How I tackle Gouache studies in Black and White

For about one month, I have been subscribed to the Nathan Fowkes course on Landscape Sketching in Watercolor and Gouache at Schoolism.
It’s an amazing course and, even if I can’t go through it at the pace Nathan suggests, I am slowly building painting over painting. Each new one leads to a greater understanding of the medium, and it’s also quite rewarding.
The first part is entirely dedicated to black and white studies of master paintings, a great way to discover new artists, and I feel more and more enthusiasm after each one.

I haven’t completed the (at least) ten studies required for lesson one, but I would like to share my approach here, hoping it can be helpful to anyone fighting with the medium like me.

I am by no means a pro, and definitely still quite slow (one hour, only for the painting itself).

This is the Master painting I am working on, by Scott Christensen.
I work from the color version, as the aim of this first lesson is to see color for value (which is not easy at all!).
My copy is fairly small, usually around 10 centimeters wide by whatever height the original has. The surface is a sketchbook I made with brown kraft paper, the same Nathan uses. I have to admit mine is a little too light for the medium, and tends to buckle with moderate amounts of water. Ideally, you should look for a 130-180lb weight paper, while mine is 82.

Before starting with the actual painting, I do a quick study in pencil on toned paper with black and white pencils (Conte)

I am a little exaggerated here, still too detailed (and it took ages, almost half an hour), but it helps me figure out the big masses before messing with the real thing. After this, I get to my painting sketchbook.

I use a water-soluble carmine colored pencil (Supracolor II), and try to keep the lines to a bare minimum, establishing the bigger shapes and relationships, only. I frame it with low-tack tape as soon as I am done, to have a clean straight edge after completing the painting.

I then proceed blocking in the main shapes. I would like to stay more watery on the river bed (for reflections) but I just can’t do it with this paper. I am painting relatively transparently in any case (translucently, so to speak), trying to block in the main areas of value. If you ever used gouache you certainly know it’s not very friendly to who tries to paint dark over light and vice-versa, therefore, for areas like trees I try to figure out the main general tone, either dark or light. Alternatively, I paint a value more or less in between those, that I can darken in the shade and lighten in the lights.

One thing I noticed about trees and greenery, is that I always see them lighter than they are. Therefore, I recently started using a dark underpainting for them, so that in any case my lights won’t go as light as they would without it, even if I am a little off with the value. Call it cheating 😀 This is true especially for warmer colors, as we always see them lighter than they actually are.

I went quite off on the river bed there, so I tried recovering with the second passage, thicker:
Here you can also see I lightened the background masses a bit, for the atmospheric perspective. I also tried softening the farther mountain and keeping trees in the distance quite simple, as another trick to conceive depth.
I forgot to take a picture of the next step, but it’s basically about correcting here and there, adjusting values and shapes. I just always make sure that my previous layer is bone dry before painting over (I use a hair dryer for this).

So here is my final result. You can see I just lightly scrubbed in a tone for the light parts of the trees in the background, without having the edges stand out. For the closer trees I went all the way dry brushing the light tone over the dark part I had blocked in. I went off with the contrast here and made it too dark, it was actually better in the previous photo.
For the foreground water, I just mixed a tone more or less equal to the river bed, added a touch of white and painted in random shapes (yeah, I know it’s not accurate). I did the same, but with a touch of black instead, for those submerged stones’ shadows.
I want to try staying simple so I guess painting each shape separately and precisely would kill the overall feeling, as adding too much contract would have, the same way.

I used almost pure white for the fallen logs and tree trunks, and super dry white for the water foam. Yes, the shape of the rock leaning on the right side is completely off 😀
I also failed to catch the bushes on the same spot. Had a very hard time figuring out what to do.

Overall, I am satisfied enough. While I can’t say it’s perfect, I am happy with the result and have learned to control the medium a little more. It took me more than one hour and a half to finish it, if I consider the initial pencil study, so I’m totally off track with time and I have to try to get the next ones done faster.

The final step is comparing the original turned into BW and my copy, which usually leads to plenty of tears 😀 I will save this and post it together with the others, once I am done with all studies.

Aug072016

Pippo Gullotto, and other sketches

I wanted to publish a little tribute to my friend Pippo Gullotto (69), who I sketched today when I met him. I admit it’s not perfectly resembling him, but I was just standing with the sketchbook in my hands, and this is the best I could do. It does look like him… somehow! It’s just about 3 inches tall, so I didn’t have much room for details. He would looks just like Santa Claus dressed up in red.

I also sketched other people while I was there.

The rasta guy was completely smoked. He kept moving weirdly while some performers on the stage were testing instruments with microphones. Can you notice I shaded the left (lifted) foot of the top left guy? It’s not in shade, it was THAT dirty.

All in all, a productive sketching day. I also sketched a few people and a stand at the local market, in the morning:

Oct042015

Praying Angel

Since I am taking part to the Graveyard Challenge on James Gurney’s blog, I went to my town’s graveyard to start thinking of my entry. I am still undecided on the subject, the quantity and variety of grave stones presenting a real challenge in summarizing them, and still preserve their identity, in the composition. I found a nice statue on one of the graves, so I stopped by to paint it.
The drawing is not excessively accurate, and I suffered from having to use a single brush, a 1/2 inch Princeton Neptune flat (with the help of a waterbrush)
I used Ultramarine, Burnt Sienna and Yellow Ochre, which would have been fine to enter the challenge, but then I really wanted to experiment some of the new Supracolor pencils I got, so I guess I will give it another try next week

Sep202015

Old Church Ruins

Today I wanted to paint some ruins. My Town has many, as it’s been bombed during WWII and plenty of historical buildings have been torn down during the conflict. Today’s subject is an old Church, named St.Peter, which was the main one of the area before being destroyed.
Here’s the comparison with the scene itself:
I dripped some blue on the bottom part of the facade, so I had to pretend that crack in the plaster was actually deeper than it really is. Damn watercolors!

Aug252015

Sketching at the Natural History Museum

My town has a tiny but interesting collection of stuffed animals (mainly birds), and a few archaeological artifacts, stack together and showcased in some old school rooms. I wanted to do some life drawings today, so I packed up some water soluble pencils, a water brush, and my loyal Lumograph 2b, and made my way to the museum.

The first sketch is a big, white shell I came across in one of the rooms. I cursed myself for not having brought some darker ink to paint the background and make the shell look as white as it was. It was kind of back lit because of an open window, and had some tiny led lights over it as well. It was sitting on a blue carpet so there was a lot of that blue in the bottom part’s shade. Sadly, I failed to capture the right darkness of this bottom part.

I then move to the archaeological area where I sketched out various things in pencil (it’s not the same sketchbook, this is one I made myself with Fabriano extra smooth paper). That Ursus thing is actually a Bear’s leg. Ursu Spelaeus should mean Cave Bear.

In my last 50 minutes I headed over to the birds collection, and find this white stork pretty inspiring. The beak was of a flame red but I didn’t have any bright color of the red family. My only reddish hue was brown, so I tried using that. The yellowish areas were made by blending a light olive with brown/umber. I used the black pencil again to get the background and try having those white feathers stand out a bit.

Next time, I should really take the inks with me as well.

Jan132015

Sunset Boat

I just completed the lesson on ripples in the water and noticed the outcome of the final exercise was decent enough to be shared. Ultramarine + Naples Yellow + Burnt Sienna. I used almost all of the brushes I had, mysteriously. And I still can’t get those straight lines perfect, hm!

Jan062015

Watercolor Reflections and water

Continuing with the Art Tutor class hosted by Rob Dudley, I recently practiced painting water. Which might as well sound weird, painting water with watercolors… or not 😀

Whatever it is, getting reflections right can dramatically enhance a picture’s realism. As far as I could tell so far, the key is to paint reflections slightly darker and with less contrast than the real object (due to refraction some light is absorbed by the water). This of course varies depending on the water’s condition, be it clean or muddy.

After several exercises (the one above is the best one really, others were…ugh. I spared you the one color uglies, this is two colors each: lemon yellow + ultramatine, ultramarine + burnet sienna, the same, again lemon, and lastly ultramarine + raw sienna) I went for a complete painting with a limited palette: ultramarine blue + raw sienna + alizarin crimson:

And then, a choppy sea and boats reflections. The first goal was to get the white sparkles/foam, while the second was getting decent (I won’t dare to say believable for these :D) rippled reflections:

Colors are ultramarine only for the boats, ultramarine + phthalo blue for the seas. I also used masking fluid and spattered it all over to get the wavetops in the very first.

Dec152014

Christmas Robins

A few days ago I got terribly inspired by a video I saw on the Art Tutor Facebook page (this one: Make Your Own Watercolor Christmas Cards – 2014) and I decided to take on the challenge of painting robins myself! I used some reference photos I found on Pinterest (here: http://www.pinterest.com/easeljourneys/inspirational/) and drew a couple of quick sketches of the birds. Then, I traced them using vellum, exactly as shown in the Art Tutor video, covered the back with a soft pencil, and traced them down to watercolor paper (140lbs Bockingford NOT). Here are the paintings, followed by the sketches:

I didn’t use the last sketch yet, nor the other reference image I have (which is quite inspiring, I have to say). So I believe I’ll come up with something else very soon. As for the palette, I used a mix of Rose Madder and Lemon Yellow for the orange of the breast, then Ultramarine plus Burnt Sienna for the various gray/blue/brown colors, varying proportions to get the different tones. For the black, once more the same two colors but with as little water as I could.

It was definitely funny, have a go yourself! Feel free to use my sketches as references for your own cards! And thanks again to Siân Dudley for the inspiring video!

Dec012014

Feelin’ like Christmas!

Will you send out Christmas Cards this year?

Well if so, and you love watercolors, why not taking this chance to practice the medium? I made a couple of simple ones to try painting some believable snow. I laid down a pale wash of cobalt blue + permanent rose (just a touch) on pre-wet paper (preserving some of the white flecks by spattering some masking fluid), trying to form the snow’s shadow; then, added the fir trees’ greenery with cobalt + quinacridone gold + a touch of viridian here and there. I’m pretty satisfied with the result:

Oct262014

Snow Capped mountains

Continuing on the Watercolor academy of Art Tutor, in the last exercise I created a couple of simple snow scenes. I painted in the sky first, laying down a layer of phthalo blue on wet paper (around the mountain itself), then letting it dry, re-wetting and adding a thin mix of ultramarine and permanent rose to darken the atmosphere a bit.

It’s important to leave the mountain white, and gradually add in snow shades using cobalt + ultramarine + permanent rose. Lost and hard edges are vital to “form” the snow coverage itself. The last step is to use a dry-brush effect with some really thick burnt umber, varied and darkened with ultramarine blue to create a sense of 3d shapes in the rocks. As simple as it is, give it a go 🙂

By the way, the first one should be the Matterhorn…I guess! 😀