Category: Paintings

Last night I was at a workshop given by Sarah Moss, on watercolour landscapes including people. The group included those who mostly paint with watercolour and those who rarely do, people who paint in completely different ways and some who have little experience of the more technical aspects of this medium. This is an attempt to explain and simplify things a bit. I’m not going into detail about different sorts of watercolour paint, more the way of application and the papers.

This is what Sarah was getting us to paint (though I managed to miss that and made up my own).

Those of you with experience may realise straight away that this may be better on a slightly smoother paper. It is also painted using a wet on wet technique, which means putting lots of water on the paper and letting the paint flow on the surface.

Sarah said that 200lb paper would be best. Immediately we are into issues that can be confusing, with jargon in the advert or on the pad of paper can be somewhat off-putting. The good news is that Turner and his contemporaries mostly used writing paper to paint on with watercolours. That is because the writing paper of the day was reasonably heavy and had absorbency that took the ink but didn’t spread it around. The other good news is that, once you find a paper that works with your style, you can just buy it on repeat until you want to try a different way of doing things.

One jargon area is weight of the paper. Sarah specified that in lb (lbs), which relates to the, well past retirement date (unless you are American or old like some of us), Pounds and Ounces system. So we already have lb, lbs and pounds for one measure.

Another, more universal, measure is GSM, which is grams per square metre. The trouble is that there is no easy conversion between the two. That is because they measure slightly different things. Both are slightly odd in measuring on a flat scale (e.g. square metres) something that can have a whole range of thicknesses. Then, for a particular thickness there can different densities. Oh dear. So 200lb watercolour paper is usually 425gsm. That is a heavy paper. Because I have it, I used some old hand-made paper that is like card for the workshop. For most uses I would buy the heaviest that you feel you can afford both to buy and to waste. If it is lighter weight you can stretch your paper (wetting it till it expands and taping it down while it dries to make it tighter and less prone to wrinkling) but that is not without its problems, or you can put up with the wrinkling but that just makes the painting harder to control.

Let’s go back to the texture of the paper. This is indicated in various ways. It might be a reference to a particular way paper was made once e.g Bockingford or a manufacturing technique (NOT or Cold Pressed). Papers move from smooth through those that have a quite pronounce 3d texture. Some famous watercolourists used the texture of the paper to give visual texture to the paint. Sarah talked about adding texture with the paint by bleeding or removing colour from particular areas. She also introduced the idea of denting the paper (with the end of the brush handle) to make the paint pool in those areas. That way you get the effect of different paper textures where you want them, not all over the paper. Textured papers are like the wrinkled paper, there are peaks and troughs and pigment runs into the troughs. There is also more surface area, because of the little bumps, so that can make the paper appear relatively more absorbent. Apart from the little tricks that you pick up, I would get a small amount of each and play with it to see what happens. Then, alongside the weight you can afford, pick the paper that feels like the ones you were most satisfied with.

The final topic here, at least for the moment, is absorbency. Paper is lots of fibres squashed together. The paper often has glue(size) spread over the surface to fill in the ends of fibres that are facing upwards and to make a paper with a more controlled surface texture and absorbency. Some papers have size internally as well. I wouldn’t bother thinking about this too much. Just try experimenting over time, ask people who do it a lot or perhaps you could read up a bit. Just remember that people love to repeat the little they know as, often inappropriate, wise advice (including me of course).

I hope the message has come across to keep trying different things. If it helps, make notes, so you can recreate the successful efforts. I know I had enormous fun playing last night, painting in a way that was different to much that I do normally. I was happy with what I produced and will add it all to my stock of different options when I set out to paint something.

Of course, I had the right paper for the occasion, watercolours in tubes put into a palette that I use all the time, brushes that were of reasonable quality and that I am used to (the main flat brush I used is nearly sixty years old). So keep it simple, try different things in a reasonably organised way and be prepared to ask questions. Mainly have fun.

Yesterday I was at a Contemporary Landscape Painting workshop with Pippa. It was very stimulating, so I thought I’d pass the basics on.

We started by dividing a good sized piece of reasonably heavyweight cartridge paper into three rows and then making marks across each row with palette knife and undiluted acrylic paint. Desperately not thinking of landscapes we used a dark, medium and light colour in each, perhaps with a warm or cold colour relationship.

Make sure to leave a good quantity of white paper. On one row at least the dark should be black. The marks should overflow to give colour and texture subtleties. There should be slightly stronger areas of pigment and others could be almost scraped off. Don’t get too fussy.

Next take a small mount cut out and keep laying it over the paper to see if any interesting shapes or images emerge. You can twist the mount at whatever angle works. Pick as many images as you fancy playing with. They can’t overlap, as the next task is to cut them out and stick them to a sheet of paper to work on. In those bits you can think about landscape at last. You can paint over any bits that don’t work and add detail that adds more shape, distance and texture.

Lastly we did some larger (but still small for this exercise) pictures using the same stages on each piece of paper – Making flat marks in three colour shades, with different strengths, overlaps and textures. Doing it reminded me of Heather Burton’s advice to block in shapes quickly in flat colour at the start of a palette knife piece and the abstract session where we folded a paper that we had worked on to highlight different sections and stimulate new ideas.

The exercise aimed to give more liveliness to compositions. Using flat acrylics allows you to add layers of subtlety and detail afterwards.

This approach allowed me to free up a painting I’d been struggling with, trying to capture a day at Glencoe’s Signal Rock site, when there were many dragonflies. Not perfect but improved. Thanks again Pippa.

Angela at the Shelley Art Group I go to said the other day that we should enjoy it when we work on something. Very wise. This when everyone else was painting a bit like Monet, while I just messed about. Previously, I’ve tended to expect to produce a finished product when I start painting or drawing. When it doesn’t work out right, I would get annoyed with myself.

Over the years the huge number of times I’ve been out sketching, often in public, have helped me relax more. Age and experience have probably helped too. Sometimes I even produce things that people really like.

Angela isn’t the only one who has recently helped me enjoy it more. When we were doing a session on abstract art there was a tip about folding up what you produce, snipping it and looking it from different perspectives. Now I’ve also got used to playing with palette knives and raw paint often mixed on the picture, that has also allowed me to take a more relaxed approach.

So when I wanted to paint a picture of Ruth sitting by the Coe river, as in Glencoe, from a sketch done when there were masses of dragonflies about, I started playing with both the picture and with different ways of doing dragonflies. I fully expected it to be haphazard, scruffy and throwaway. As it evolved I kept trying new ideas, Some work better, some don’t. Taking photos and cropping them allowed me to look at different compositional ideas and highlight what worked.

The penultimate one there was where I started on a more finalised version. Adding a bit of sky peeping through the foliage told me to do a layer of sky first and then trunks and foliage on top. On the right I wanted to make the foliage stand out as nearer to give more depth. I’ve got to add three people in there too. It kept me going for a while, but kept looking at the sketch, thinking I was not really making any improvement. Finally I reached a point where it had achieved what I set out to do. It adds something to the sketch but I still probably prefer the sketch overall. It does include the hint of dragonflies for the close observer too.

If you are playing with acrylics, particularly with a palette knife, you can use cartridge paper or heavy grade lining paper but put a ground coat on beforehand, as it helps the paint move. This tip I owe to Julie and it helps make the acrylics behave more like oils, rather than the watercolour-like method used by Anthony Barrow. I am in the habit of using white gesso mixed with a touch of red for some reason.

Where I had little hope that I could manage it with my skill set, I now think I may be able to have another go using what I’ve learned. I may have accidentally produced a bit of a Monet as well.

Last night we had a session at Shelley Art Group with Anthony Barrow.

He was very inspiring but threw a lot of information at us while painting rapidly. I work fast and free mostly but had to stop trying to take in every word to concentrate on transferring the ideas to the work. I thought I’d write what I learned and combine it with my own experiences to help others gain more from the possibilities in the techniques.

Thanks Anthony and also Sally for arranging the session.

This is what he produced as he talked, from a very small photo of the Langdale Pikes :

Let’s start with what we were painting on. Like Anthony I used 1400 grade lining paper taped to a board to reduce the curl as it got wet. You could stretch the paper beforehand by taping it down when wet. This would help the surface stay flat through the painting process. Mine still buckled a bit but is straight this morning. One advantage of the lining paper is that it is not brilliant white. So while the paper colour shows through with the wet on wet technique he used, it already has a warmer feel to it. Using acrylic you can then add white later if needed, either as as a wet in wet mix or a less transparent layer when dry. He also specified a reasonably large piece of paper. This is important to stop yourself getting trapped in detail and it also reduces the risk factor of over watering in wet on wet. You can scale down once you’ve become happier with the skills.

Next came sketching in the key shapes that are more important to get right. Using a colour that is part of the mix you want to end up with works well as many sketching mediums can interfere a bit, especially with wet on wet. When Heather Burton was doing the palette knife session she sketched the basic colour areas rather than detailed shapes, as she was using the paint in a different, undiluted, way. She knew that she could add detail later as the paint dried. Incidently Heather still uses thin layer with some transparency even with the palette knife, keeping the surface smooth to help adding upper layers. Because of the thicker paint and faster drying, it is also possible for her to scrape off areas of the upper layer to reveal more of the lower one.

What about that wet on wet technique? It’s scary isn’t it? It is easy to feel out of control but it tends to create smoother colour transitions. You also end up with nice thin transparent layers that you can then add on top of later. It is even possible to do that with water colour. Just make sure you have cloths or paper towels ready to dab off the worst mistakes and remember that with acrylic you can completely paint over the top later.

I’m not going to talk much about colour. Anthony was repeating for us the lesson of Jo’s session a couple of weeks ago. You can achieve a whole rich array of possibilities from a limited range of tubes or pots. Like all trained artists he obviously knows and indeed feels what different tubes can do in terms of warmth and transparency. It is hard to build up that knowledge, but starting with a limited range and experimenting helps. You can then add extras as you realise that a particular tube just adds something you want. Greens are particularly tricky.

Another little snippet Anthony said to me was that most people have trouble with foregrounds. It is not completely true, but in landscapes the foreground is often there just to look past. Unless it has something that you particularly want to come out in detail, a relaxed and sketchy approach to the foreground often works. Of course, unless you are way more naturally talented than I am, getting sketchy to still look true takes practice.

This is what I produced on the night. I’m a fairly literal person sometimes and like to respect the landscape I’m painting. From the photograph I was confused about the area in the middle, below the highest peak. As Wayne and I have climbed in that area, this niggled. Back home I found another picture and realised it was actually the area of rock on which we’d climbed, so that had to change. Next I realised that I had produced a misshapen version of the rocky middle right. One of the advantages of acrylic is that it is often easier to overpaint, if you haven’t gone overboard on texture. That bit got adjusted too. I decided that the picture we had been given was actually an amazing evening light, rather than a snow covering, so I adjusted accordingly. I also hardened up the mountain tops, that had been left blurred by the wet on wet. a few other little corrections and then finally I went back to that foreground. I decided to introduce a hint of another landscape layer nearer the viewer to add further depth and to balance the colours with the mountain shadows. I’m happier and have given it a single coat of varnish to bring out the colours. I’m finished now…. perhaps.

I hope that is helpful to anyone reading it. I certainly will be seeing if I can improve what I did last night and will think abut it all as an addition to my options in saying what I want to say.

I have been aware of digital art most of my adult life, i.e. since the early 70’s. I’ve made static images, animations, games, manipulated videos and sound. The tools that are available now are astonishing. That said, alongside a phone to quickly capture some aspects of a scene, below is what I use mostly when sketching:

It has in it mechanical pencils with soft drawing leads, short very soft pencils, a mini paint box, water filled brushes, rags, two tiny sketchbooks…… It also isn’t affected by awkward light reflections and doesn’t run out of power. The image below is in that bundle still.

On my Android phone I have a copy of Art Rage, which works on all the main computers. This one used just my finger as a pointer/pen/pencil. Waiting for a tram in Soler on Mallorca, I could draw this quickly without getting out and balancing, pad,water, paints and pencils.

The first thing to remember about digital art packages is that media rules don’t apply. While you can appear to be painting with oil and a stiff brush, you are just applying dots of colour. If you use a pencil effect, you can expand the the size of the lead to huge proportions, add colour and get that grainy effect of a soft pencil on grainy paper over whatever area you want. You can change the settings of the tool, for instance to make the pencil or charcoal softer or more grainy. If the tool doesn’t give you the effect you want try another one. This lack of rules applies whatever the App you are using.

While you are just applying dots when you work, the apps and devices are very sophisticated nowadays and can often detect pressure and speed to recognise gestures. In this way they try to reproduce what you would get when using a brush, pencil or other tool on paper or canvass. To get the best out of this, the ‘pen’ device and App may need to match. Procreate on Apple is matched to the Apple Pencil and even different models are better matched than others. Don’t forget my finger drawing though.

The final thing I’ll say for the moment is that there are three tools on all Apps that you can use. First, Undo, which usually allows you to go back several times to pretend you didn’t just do what you did. Second a variable size Eraser that will magically rub out paint too. Third is the ability to change the Settings for each tool, for instance to add more thinners or paint. There is also the opportunity to save what you have done so far and start adding to it in another version (left swipe the file on Apple).

I’ll keep adding to this post with more detail later. See below.

Good luck.

What are you trying to draw/paint?

Here are a couple of finger doodles on the phone:

These were done very quickly to send via WhatsApp. The second one was during a FaceTime with Ruth’s grandchildren, when they were laughing at my eyes popping out. I sometimes play ‘swap the doodle’ with my grandchildren or send quick visual jokes and birthday wishes to them. The digital art apps are great for that but if you are thinking of a digital version of a paper image then it gets a little more complicated. As with any medium, it is easier if you create images that fit with the medium. All we need to know for the moment is that it helps to have an idea of what you are aiming for. If you are aiming for a particular size of printed image, then try to start with an image of that size.

Cutting and Pasting

I am now going to half contradict that statement above and introduce another tool. The image below is one I was working on, using techniques I had never used before, which are much akin to collage. It served to reassure me that I was getting somewhere but I didn’t like the colours of the feet at the bottom and the cars needed more variety. So I made a new copy of the image and started altering it. I simply rubbed out the feet and started again, having worked out better ways of doing that bit of it.

The result was this one:

You can see that the feet are completely different, I’ve added soil and subsoil layer and also creatures. There is extra colour and variation in the cars too. At this point I realised I had made the wrong shape decision at the start, so I was able to set up a new blank canvas and select a portion of the old one and copy it in.

I was much happier with that, so I added a few subtle changes and settled on the finished image (for now…). So don’t give up.

Importing an Image

Last week I was at a workshop on using palette knives, which I am not very practised at. I kept at it afterwards and produced the image below:

As an experiment I imported that image into the art app I was playing with and added a transparent layer on top (thank you Linda for the idea). In that layer it took around 1 minute to carelessly add some snow. Here is the result:

I use this technique to make things like Christmas cards.

While the landscape images above are here, we might as well look at a quick paint app version, done in a bit over an hour, using my finger as a pointer on an Ipad. I think it is not as good and would have to work hard to make it match.

Here is a version done on my phone:

In both of those images I tried to use the tools available to get a bit closer to the hard copy original. In the ArtRage package there is even a palette knife tool, but I couldn’t get that physical feel. A quick play with Procreate was even less satisfactory, but I am less experienced with that.

I’ll finish this particular post by repeating earlier advice. Treat the digital art Apps as a different medium. Play with them to see what works for you. Discover how they work best. So far I have discovered that ArtRage seems to work better than Procreate at reproducing different media while still being flexible in use. If you paint or draw detailed and smooth images, rather than textured, then the Apps might make a better job of reproducing what you do. Here’s one about us travelling through the world, that was digital from start to finish:

Here is one, called Dancing up the Dawn, that I’m working on. It uses all the techniques covered above:

This is much more complicated and there are basic figures that I have taken from previous work and then altered for this picture. I have used multiple layers to play with the arrangements. If you put a piece of the image in a higher layer, then it will cover the lower layer, so you can play with different overlaps. Even with the background I use two layers to try out different effects, once I had the basic layout and sky. I later went back to the top one of those two layers to play with the shadow effects. You can merge layers when you are happy to make it all a bit simpler to remember and make them temporarily invisible when you are having difficulty working out which layer is which.

Finally on Layers, the canvas is also a layer. You can choose between different canvases. The texture of the canvas will have an effect on what the paint does. All the layers, including the canvas, can normally have varying levels of transparency, so the can either cover up lower layers, where there is drawing in this one, or merge in. This is generally true of the canvas as well, to that the canvas disappears when the marks are printed. This is important if you are sending it to some one to print on a T-shirt or other object.

This image was taken by starting with a watercolour sketch I’d one, adding to it an altered cut and paste from a photograph and then playing with it all in the art package to get an idea of layout. This was then worked up into an acrylic painting.

I’ll just finish by saying a bit about the apps that you can use. There are loads of them and there are similarities but also many differences. I have found that there is no one app that is good for all purposes. They all have quirks. It also depends on the type of computer you use. Apologies that this starts to use jargon but at some point you have to understand different file types, print sizes and other such technicalities to get the best of what you are doing.

First remember photo manipulation apps such as Photoshop or Lightroom and free equivalents, like Gimp. They often have tools that are useful for image manipulation. It may be quicker to export your image, adjust it and then import it again. Next there are simple art apps on most devices that can be a less daunting starting point and a more icon led and more intuitive than apps catering to constant users. Finally there are alternatives to the obvious contenders such as ArtRage that I now use and RealWorldPaint.

Once again, Good Luck.