overall shape reads as a greenish-brown.

 

The figures are quite small, and yet they become the subject of this painting. They also provide "scale", giving the viewer a sense of the distance from the foreground to the far-away rocks.  There is no definition of features, just shapes of color so that the figures would stay in the background.

I'm excited to tell you that I've been invited to teach a watercolor workshop in Spain in September 2015. For information, please visit the website and scroll down to the bottom to the September dates. http://frenchescapade.com/trips-painting-spain.html      If you have a question, please send me a comment. I'll be sure to respond.  'Til next time, happy painting!  Evelyn

 

Final Brush Stroke on "Painting A Beach on A Snowy Maine Day"

Believe it or not, it is snowing again! It was a perfect day to be in the studio (I am saying that a lot lately!)

I must say, completing this painting has been quite an interesting experience. I am not sure if I'm going to use any more of that un-sized paper! 

 When I left you last time, I had painted everything except the figure that I had "masked" so that I could freely pour paint for the sky and sand.

When I took the mask off the figure, there was absolutely no "tooth" 

left on the paper. It was just like a blotter. I painted the area of the figure with Daniel Smith "Watercolor Ground"
 http://www.danielsmith.com/Item--i-284-055-001
and left it to dry for 24 hours. This ground provides a new watercolor paper surface to paint on. 

I poured a wash of cobalt blue at the top of the sky, letting it merge into the first wash of manganese blue.

The sand required several applications of spatters to built up textures. I used all of the same colors that I had used for the sand, as well as some naples yellow and chinese white. 

Artist at the Beach 

36 x 42" image

The figure required several applications of paint. Perhaps I could have applied a heavier coat of "ground". I found that a stroke of teal blue on the shirt folds would literally disappear once it dried. So over the past four days, I have re-painted the entire figure until I was satisfied with the changes of values and temperature.

I did put in three sea gulls; I like the bit of movement that they add to the painting. I kept them very close in value to the sand or sky so that they did not draw attention.

You can see that I have used a limited palette in this painting. I use the blues in the sky, water and clothing to unify the painting. You can't really see in this photograph but I've used the complementary colors to enliven the painting. i.e. 

orange marks on the skin, spatters on the sand, and the clothing of the figure out in the water.

Little spots of Chinese white also add sparkle.

The two little figures provide scale and a sense of distance.

I did not use the literal value of the easel and palette. They have very dark edges and accents, and in this mid-valued painting, those darks would jump out too much. So I've made them a mid tone with just small color marks to define the shapes.

On a value scale of 1 - 10 with white being 1 and black being 10, this painting is a good example of  a painting with a range of values that goes from one to about seven. There are just a few dark accents (on the hair and easel).
The atmosphere of the air at the beach bathes everything in a slightly translucent light without sharp shadows. This is also due to the time of day; it was late morning.

The iridescent pigments are fun to use; this is the first time that I thought I had a subject that was appropriate. I think they work well for the texture of the beach.

The pigments that I used were Iridescent Sandstone, Scarab Red, Goldstone, Ruby, Sapphire and Duochrome Mauve.

You can see the blue that was spattered on the sand. Again, this was done to help unify the image. I like a limited palette, and carrying colors throughout the painting is very effective.

You may know that I almost always include a story with each of my paintings whether in a show or on my website. When I was getting ready for my "first ever" exhibit in 2000, I decided to put a label by each painting with a description of what inspired me to do the painting along with whatever personal information I had about the day, the experience - whatever was important to me about that painting. I remember thinking that either the audience would enjoy my notes, or not. As it turned out, everyone  who purchased a painting asked to have the label; and some who had short notes on their label asked me to write more about that painting and send it to them!

Now, I find that I am often asked to put into words why someone would want to buy my paintings, or what makes my work any different from someone else. Needless to say, this is a hard question for me to answer. So I thought I would ask the experts!

I am writing to ask if you would send an email to me with a comment about what you enjoy about my paintings. Anything at all. Your thoughts would be a big help.

If you have one of my paintings in your home, I'd love to have a photo of you with the painting that I could put on the "Comments from Collectors" page of my website. It's so nice to see a painting in its surroundings, with all the color and personality of your home.