Category: Watercolor

A Bit Rusty

Blue-Green Door

This week I decided to get a bit rusty. As my friend and watercolor coach said, “Of course, every watercolor artist loves to paint rust and old wood.”

There’s just something about how rusty metal and old wood seem to inspire me to paint and sketch. Maybe it’s because I’m a history enthusiast and seeing old things rotting and rusting away makes me want to wish those old items could talk and tell their stories.

Take the Blue-Green Door here for example. This photograph was taken by a fellow I follow on FaceBook who goes by Finius the Skinniest on Quartzite Happenings. Continue reading A Bit Rusty

World Watercolor Month

World Watercolor Month is in the can! It’s done, finished…over…

Crape Myrtle

As I mentioned back in July in my article Quantity-Quality-Or Both, participating in challenges such as World Watercolor Month gives me an opportunity to produce a number of watercolor sketches—quantity. As I reviewed them this weekend I noticed that, as I thought, some were higher quality than others.

I also noticed that as I got closer to finishing the month, quality seemed to go down…until that LAST painting. My first painting last month for World Watercolor Month was the Crape Myrtle on the left.

Continue reading World Watercolor Month

Sky Studies

One of Two-Wet on Wet vs Wet on Dry

This week I spent some time working on sky studies. Clouds and sunsets, colors and techniques to improve my landscapes.

Prompted by World Watercolor Month for clouds last week, I decided to spend more time getting to know skies a bit more. After all, I’ve spent a lot of time up there and I certainly have seen some beautiful skies.

Two of two Wet-on-Dry

Steve Mitchell, The Mind of Watercolor, had a good tutorial on clouds the other day working in both wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry techniques. As you can see in these to photographs each has its own merits depending upon the affect I’m trying to achieve. Naturally I didn’t want to waste the paint and time so what do we to with two cloud/sky studies? We add a landscape of course!

Continue reading Sky Studies

Time to Get Serious

The union oyster house Boston 11 x 14 cold press watercolors by Matthew Mc

After several weeks of World Watercolor Month #worldwatercolormonth, it’s time to get serious about painting. Now…don’t get me wrong, I’ve been very serious and taken my time and done my best on many of my paintings, but…

When I see a painting like this, The Union Oyster House, by Matthew Mc I realize I still have a long way to go when it comes to composition, value, and color in my work. As I mentioned in my post Quantity-Quality-Or Both, I’ve been pumping out a quantity of art, especially this month, to practice and learn but once this month is over I’ll need to concentrate on quality. Continue reading Time to Get Serious

A Peek Behind the Curtain

First layer…somewhat loose

I thought I’d give everyone a bit of a peek behind the curtain this week when it comes to my paintings and sketches.

On the right is my first layer of a painting I did for #worldwatercolormonth sponsored by www.doodlewash.com, whose daily prompt was “Blossoming”. As this is a “loose” painting, meaning I’m not trying to make it a photo-quality work, I used a large quill brush on 300# cotton paper. The idea is to just get a rough outline of the subject.

Continue reading A Peek Behind the Curtain

Of Pen & Ink

Pink Crape Myrtle

I like to experiment with different techniques of pen & ink. Recently I bought a dip pen with several nibs and went to work on a couple of botanical studies.

On the Pink Crape Myrtle painting to the left I penciled in the overall outline before going to the pen & ink. Usually when I’m using a fountain pen I tend to just draw out the sketch without first penciling in the outlines.  Freely inking the sketch forces me to concentrate more as I draw my subject. Continue reading Of Pen & Ink

Quantity-Quality-Or Both

Photo and work in progress

Is quantity, quality, or is both that are important when it comes to learning to paint with watercolor or sketch with pen & ink?

Learning a craft is much like playing a sport—to get good at it, one must practice, practice, and practice some more. Sports legends like Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, and Tiger Woods spent hours, days, and years practicing their sport to get to the level they have all achieved. Continue reading Quantity-Quality-Or Both

Waiting for the Paint to Dry

Waiting for the Paint to Dry

Well I’m sitting here waiting for the paint to dry on a commission I’m doing for a dear friend of the family so I thought I’d take a moment and update my blog.

This has been a busy week for us. On Monday Ilene worked at the local Food Pantry while I worked on preliminary sketches and colors for Barbara’s painting. That’s after we dropped Bella off at the kennel and picked up a rental car. Continue reading Waiting for the Paint to Dry

Painting with Kateri

The first art “lesson” I purchased was through The Great Courses program. Taught by Kateri Ewing, her course gave me a good foundation on color, value, and techniques for learning to paint with what many believe to be one of the toughest art mediums—watercolor.

A fun thing she does in the class is show several ways to add “texture” to watercolor paintings. In this case she had us swab several colors on paper then sprinkle table salt and water on the collective colors. Continue reading Painting with Kateri