Reflection on the Thames

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14 x 10 in  -  36 x 25 cm     Watercolor    

This quick quarter sheet painting was done as a demo for an article on reflections that can be found at PaintingFriends.com

I took this reference in late autumn in the early evening the sun as a way to my right and so the fronts of the houses that face the river are glowing in the sunlight.

Color Arches

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8 x 11 in  -  20 x 28 cm     Heavy Body Acrylic     While this was done as a two hour challenge it was also done as a bit of fun. A side brief was to attempt to use a lot of colour.

This is a reference kindly supplied by Desiree.

Garden Rose

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10 x 14 in  -  25 x 36 cm     Watercolor     This was done for a two hour chalenge on PaintingFriends.com.

I don't think I quite managed to pull it together on this one. I can't decide whether the dark background should have been reduced or increased it certainly is one of those paintings that looks better as a smaller image.

Many thanks to Desiree for the use of the reference image here.

Desiree's Paradise

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9 x 7 in  -  23 x 18 cm     Heavy Body Acrylic    

This was done in around 50 minutes for a 2 hour challenge set at PaintingFriends.com.

This is the Ref supplied and show here with kind permission of Desiree.

I have very little skill at using heavy bodied acrylics, but you won't get anywhere if you don't make an effort to improve. One exercise I did while trying to paint this was that of counting the strokes.

I painted background prior to starting the count. After that you count every stroke you make. The idea is to train yourself, in a medium in which you are trying to show the strokes of the brush, to only paint strokes that do something that have a purpose.

I painted this with 179 strokes, not counting the background.

Fat Pegion

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9 x 7 in  -  23 x 18 cm     Liquid Acrylic    

Done for a two hour challenge. I think I have to admit that this one is not a success. It was the first outing of some newly purchased liquid acrylics. While they act like watercolour I was unable to mix colours to form the darks I am used to mixing.

This is the reference, it is actually one that I took in Italy earlier in the year.

The reason why I am showing this failure here is because I have come to realise that if you only show your successes the pressure becomes far too great. Much better to be honest to oneself and the audience and show that not everything comes out quite as it should.

Maggiore Reflections 2

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8 x 11 in  -  20 x 28 cm     Acrylic     This was done as part of a two hour challenge. It is in acrylic and to be honest I'm not that pleased with it. I should have been more particular when painting the sky. The brushstrokes I are good idea but I should have been far more thoughtful as to what blues and what whites got placed where.

I should then have continued the same stroke pattern on the building then it might have had a better outcome.

This is the reference slightly cropped from the original. Taken on Lake Maggiore in April this year.The challenge used one of my own references taken on Lake Maggiore few months ago. I did a watercolour of the same view a few paintings back.

Thumbs Up - Cuban Style

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10 x 14 in  -  25 x 36 cm     Watery Acrylics    
This is painted with acrylic paints. I don't have any liquid acrylics so I watered down some normal thick acrylic paint. I found that none of the colours I had treated in this way would make a good darks. So I was forced to try to add some of my darker colours like black.

Not surprisingly this has contributed to the rather murky and to the rather murky darks. This is the classic reason why beginner watercolourists are urged not to use black. It's not that black is a bad colour is just that, when used in mixes, it is seldom successful.

The reference was taken in November 2006. One of the things you notice when you visit Cuba is that it is a black country ruled by whites.

Of course the official statistics say blacks are in the minority but how many statistics from the Cuban Ministry of information would it be sensible to believe.

Adendum
There is a close up of the thumb, which is the part I am most pleased with.

After all that is the subject of the picture.

Cottage on the Hill

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10 x 14 in  -  25 x 36 cm     Watercolor     I started this painting with the intention of pushing the colours up a level or two in intensity. When I came to doing it my nerve failed and I fell back on following the reference more than I had intended. Perhaps it was just a lack of imagination.

This is the reference.

Taken at the end of May this year.

Sweet Peas and Succulents

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14 x 10 in  -  36 x 25 cm     Watercolor    

I attempted to do this with a Charles Reid approach. I knew this would be a difficult reference to work from.

I have had some success with this approach in the past see this previous blog entry.

Back then I was careful to only have a few flowers in the composition.

This time I was much more ambitious. The right side got a little over worked and the dull base is clearly, not a pleasure to look at, despite it following the reference quite well. There must be a lesson in composition hidden in there somewhere.

While I know this can be said of most of my paintings. I think it is true with this one that if you get back far enough it does start to hold together.

Street Figures, Study

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10 x 11 in  -  25 x 28 cm     Watercolor     At first I planned to do this as a full painting but then I came to realise that I wasn't really interested in the full scene on the reference photo.

The ref photo was taken in Normandy in June this year. I did not set myself any particular restrictions. The painting is quite detailed with a lot of use wet in wet to get the darker tones. While the brushes I used for this are quite large they do have very fine points on them.

The Ford at Kersey

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14 x 21 in  -  35 x 53 cm     Watercolor     I have come to see that what I am striving for in my painting is to be both loose and where possible be a one touch painter. By one touch I mean never going over an area twice, unless of course, that was part of the original plan.

I took the reference photo on a "Paint with John Yardley" week in 2007.

You can see there that the painting is mainly one touch. I agree there a quite a few places where a "second go over" would make it better. Like the three center rooves. But I if let myself correct these sorts of things then I will never learn to mix the paint strong enough first time.

So the plan is to stick this on the wall and so have me staring at my mistakes to prod me to better things.

Maggiore Reflections

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10 x 14 in - 25 x 36 cm Watercolor This was another two hour challenge held at PaintingFriends.com

I concentrated on trying to get the refelection to look OK and to do it in the time allowed.

This is the reference slightly cropped from the original. Taken on Lake Maggiore in April this year.

I took 5 mins thinking through the possible issues in the painting. The main thing, seemed to me, was to get the tones is right in the reflection. I noticed that the reflection of the bright walls are lighter than the real walls that are in shadow.

I took 20 minutes on the drawing. While drawing I knew perfectly well that some of the windows that I was draw would not have any paint on them so I was just using the pencil mark to indicate that there was something there. I have noticed John Singer Sargent do this in some of his watercolours and if it's good enough him then it's good enough for me.

I finished in 1 hour 35 min. Yes I know I could have touched up a few places. A few more darks around the line where the land and sea meet would be an improvement. But I had basically done what I set out to do so the painting is, for me, "finished".

Flag at Grand Central

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8 x 6 in  -  20 x 15 cm     Watercolor    

A quick 'sketch' from a 2 hour Challenge at PaintingFriends.com

This is the ref as supplied to the challenge.

The first layer was raw seinna and umber to get the yellow background. Then some wax resist to get the lines in the ceiling and what would become the stars in the blue part of the flag.

A phthalo green wash comes next. Once that is dry fellow blue and the cad red in the flag can go in and you are done. The whole thing took around 50 minutes including a couple of long periods of drying time for the yellow and green washes.

Seagull

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10 x 14 in  -  25 x 36 cm     Watercolor     This is another piece of work for the two hour painting challenge at PaintingFriends.com

This is almost a two colour picture these being perylene maroon and prussian blue. Yes there is a small amount of cad yellow on the beak and cad red make the orange spot.

Many thanks to Desiree for the use of this reference here.

I took about one hour 20 minutes to do this and that's 15 minutes for the drawing and about 45 minutes for the painting the background being done in about 15 minutes rest of the time was for a couple of drying pauses.

That secret, if there is one, to painting rapidly is to simplify everything. Two main colours is about the simple as you can get. I used large brushes number 10's and 12's so I could not get too fiddly. Most of the painting has been with one touch. Only on the seagulls body have I gone over it couple of times and added additional layers, in this case dark layers.

Sun Shades

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8 x 12 in  -  20 x 30 cm     Acrylic     This is from a weekly two hour challenge that is held at PaintingFriends.com

I took about 1 hour 30 on this. To be honest a lot of that time was spent mixing the colours. I did no 'under drawing', basically because when I do it gets wiped out with the first few strokes.

This is the ref photo, used with permission of Desiree, which I only slightly cropped in order to close in on the sun shades.

It was the colours that made me think of using acrylics. I always forget that with acrylics you have to work so very hard to mix the colours you want. Of course the real solution is to reserve acrylics for subjects that don't require a lot of colour mixing.

I think I am pleased with this as I did manage to get some of the feel I was after but the lack of good acrylic technique does show.

Confirmation

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10 x 14 in  -  25 x 36 cm     Watercolor     I liked this when I started but it grew less and less interesting the more I did.

I think the plan was good, to be very minimal, except I should have done less of the church in the background. It is on hot pressed paper hence the 'smooth feel'.

The ref was taken in Havana Cuba at the end of 2006.

Pallenza Refelection

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14 x 21 in  -  35 x 53 cm     Watercolor     My aim was to capture the strength, intensity and dominance of the dark reflections of the boats. To be honest I don't think I quite did this. My painting lacks the punch of the photograph.

The reference photo was taken just outside town of Pallenza on lake Maggiore, in April this year.

Morning Shadow

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10 x 14 in  -  25 x 36 cm     Watercolor     A two hour challenge to painting. I was trying to get the viewer to see the shadow of the building that is falling on the buildings that we see across the street.

You can see it in the challenge ref that I cropped to concentrate on the shadow.

As you can see I followed the reference tightly perhaps too tightly.

Dedham Hall

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14 x 19 in  -  35 x 49 cm     Watercolor     Dedham Hall is an art and painting course venue in England on the boarder of Essex and Suffolk. John Yardley runs two courses there a year.

I took this ref photo while John was painting the hall last year. The heads in the photo are looking down towards his painting. I thought it was about time I had a go at this reference.

The painting has come out just about as I planned it, which is a good thing. Now that is done I think it's clear that I should either have been lighter on the John Yardley style greens, or stronger on at least the roofs of the building.

When painting this work I was not attempting to do it in a strong John Yardley style although clearly I have been influcenced. For those who are interested here is the painting that JOhn did last year.

Central Park - Experimental

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10 x 14 in  -  25 x 36 cm     Watercolor     I have given this work the 'experimental' designation because once again I did not set out to paint the best looking picture I could from the reference. Instead I set out deliberately to make the greens of the park as extreme as they are and the buildings light and with strangely coloured washes just as they are. So to this extent I actually painted exactly what I wanted to paint.

The reference photo taken a couple of years back from the "Top of the Rock" visitors gallery.

The Breakfast Table - Experimental

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10 x 10 in  -  25 x 25 cm     Watercolor     I tried to approach this in a sort of Charles Reid style. However I had planned to keep, and did keep, more grey's that I think he would. I am sure he would use more colour and then of course would have produced a much better painting.

The ref was taken just over a year ago on the John Yardley course at Dedham Hall.

I have given the painting an "Experimental" designation because it is just that. I was not trying make the best looking painting that I could from the reference, instead I was trying to paint it a particular way in order to see how it would look at the end. So this makes it an experiment.

Willy Lott's Children

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14 x 21 in  -  35 x 53 cm     Watercolor     Willy Lott's Cottage is famous for being the building in Constable's painting 'The Haywain'. It is still clearly recognisable today after nearly 200 years.

The ref photo that I took a couple of years ago caught two children in the lower left. In the ref shown here I have photoshopped them to move them nearer the cottage. The children are of course, how the painting comes by its title.

I am pleased with this. However there are a few weaknesses. The main one is that I intended to go back and do a better shadow on the tree in front of the building.

Boats on the Hard

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14 x 21 in  -  35 x 53 cm     Watercolor     To my eye this one comes out as "too bitty" and so not enough unity. As the right side is so busy I should have kept the sky as a more solid wash. There are lots of other strengths and weaknesses but they sort of cancel each other out out and leave me thinking - well ought to do better.

To the right is the ref and below is the John Yardley painting I have shown before.

It is of almost the same scene but John was standing more to the right that I was when I took my reference photo.

A John Yardley Painting
As you can see John's work has such wonderful unity.

'Keep practicing' is what I must keep telling myself.

Piazza Tasso, Sorrento

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14 x 21 in  -  35 x 53 cm     Watercolor     This one turned into way more of a battle than it should have been.

This is the reference image taken a couple of years ago in Sorrento.

Firstly I decided to change the perspective slightly twisting the buildings so that they are at a stronger angle in the roof lines. The refereance is a bit head on. Strong diagonals make a greater interest.

The buildings on the far left need to be darker than in the reference otherwise the whole painting would have been just a bit too weak and make the viewer just wonder "what's it about". The painting itself became a bit of a battle with me wanting it to be loose but it keeping me painting tighter and tighter. I think it came out as a draw in the end but then again maybe the tight side did start to win through.