Category: Landscape

Beginning Watercolor, Lesson 3, Tree Shapes

2/27/2015

Individual species of trees have distinguishing growth patterns and silhouettes. This exercise is to help you practice adding realism to your landscape art by depicting trees accurately. You can find reference photos of different tree species on line, or in seed and nursery catalogs.
Concepts: Recognizing differences in tree silhouettes, painting trees, using sponge, brush, and spatter to paint a tree.
Materials: Watercolor paints, including blues, greens, browns, yellows, a pencil, brushes, cellulose sponge, tree reference images, watercolor paper.

A live Oak tree has a broad, umbrella shaped silhouette. The trunk is usually short, and begins to branch off low on the trunk.

You can paint a tree using the side of the brush, or the tip of the brush. Hold the brush loosely and let the paint blend on the paper. Decide which direction the sun is coming from and paint that side in lighter colors.

Mix some burnt sienna and cobalt blue to form a grey. Trees trunks in Texas are usually some shade of brownish grey. Use a small brush to paint the branches. change to a rigger to paint the small, fine branches.

As an alternative, you can use torn bits of a new kitchen sponge to stamp the foliage on the tree. A squirt with a sprayer will help the colors run and blend. Do this GENTLY. Do NOT over blend.

Lacebark Elm: The Lacebark elm is basically an oval, with the bottom part of the foliage a little narrower than the top. Branches come out of the upper trunk in a fan shape. The Branches appear relatively high up on the trunk.

Live Oak branches tend to form low on the trunk, and to extend parallel to the ground. They are often twisted and gnarled.

While the paint in the foliage drys, you can use the side of the brush to create "grass" below the tree. This is also a good time to add spatter to the tree and grass area.

Add some shadow under the tree with more blue and brown. A squirt with a sprayer will help the colors to blend. Add more spatter as desired.

Variation: You can make your tree appear to be standing over its reflection in a pond. After you have painted your tree, spray the area below the tree to wet it. Use a brush to drop in the colors of your tree. Take a clean brush and dip it in clear water. Draw a line of clear water across the upper edge of the pond to mark the area between pond and land.

Begin to apply foliage and trunk paint to the tree. I am using a brush and an occasional squirt from the spray bottle. You could also use a torn kitchen sponge to paint the foliage.

While waiting for the elm to dry, I started a Bald Cypress. Bald Cypress trees have a pyramid shape.

I added greyish branches and shadows to the elm tree. Bald Cypress trees have a more reddish trunk than other trees, so I used more burnt sienna in its trunk.

I finished the trees by adding shadows and spatter.

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Beginning Watercolor, Lesson 1: A simple landscape

2/18/2015

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The following is the first of a series of lessons for beginners in watercolor, which I am presenting to a class at Butterfly Gallery in Dripping Springs, TX, Feb 14-March 14, 2015. I am posting these for the benefit of my students, and for anyone else interesting in learning watercolor painting.

Concepts: graded wash, wet-in wet painting, mixing greens, scraping, wet on dry painting, negative painting, Aerial perspective
Materials: 1/4 sheet of watercolor paper, drawing board, masking tape, your largest brush, a blue paint, a yellow paint, and a brown paint and water. (I used Pthalo blue, Cadmium yellow, and burnt umber). You will also need something to scrape with. This can be the side of an eraser, an old credit card, a palette knife, or even a kitchen spatula.

Use Masking tape to tape your 1/4 sheet of watercolor paper to a drawing board. I am using Saunders Waterford Rough paper.

Dip your brush in water and then into blue paint. Mix the paint and water into a puddle on your palette. The Pthalo blue I am using makes nice greens, but is a strong, staining color. Make a puddle of a yellow(I used Cadmium yellow) and a brown(I used burnt umber).

Use your largest brush to thoroughly wet the paper by brushing water across it. Tilt the drawing board to pour off excess water. Dip your brush into the puddle of blue. Paint the blue in a horizontal line across the top of the paper moving l-r. Without dipping into more color, make a second horizontal line under the first, moving l-r. keep moving down the paper, l-r without dipping into more color, until you have covered the paper. This will be your "sky".

Dip your brush into the puddle of yellow. Brush on a "hilside" of yellow into the wet blue paint. The yellow and blue will combine to make green.

Add more yellow and blue to the page to make different kinds of greens. Tilt the board and let the colors blend naturally on the paper. Add some brown for rocks. Try to make your colors darker and stronger as you approach the foreground. Wipe excess liquid from the bottom of the picture.

Use pale blue paint to incicate a distant hill. Use a tool(I used a palette knife) such as a palette knife, old credit card, the side of eraser, or other tool to scrape "rock" shapes into the hillside.

While the paper is still wet, scrape in some "grass" and "twigs". Let the paper dry.

This is the actual painting from the class demo. After the paper has dried, Use wet green paint on the dry paper to add some background trees and brush. Use the darker green paint to paint around the tops of the yellow grass on the top of the hill, so it appears to be growing in front of the trees. Use brown to add some twigs. Add any needed light blue paint to the distant "hill". As things recede into the background, they become lighter and bluer. This is called "aerial perspective".

After I got home, I added some darks (some dark blue and some brown paint) to the hillside to add interest to the picture. I also added some darker patches to the bushes and trees in the background. I made the "birds" in the sky from a grey mixed from blue+brown. When this dries,(several hours) I will sign it, and carefully remove the tape by pulling it AWAY from the paper.

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Painting Lady Bird Lake

6/28/2014

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Evening Bat Watching Tour

One of my favorite things about living in Austin, Texas, is the part of the Colorado River known as Ladybird Lake. It flows right through the middle of town, and it is one of my favorite sights to look down and see paddleboarders and canoers on the lake as I drive overhead on the Lamar Street Bridge. A specially nice thing about visiting the lake is how quiet it is, since gasoline powered boats are not allowed. A year ago last spring, I took some visiting friends for a boat tour at sunset, to see the flight of the Mexican Free-tailed bats from under the Congress Ave. Bridge. I took a lot of photographs. The challenge now is to turn some of them into paintings.

I was especially drawn to the bridges on the tour. As the sun went down, the light on them became more and more golden. As the boat passed under the massive spans, and past the columns, there was a feeling almost of apprehension, like crossing a portal. You could feel the heat still radiating off their cement columns as the boat slipped past to the other side. As the sun got lower and lower, the contrast between cool shadows and water, and warm sunlight grew greater and greater.

My favorite shot was taken just after the sun went down, as the boat was about to pass under the Lamar Street Bridge. The sky and water were golden and ephemeral,contrasted with the massive bridge. Off in the distance, rowers were moving their boats into some unseen place far ahead. My first attempts at painting this scene were total flops. Mistake #1 was interpreting the scene too literally, and trying to put everything in just as it was in the photograph. Mistake #2 was in trying to paint the bridge too accurately. The bridge became a big impediment, and not something you could pass smoothly under.

On Exhibit at the Dougherty Arts Center

At right is my final version, titled "Passage". I chose to use a "soft focus" approach to the bridge, trying to give it the effect of being bathed in light. I rearranged trees and boaters to assist the composition. This painting recently won juror Alexis Lavine's "Top 3" award in the "Windows, Doors, and Gates" exhibit at the Butridge Gallery, Dougherty Arts Center, in Austin. The exhibit, which includes three of my paintings, will be up from July 9-August 4, 2014. The gallery is open M-Th from10:00AM-9:00PM, Fridays 10:00-5:00, Saturday, 10:00-2:00, closed Sunday. There will be a reception July 16, 2014, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. I hope that you can come!

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Cloud Shadows at Mule Ears

6/12/2014

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Big Bend National Park

I love looking across the distance of a Southwestern landscape on a summer afternoon. Often, the morning's clear sky turns into puffs of cloud that get larger as the day progresses. Although the day may be hot and brilliantly lit, the clouds will cast quickly changing, random blue shadows across the landscape. The effect is an instant transformation from warm tans, siennas, and yellows to cool blues and purples, and then back to warm colors again. It is a fascinating effect to watch. Photos I took, and vivid memories from several vantage points along the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive have been challenging me to try and paint this effect.

"Cloud Shadows: Mule Ears" 11"h x 15"w, watercolor on paper. Unframed original, $200.

Mule Ears, seen in the distance from Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive. Shadows from passing clouds make parts of the landscape suddenly dark.

Mule Ears

The volcanic formation known as "Mule Ears", is fascinating to watch as the cloud shadows dance across the desert. Although the photo reference I had shows the "ears" in the distance, I decided to move in closer for the painting. The ground near Mule Ears is very dramatic--dark colored magmatic rock contrasts sharply with areas of white volcanic ash.

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Beginning Watercolor, Lesson 3, Tree Shapes

Beginning Watercolor, Lesson 1: A simple landscape

The following is the first of a series of lessons for beginners in watercolor, which I am presenting to a class at Butterfly Gallery in Dripping Springs, TX, Feb 14-March 14, 2015. I am posting these for the benefit of my students, and for anyone else interesting in learning watercolor painting.

Painting Lady Bird Lake

Evening Bat Watching Tour

On Exhibit at the Dougherty Arts Center

Cloud Shadows at Mule Ears

Big Bend National Park

Mule Ears

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