"Queen Anne's Lace Lake" (watercolor and gouache on paper; 12" x 9")

 

"Queen Anne's Lace Lake"

 

The following is the description of what we did in the fifth week of the spring term, 2022 for my "Watercolor from Start to Finish" class (my online Zoom class with the Art League School in Alexandria, VA).

This week we explored the mixed media of watercolor and gouache. Whenever you add a little white gouache to watercolor, the latter turns into an opaque medium of gouache. Please check out James Gurney's YouTube video on "Painting Peonies with Watercolor". In this video, you will learn the nuts and bolts about plein-air painting and how to paint tree peonies in watercolor and gouache. He is a world-famous painter of many mediums; he is one of the most creative artists I know of.

"Queen Anne's Lace Lake" involves the hard/soft edge handling as well. After drawing the design, we wetted the paper thoroughly and evenly and first painted along the horizon (both above and below) with a very pale winsor lemon (if you are heavy-handed with lemon, your sky will turn green!), then painted the rest of the sky and water in cobalt blue.

After drying the paper, we wetted this time the sky shape only and dropped the greens (lemon and cobalt blue) and purples (French ultramarine and permanent alizarin crimson) to suggest the distant trees. If your paper is too wet, you will lose control and the distant trees will be as tall as the middle-ground tree. Drop purples generally along the horizon, but don't be automatic. Refer to my painting. At one go, I created the impression of the soft-edged distant tree line with layers of tall and short trees.

After the paper dried, we wetted this time the water and tall middle-ground tree shape. We dropped purples for the reflections of the distant trees along the horizon and the reflections of the tall tree and middle-ground land shape. We also dropped greens and purples for the tall tree. Make sure the tall tree shape looks like a tree, not a mitten! If you haven't wetted the paper thoroughly, you will have hard edged reflections!

While the paper is still damp, make grass strokes in the foreground with various greens and even some purples for dark shadows in between grasses. 

When the paper dried, we pained the middle ground land shape (now hard edges are happening for definitions).

Time for gouache! Whenever we use gouache, we have to use it with much less water. If you use it in the consistency of watercolor (with lots of water), gouache practically disappears. Whenever we mix watercolor with white gouache, the mixture dries about two value scales darker (the opposite of watercolor).

Keeping these two things in mind, stipple dots with the watercolor/gouache mixture of appropriate colors in the tall tree, middle-ground land shape, and middle-ground reflections in the water. These dots suggest the tree foliage, distant Queen Anne's lace and their reflections in the watercolor.

For the foreground, we are also using the watercolor/gouache mixture, but in a more controlled manner, tiny dots for the Queen Anne's lace flower heads, elongated strokes for the cattails, and long grass-like strokes for the tall grasses. 

 

Make sure that the flowers or cattails don't have the same heights or are not evenly spread out as if they are a marching band. The grasses should have different heights and some should reach all the way to the middle-ground land shape. Grasses should have a variety of greens; stroke in some ocher-colored grasses and dark blue shapes for a variety as well. 

At the end, as the icing on the cake, I painted the tiny water lilies in the water using permanent rose and gouache.

As you can see, introducing a white gouache to watercolor opens a whole new world to the watercolorist. We can go not only from light to dark as the medium dictates, we can also go dark to light. Freedom it allows us may not be for all watercolorists, but I embrace it whole-heartedly!

"South Downs Fog" (watercolor on paper; 12" x 9")

 

"South Downs Fog"

 

The following is the description of what we did in the fourth week of the spring term, 2022 for my "Watercolor from Start to Finish" class (my online Zoom class with the Art League School in Alexandria, VA).

This week we explored the aerial perspective through "South Downs Fog". The aerial perspective is the phenomenon that occurs in nature in which the farther things (let's say, mountains) are, the lighter (value), duller (chroma), and bluer (hue) they appear. The details also disappear progressively as the distance between the viewer and things increases. The phenomenon is caused by the presence of dust, pollution and moisture. The following images from the internet are good examples of the aerial perspective.

How do we achieve the aerial perspective in watercolor? Watercolor is ideal for painting this sort of landscape situation. We have been exploring the wet-on-wet variegated wash for the last two weeks and that is precisely what we used to create the soft, diffused look of the distant hills in the reference. Since we go light to dark and soft to hard edges, we established the general atmosphere in the first wet-on-wet layer.

We wetted the paper thoroughly and evenly and painted in horizontal strokes, using cobalt blue, permanent alizarin crimson and ultramarine blue (the last two make purple). At the very bottom of the paper, you may want to use a little winsor lemon with cobalt blue to paint the light yellow green field. Dry the paper.

The rest of the painting was painted on dry paper to create crisp top treelines, using stippling method (reminiscent of Seurat's pointillism). A small round brush is better than a large one. You have to use enough water, otherwise the dots will dry by the time you stipple the next brushful of different colored dots, therefore not allowing the paints to mix on their own on paper (as supposed to the artist mixing the paints on palette).

If you look at my painting above, you will observe the bottom of each treelines is darker than the top of the treelines. This occurs in nature as the bottom of a tree or treeline doesn't receive as much light as the top. We created the illusion by starting each treeline with the dark purple mixture of ultramarine blue and alizarin crimson.  Immediately we switched to stippling with the darker green mixture of ultramarine blue and gold and the lighter and brighter green mixture of cobalt blue and cadmium yellow pale (for the top of trees). In the shadow areas, you can stipple with the purple mixture.

Make sure you draw some tree trunks and limbs to suggest these dots are trees. Also connect the dots here and there so that they don't look like a jumble of meaningless dots. Some trees should have more "sky holes" than others for variety.

Before the first dark purple strokes started drying, we stroked cobalt blue shadows to create the soft, fuzzy look. In the case of the first treeline, I stroked the cobalt blue wash diagonally and left some first light yellow green wash intact (to suggest the sun rising and the fog lifting) in this mellow southern English landscape.

For the second treeline, we used slightly less paints to make it lighter; for the third treeline, even less so that the aerial perspective was materialized. The control of values by using less or more paints (or more or less water) isn't easy. In my class demo, I erred on too light a third treeline, which had almost the same value as the fourth treeline. I could have added another layer (glazing), but didn't have time.

The details also were minimized in the third treeline; by the fourth treeline, there was no detail.

At the end I tried the milky white gouache horizontal strokes on the fourth and third treelines to emulate fogs. You can try them too!

 

 

"Enchanting Bluebells" (watercolor on paper; 9" x 12") sold

 

"Enchanting Bluebells" (sold)

 

Virginia bluebells are blooming in the Riverbend Regional Park in Great Falls, VA. Let's walk down the path in dappled light together. It is so magical and enchanting that all the worldly worries are forgotten here.

"Acadia Milky Way Reflections" (watercolor on paper; 12" x 9")

 

"Acadia Milky Way Reflections"

 

The following is the description of what we did in the second week of the spring term, 2022 for my "Watercolor from Start to Finish" class (my online Zoom class with the Art League School in Alexandria, VA).

This week''s lesson was the wet-on-wet variegated wash through painting "Acadia Milky Way Reflections". The way we did it was a little unusual, but the sky is the limit as far as the variegated wash is concerned, and I cannot emphasize its importance in watercolors. 

We drew the design with a HB pencil very lightly. Then we wetted the paper thoroughly and evenly except the land shape below the horizon. The success of the variegated wash depends on how you do this step; don't rush it. There are no fixes when the paper is wet unevenly.

We dropped very pale Winsor lemon, then a little permanent rose in the sky and water, where you see the glows caused by the gazillion stars. Make these pale shapes interesting and somewhat mirror-image (the glow shape in the water is the reflection of the same in the sky!)

Dry paper until it's bone dry (feels room temperature, not cool, to touch). If you rush this drying stage, you are likely to disturb the underlying layer(s). As long as you bone-dry and then wet the paper gently but thoroughly for the next layer with a soft flat brush, you can do this theoretically up to hundred times, although only a few fanatical watercolorists do it!

The next layer was cobalt blue to suggest the night sky. The night sky is usually very dark, almost pitch black, but when there is a full moon, aurora, or a galaxy full of stars, it will look quite colorful. Don't cover the glows from the first layer. Bone-dry the paper and wet it again for the third layer.

We darkened the periphery of the paper with the blue purple mixture of French ultramarine blue (darker than cobalt blue) and permanent rose. Quite a few of you ended up covering up the cobalt blue layer entirely. Please don't. If you haven't wetted the paper nice and evenly, you will by now have many hard edges around the glows in the sky and water. It's game over because the sky and water take up 90% of the painting. We cannot even say they are the background or negative space; they are the painting, the story (plus the stars). Again, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of the beautifully executed variegated wash at the beginning of many paintings.

Many beginners feel thwarted by the variegated wash or wet-on-wet technique altogether and decide to stick to the wet-on-dry, paint-by-the numbers-without-numbers technique. If you are one of them, you are limiting your potential. Watercolor is capable of achieving the infinite variety of subtle and not-so-subtle images. You master both the wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry techniques, the world truly becomes your oyster!

If your sky and water are not dark enough, you have to repeat the process. Don't be afraid of using enough paints. Don't paint wishy-washy, anorexic paintings. Nobody swoons over the half-hearted washes.

Now, it's time to paint the small sliver of the land shape. Paint the rocks in three layers: quinacridone gold base, burnt sienna mid-tone cracks, and the dark mixture of ultramarine blue and burnt sienna, plus a little gold (for the dark base, some cracks, and reflections of the dark rocks in the water). Using the same dark mixture (don't mix the paints thoroughly ever!), paint also the coniferous tree shape, making sure the farther trees are smaller to have them recede.

Finally, it's time to get messy with the white gouache splatters. Cover yourself and working area because these pesty splatters tend to end up everywhere! And mask the water and trees with two pieces of paper. Use a small round brush, load it up with enough thick paint and splatter carefully in all directions. Avoid big bombs (caused by too much water in the brush). Nothing happening? Use more water. Don't be half-hearted with these splatters. Do enough of them so that they show!

 

We will be using the splatter technique again. So if you don't like the mess, get over it! It's useful for stars, sands, rocks, or to add some visual noise where nothing of interest is happening.

 

 

"Snowman and Red Barn" (watercolor on paper; 9" x 12")

 

"Snowman and Red Barn"

 

The following is the description of what we did in the second week of the winter term, 2022 for my "Watercolor from Start to Finish" class (my online Zoom class with the Art League School in Alexandria, VA).

The main business of the day was painting "Snowman and Red Barn" from a black and white photo. We first drew the design lightly with a graphite pencil on the Arches paper. The horizon is above the half way point; the snowman is off the center; the dark anchor tree is behind the snowman (don't put it too close to the edge); the barn is in the center on the horizon. We added a few more secondary elements, then masked the snow-coated tree branches and distant trees with masking fluid.

Landscapes are generally painted from top to bottom, which means from the background (or sky) to the foreground in western art. We first wetted the sky shape above the horizon and painted a graded wash, making the right side slightly darker. The distant trees went in, slightly darker than the sky.

The barn was painted with cadmium red (the sunny side) and permanent alizarin crimson (the shadow side and the gaping interior). We had painted the shadow shapes first with black to darken it (this is something we never do, but for this particular black-and-white exercise).

Then we painted the small tree behind the snowman, slightly darker than the distant trees. The big anchor tree was painted even darker (mid-dark, don't make this tree too light). When you are painting the branches, paint the strokes below the masked lines. I added some grass-like strokes at the foot of the anchor tree; I painted diagonal strokes to suggest the tracks in the middle ground on the left (don't make them too steep, then the barn will look like it's sitting on a hill).

I also added a very pale wash around the front of the snowman so that it will pop out. Some elliptical brush strokes were done around the torso and body of the snowman. On the shadow side of the snowman, I made a bunch of mid-tone strokes to suggest trampled snow. These calligraphic marks take practice, but add so much texture and interest to a painting.

Finally, we painted the snowman itself in three layers (glazing), starting very light and getting increasingly darker, to create form (illusion of three dimension). Then we painted the hat (black) while taking care to leave the strips of white paper to suggest the snow coating. The round chips of the eyes and smiling mouth were done in two layers (light and dark) in black. The carrot nose was painted in two layers (the red-orange mixture of cadmium red and cadmium yellow pale; alizarin crimson stroke at the bottom to suggest shadow). The scarf was painted in three layers (the yellow green mixture of winsor lemon and winsor blue, then add slightly more winsor blue to make the green greener and darker). That's it!

Remember that we used the wet-on-wet technique only at the beginning with the sky. The rest of the painting was done on dry paper!