Paper and Threads

Linda Kemp's book, Watercolor Painting Outside the Lines, was mentioned on the Everyday Matters message board, and on View From the Oak Blog.  When I have gift cards, I buy this type of art technique book for my library and this year it is one of my goals to actually read and sometimes do exercises or demos from some of these books.  This was my book for August.

In order to really understand the technique of painting just the negative space, I had to try the first two exercises in this book.

Exercise 1:  Paint many different size circles in groups and paint only the negative space.  This painting has 5 layers.  I was quite messy, and didn't keep nice smooth edges, but I accomplished my goal.  I did understand the concept after doing this exercise.

I just found Linda doing this exercise on a You Tube Video.

Exercise 2:  Same technique, but with a stem with 2 leaves, and a watercolor underpainting.  Again, I was quite messy with the outlines, but now understood working wet-in-wet and creating interesting color washes.

Although I did this exercise from her book, I just found a demo of it on her website.

Extending the Lesson Using My Original Image:  Friends brought a lovely bouquet of flowers Saturday evening and I decided to use the flower and leaf shape from one of the flowers to create my own negative painting.

Then I created Two Magnetic Bookmarks using the same flower and leaf shapes.  The technique for making these was posted previously.  But now I use individual magnets sold at Staples as adhesive business card magnets - and I cut them in half vertically. 

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In Kate's "Artist's Journal class" we are exploring various media that we own or have never used and this week I sketched my whole repetoire of pens and the 3 watercolor triads that I use for mixing colors.  After documenting what I had, I decided to make a trip to NY Central Art Supply today to learn about nibs for dip pens and to bring some home to try.

Here are all of the sample pages done as over the last 3 days:

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One of the watercolor projects from Chapter 1 in Anne Elsworth's book (Watercolor Skills Workbook - 10 easy lessons) is mixing watercolors to match master paintings.  I chose this Picasso piece (which was done in pastels) and used my regular palette of primary watercolors to mix each of the colors that I could see in the print.  This is a fabulous way to train your eye and I hope to do more of these projects as I work through her book.

I am now done with the projects that I want to do from Chapters 1 and 2 - and ready to move on.  I need to plan my way through these exercises and projects slowly if I want to enjoy them.  I think I was previously unable to appreciate the 10 lessons because I was trying to rush through the book.

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I didn't have many orange items to paint - and will soon be leaving for London - so I'm uploading a few of the completed sketches/paintings before the month is over.  My warm and cool reds and yellows produced oranges that were very similar.  The colors in my Daler-Rowney travel set, which were used for the lily, produced much more varied and interesting colors.  This ends 6 months of using my current palette - one cool and one warm red, yellow, and blue - which I used for an entire month of painting each primary and secondary color.  When I see my 18 month old grandaughter in London, I may be inspired to work with pinks!  Until then, I'm done.  The scans were more difficult than usual today - maybe because the paper was more buckled.

I'm still doing a minimum of one page per day in my sketchbook because I'm determined to improve my drawing and painting skills in 2006.  I still feel most free working in my inexpensive spiral Aquabee Globetrotter sketchbook, so I'm not making much progress moving to the Moleskine or Cachet watercolor journals that are waiting on the shelf.  There are several threads on the forums at Wet Canvas about sketchbooks and I'm comforted to know that many others share my "Fear before action" (see my EDM challenge #70 entry).  I found some of the proposed solutions hilarious as those who have no trouble using "special journals" try to coax those who do.

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I continue to work on purple this month and have several more paintings done.  Click on the image to enlarge the scan.

It is definitely harder to mix secondary colors than to just match primary colors to objects sketched.  I loved sketching and painting the hydrangea that was growing in a windowbox in front of a neighborhood restaurant.  Most of the people arriving for brunch ignored me completely, but one man just said "nice painting" over his shoulder as he passed me and entered the restaurant.  This was great for my confidence of sketching AND painting in public.  Information on the cool and warm blues and reds that I used are in the first purple entry for the month. 

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I think that I was so worried that I wouldn't find anything purple to paint, that I found many things in the first few days of the month.  I therefore decided to post some now and then any remaining paintings throughout the month.  I spent a day mixing my cool and warm reds (alizarin crimson and cadmium red) and blues (French ultramarine and winsor blue) to see the range of possible purples - and found it difficult to match the exact colors without some premixing and testing.  From left to right: (1) miscellaneous toys and household items, (2) myrtle ground cover, (3) eggplants, and (4) a beautiful pansy.  Each image can be enlarged by clicking on it.

Previous months I painted blue (January), red (February), green (March), and yellow (April).  These previous entries can all be seen in the "Color Project" folder on the right side of the webpage.

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This was my month to try to replicate yellows, using cadmium yellow and winsor lemon as my two primary tube paints.  My yellow daffodils and yellow NY Checker cab paintings were already posted as EDM challenges 61 and 60 respectively and can be found in the archives.  I have now completed 3 primary colors and one secondary color.  I liked mixing shades of green and next month I will look for purples!

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Yesterday was a beautiful day in New York City and everyone was outside enjoying the early spring weather.  Central Park was full- many ball games, bike riders, walkers, runners, sun bathers and just plain folks sitting on the benches.  There were several beds of daffodils at the park entrance on E 86th Street and I stopped to sketch a few while I was walking with my granddaughter in her stroller.  I was delighted to see the EDM challenge for this week because I already had my grouping of 4 different daffodils and just needed to finish painting them today.  Within the next 2 weeks there will be many beds of tulips in bloom as spring definitely arrives in the Northeast.  I'm watching and periodically sketching one specific tulip plant that is growing in a flower bed in front of my building.  I can't wait to see what color it is!  This daffodil painting was going to be one of my series of Color projects since I'm exploring YELLOW this month.  Now there will be one less to add at the end of the month.

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I sketched and painted cars twice already in 2006, so for this challenge I decided to use my Grandson Henry's toy New York City checker cab.  Since I will soon start my yellow month, as part of the Color Project that I am doing, it was exciting to get an early start. 

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March was the month for me to explore mixing green watercolor paints.  I continue to use Winsor-Newton tube paints and have a cool and warm color for red (alizarin crimson/cadmium red), blue (French ultramarine/winsor blue), and yellow (winsor lemon/cadmium yellow).  I also use burnt sienna, burnt umber, and neutral tint to expand the color choices.  It was fun to move from blue (January color) and red (February color) to green because mixing a secondary color before changing it further took more mixing and experimentation.  I try to choose items for this project to expand my color range and then to replicate the actual color to the best of my ability.  For new members of the EDM group, exploring one color for an entire month was inspired by Laura (of Laurelines) and I am now only one of several members who have followed her lead. 

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February was my month to experiment with my cadmium red and alizarin crimson W-N tube watercolor paints.  I made several more sketches, but these are representational samples of the type of paintings that were done.  The "lion" journal, which I purchased in Venice, was done using a watercolor mask. I was pleased with the process because it actually looks very similar to the handmade cover - imprecise sketching and painting.

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Last fall Laura F. shared her 2005 color series with the EDM group.  I am such a novice with watercolor paints that I just made the change from student grade pan paints to Winsor-Newton artist grade tube paints.  This seemed like a great time to play with color mixing (my favorite part), so I used blue for January- a frosty cold winter month in the Northeast.  I am also just learning how to build a webpage with help from my home-grown, computer expert son so this is my first attempt to add 3 pop-up images to the page.  Hope this all works.  If not, he is visiting from Boston this weekend, so I'll be able to ask for HELP!

I just tested the entry and learned that the second and third images will open only if the one before is closed properly.  Sometimes the previous pop-up was still open and was actually hidden until I reduced the size of the window to see it lurking behind the page.  This is probably novice information for some of you, but my skills building and editing webpages is really at beginner level.

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