painting people - watercolour

Another watercolour - originally landscape - cropped and framed to portrait...

painting people in watercolour

Trying to keep things simple here and not be so realistic...
This was done from a photo I took last year.

My thoughts were to capture the essence of sitting outside in the sun, watching Southern Right whales - to give as a gift.





I first started with a simple drawing of the elements I wanted to include

then came a basic/light wash of cobalt
whilst the paint was still wet, I put a blob of raw sienna where the faces are. you'll notice how it expanded...
when that was all dry, I painted the background mountains of Hermanus in ultramarine - making sure that they gradiated light to darker.

painting people - process

I was going to incorporate the foliage of the plant you can see in the photo, but then that is the beauty about painting - you're in charge, so you can decide what elements to incorporate and what elements you want left out.
Had I included the foliage, I think it would have come out in the painting looking like a shadowy monster that detracts from the essence of what I wanted to show.


more to follow...

Volcano and paint

this an image I took from our recent holiday to 'volcano country' in the middle of New Zealand's north island. I think I will enjoy painting it.

Or, anyone want to paint it and send me a pic to appear in the GUEST ARTIST slot...?

What is this? - Acrylic Ink on Watercolour Paper

acrylic ink

This is a recent painting I did for Painting About Com's July Painting Project.
But before I tell you all more about it, I'd love some comment on what you all think it might be...
Just a little bit of research to see what different views people have of this painting...
Hit the "comments" link below this post to let me know.
Thanks very much...



Well, that was the painting... Now for the inspiration of it...
It was taken from this Google Earth image and from browsing Google Earth of this place in the north west of South Africa.

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Ink Flow

Another ink doodle that I like and since some of my other paintings have been relegated to the definition of 'practice runs' - it is here...


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Bright Ink

acrylic ink

wet in wet - acrylic ink

There's something quite therapeutic about swirling pigment around a watery parchment...

No set rules to follow - it evolves naturally and takes on an abstract quality.
I'm amazed how the tiniest drop of coloured ink can expand from deep intensity to bright and even flow of colour. The real excitement for me is when another colour is added and given a slight guiding stroke or three with the tip of my paintbrush - then watching how it all evolves...

Using the three primary colours - this is the result.

I'm having fun with ink and water at the moment - building up to gaining confidence to tackle a large watercolour landscape.


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Here's lookin' at ya...

red eyed tree frog - acrylic on canvas

In the interests of keeping my blog active by posting to it on a regular basis - I thought this pic would be amusing...
It came up on my screensaver the other night and "spoke" to me.

This photo was taken during my developmental series (so it is not part of the photos I have of the finished painting) and was shot up close and at an angle.

Hope to be back soon with the latest painting stages...


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Rusty Talent...

limited colours

It's been a good few months since I spent some time with watercolour paints and my first foray into the medium after this results in this pic. Putting it in a frame thankfully detracts from the 'schoolboy' art of the painting...

I used only a few 'basic' colours to keep things simple and it was a fun little experiment.


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"Callie's Fluke" - final - framed

CALLIE'S FLUKE - acrylic on watercolour board - 225mm x 305mm - May 2007.

And here it is, the final painting for Callie - 'rescued' as a potential flop and now as a gift to a friend from cyberspace.
Many thin layers of paint have been glazed over to give the sky an almost photographic clarity.
It is one of those paintings best viewed from a distance to impart the full effect.

To view the process of this painting, please scroll down to the next post...


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How to Ruin a Painting - 101

Ok, so the title is a li'l over damatic, but I'm going to show you step by step how to ruin a painting...
All was going well until STEP: #5 onwards...

So,
STEP # 1:

painting of a whale - process

Take a spare watercolour board and draw the picture, sketching with the paint to show definition... Got it?

STEP # 2:

Decide on some bright colours to use and continue building up layers of brightness.
Remember your motto, "Expressing life through colour..."



STEP # 3:

Continue with layers of bright and vivid sunset colours.
This painting now takes shape and is working out rather well...
This would have been a good place to stop and reconsider
the options.


STEP # 4:

Going gangbusters - the whole painting is coming together nicely. Then, this is probably where you should stop and call it quits by doing nothing more on the background... If you've been fortunate enough to get some honest feedback, you probably would have been told to concentrate just on getting the whale defined...


STEP # 5:
This is where it all goes horribly wrong...
Know when to stop! Don't think by adding some more red colour to the sunset sky that it will liven things up more.
And, PLEASE, if you're using vivid transparent colours - don't go randomly using pastel and opaque - (colours that cover up the areas already painted)




STEP #6:

Perhaps this should come under the title " How to rescue a ruined painting"..?
So this is where I am up to on this and totally stuck... I've painted over the lighter colours with mixes of paynes gray, permanent purple madder, quinacridone red violet. Repainted the sea and sky with yellow to diffuse the intense red "hit" of the previous pic but I'm no longer enjoying the process. I'll give it one more go and then decide if what I've done has worked. Otherwise I'll start another whale picture on actual acrylic board instead of watercolour board.
Thanks for your patience Callie - one of these months, you'll have a whale from New Zealand hangin on your wall...



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Red Eyed Tree Frog - 5 -

Red Eyed Tree Frog - 5 - Part 8

"Consummatum est"

I'm not doing anymore on <-- this frog. At some point one has to declare, "IT IS FINISHED!" And in comparison to the other frog paintings already declared consummatum est - this one joins them... All these tree frog paintings you see here are on 100cm by 80cm stretched canvas.

I'm taking a well deserved break from frogs for the time being (even though my focus remains on completing my series...) but I am keen to get back to doing a few more watercolour landscapes.
Watch this space...



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Red Eyed Tree Frog - 5 - Part 7

Well, I've dealt to the rather blue background leaf and this is the result.
Yesterday I bit the bullet and decided it would either work or totally ruin the painting.
Instead I've landed up in no-man's land. It isn't ruined but it certainly isn't fixed.

I used Light Green to paint over the obvious blue areas of the leaf - blending that into the rest of the painting. Then I spent the whole day glazing over the background with diluted layers of Light Green. Waiting for it to dry before applying the next layer and the next - and so on.
Lesson/s learnt?: Viridian Hue is a lovely colour - BUT - only in the right context. I should have been brave enough to mix my own dark green from the start...



So my thoughts at the moment are:

• that the background has lost some of it's solidness

• the frog looks like it's hovering on the leaf rather than sitting on it

• the luminosity of the frog body is lost in the optical mixing of the background

etc, etc, etc

My solution:
to put the painting back in the office and get on with other unfinished paintings until my mind has time to 'come up with the answer' or a friendly comment is left with helpful suggestion/s



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Red Eyed Tree Frog - 5 - Part 5 and 6

Red Eyed Tree Frog - 5 - Part 5 and 6

After my few days off from frogging I decided to get out the Lemon Yellow and Blue Lake to finally start painting the body. I have an unexplained aversion to mixing my own greens, but I do like the way Lemon Yellow and Blue Lake mix.

I squeeze out a blob of yellow and then squeeze about a fifth of that of blue - on the lid of a plastic ice cream container... No airs or graces with me - I don't even own an easle (though it's on my wish list)
Then: it's paint brush into water, (for the frog body, I only used a #12 Haydn) mixing the two together slightly on the plastic lid and transferring what's on the brush to the canvas where it's mixed further by the brush strokes and more water if required. (This frog body was painted differently to the ones in my previous series' - those were mixed directly on the canvas with a much thicker conistency and applied mostly with a dappled effect. This one was painted using flowing strokes. I didn't have to be too concerned about "detail" because the previous underpainting stages had taken care of that.)
Where I need to, I add more blue or yellow directly to the painted canvas (while it's still wet) to define specific areas. Check out the link above about mixing greens.

pre glazed frog

                                         
I then used washes/glazes of just Lemon Yellow to bring out the consistency I was after. As you can see, it has made the frog more luminous and vibrant.

glazed frog

Then a little more Orange on the hands and feet and Titanium White to accentuate the highlights brings me to this point.

Now I have to figure out how to deal to the leaf background, so will be back when that's done...



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Red Eyed Tree Frog 5

Red Eyed Tree Frog 5 - Part 3

red eyed tree frog - acrylic - painting process - background

Nothing like a bit of viridian hue to liven up the background...
Again, I used various dilutions of the hue and like the way it has come out so far.

I decided to paint the background now before concentrating on the body of the frog - my reasoning being that when I do the final background, I can paint a definite and smooth line to make the frog stand out from the rest of the painting.


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Red Eyed Tree Frog 5

Red Eyed Tree Frog 5 - Part 2

red eyed tree frog - acrylic - painting process

I used a 'cheap' student acrylic called warm yellow to define some more areas of the frog - again, in various dilutions to help me when I get to 'fill in the gaps' later.
The same yellow was glazed over where the stem and leaves are.

Then I used a quality acrylic of light green to paint in the leaves.
I'm not too happy with the way the background leaf on the top left hand side came out so will be giving that some more definition soon.
And, this is where I'm up to...

Not sure if I should 'complete' the backgound first or fill in the body of the frog - not a major drama since this particular tree frog painting is one that I'm enjoying - it seems to flow a lot better for me than the other 4 I did. Practice does make things easier...
Already, I'm beginning to toy with the idea of doing a monochrome frog painting as my next project...


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Red Eyed Tree Frog - 3 - "Green series"

Red Eyed Tree Frog - acrylic on canvas - green series

Red Eyed Tree Frog 3 - Part 5

And so the red eye tree frog painting develops to this...

I don't think I have been defeated by green.
In fact I'm now beginning to actually think this is the best frog painting I have done so far.

For the face I used a lot of lemon yellow and blue lake. No white at all in that mix.

When the painting dried, I used white for the highlights and fixed up the eyes some more.

My wife thinks there is too much white on the face so I might have to re-green the frog a little...

Anyway, the next pic on here will be the final of this painting and then I start another one with the red leaves.

- If you want to see the sequence of paintings for this, just click on the GREEN SERIES label beneath this post.

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Red Eyed Tree Frog 2 - Agalychnis Callidryas

Red Eyed Tree Frog  - Agalychnis Callidryas

Well I guess this tree frog is about as finished as I'm going to be with it unless someone points out an obvious flaw.
I fixed up the body and head and concentrated on the left side "fingers" of the frog.

Then I spent a while on the borders, tyding them up so the colours on the side match the front of the tree frog.

A bit more touching up of the red leaves and "Hey Presto!" painting ready for selling...


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Red Eyed Tree Frog 2 - Part 5
Agalychnis callidryas (amphibian)

I went back and painted more definition on the red leaves.

Then looking at what I'd done I thought I'd 'ruined' it...

So, the canvas stayed in the office for a few days until yesterday when I got the 'creative urge' again - and there was no stopping me... I put in a few hours of concentrated effort and completely forgot to take photos of the progress.

What did I do?...

I decided to give the background a glazed look. Having recently read somewhere about glazing I thought I'd try it on this one since the background covers a large proportion of the canvas...

Glazing is simply a lot of thin layers of colour. Click the link to find out more...
Very easy to do but is Sooooo time consuming.

Another 'trick' I learned about mixing green paint - painting the under-colour blue and then building up layers of thin yellow paint on top of it to produce the required green.

Thankfully I was able to take a pic of the bottom right border of the canvas (which got forgotten about at the time) to show you here. Using BLUE LAKE colour I built up three layers of glaze.

I then used layers of LEMON YELLOW to paint over it to produce the colour you see here...

Now I am off to focus on the frog body and - hopefully - somehow, define the outline from the background...
I have to fix up the right hand side bottom red leaf since some blue lake paint ran and dried on me before I could wipe it all away.
Plus I have to fix up the eyes a bit since some of the glaze got on there too...


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Red Eyed Tree Frog 2 - Part 4
Agalychnis callidryas (amphibian)

I've given more definition to the 'leaves' and the yellow of the flowers. One thing I did concentrate on in this painting are the contrasts between colours, highlights and lines. It seems to be working well so far - usually when I've painted, I blend everything and then outline at the end. Being aware of the use of contrast right from the start seems to make ths painting stand out a lot more.
I also started working on the frog - as you can see, so am slowly bringing it to life...
I'm off to work on the red foliage now cause it's bugging me a bit and will be back with the next update soon...

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Red Eyed Tree Frog 2 - Part 3
Agalychnis callidryas (amphibian)

Slowly slowly I build up definition of the leaves and flowers, layer upon layer of colour.
Ok, that sounds a little slow and pedantic, but for the most part, my hand is working quickly.

The eyes were looking a tad jaded so I filled in the pupils with violet and will add to it until I get that 'almost black' look. Continuing with the violet colour I also added some to accentuate the darker leaves and shadow.

So, now I'm done painting for the day and will see you tomorrow or the next day with the next update...


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Red Eyed Tree Frog 2 - Part 2
Agalychnis callidryas (amphibian)

Figuring out what to paint next is a little challenge. I like to paint a thin layer of different coloured paints to give me an idea of definition, taking care to check where highlighted and shadow bits are. As always, I think the eyes of the frog are the focal part so usually always paint them at the beginning. They're small enough to stand out and it gives me the 'boost' I need to feel confident in my ability to carry on...