New watercolor set!

A little while ago I treated myself to a small Schmincke watercolor set. I finally got around to using it and I’m LOVING the richness of the colors. Although it’s a small set, I’m enjoying mixing colors from the basic assortment of warm and cool colors that came in the set. I've added some white gouache and still have space for a few more colors. Now, having tried the Schmincke watercolors, I’m convinced that I must buy a small set of Schmincke gouache also. Perhaps tomorrow? *lol*

My new Schmincke travel watercolor set.

 

Turning lemons into lemonade

"Woodland Stream" 9"x 7", watercolor

Here is my newest painting and boy does this one have a story to go with it! This painting was part of a series of watercolor painting exercises I’ve been doing to sharpen up my watercolor skills. Although I do know better, the complexity of this scene had me crossing my eyes in frustration fairly quickly after starting it. Now I do know better, I truly do. But somehow this piece was going nowhere fast and I was at the verge of tearing it up and tossing it away when a little voice in the back of my head said, “don’t give up on it quite yet…”

I listened. Pulling out an appropriate palette of Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils and some white gouache, I turned both the reference photo and my painting upside down and got back to work. I’m pleased to say that a few hours later I had this painting completed.

I don’t know exactly how I did it, except that I stopped fussing over the technique and just created it like I know how to do. That’s all. A pretty much a miraculous occurrence, but one that leaves me eager to do another painting.

So here’s my take away from this experience…

1. Remember that turning a photo or painting upside down tricks your mind into seeing the image as shapes only without the added burden of trying to understand them as things. This makes it much easier to interpret complex images like you see in this scene.
2. Don’t be such a purist that you turn away from other tools, if needed. I feel much more confident rendering complexity with a pencil than I do with a brush. That’s a fact. This image was pretty detailed and I intended to render it, not interpret it as a loose watercolor. Therefore, when I could not create the level of detail I wanted with my relatively unskilled brush, I turned to watercolor pencils which seemed to fit the bill better, at least for me.
3. It’s still a watercolor! It just was created with both tube paint and watercolor pencils. So ultimately, no harm no foul.

Cheers everyone!

New Watercolor Palette

As I'm considering doing a watercolor painting for my novel cover, I've taken stock and realized that my watercolor skills are a bit stiff and rusty. Horrors! I have several books on my shelf with watercolor painting practice exercises in them  and I've decided to get on with it and start practicing. As I began, I realized right away that I didn’t have a palette made up with many of the “standard” colors being suggested for the exercises. The palette I'd been using has some lovely colors in it, but many are non-standard mixed colors that weren’t reacting as the exercises had led me to expect.

Last night at about 10 pm, I cleaned out an old palette and prepared a new one, a hybrid of tube paints and some partial DS watercolor sticks. I had to do it this way as I only have some of the colors I needed, like Alizarin Crimson, in stick form.

For those who might be interested, here’s a picture of my new palette, with the names of the colors listed beneath. (NB: all are Daniel Smith watercolors except for the Davy’s Gray which is Winsor Newton.)

Lemon Yellow, New Gamboge, Nickel Azo, Cadmium Yellow Deep Hue,
Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Orange Hue, Cadmium Red Medium Hue,
Cobalt Blue Violet, Permanent Alizarin Crimson, Venetian Red,
Fired Gold Ochre, Burnt Umber, Sepia, Payne’s Gray, Davy’s Gray,
French Ultramarine, Indanthrone Blue, Mayan Blue Genuine,
Cerulean Blue, Cascade Green, Sap Green,
Rich Green Gold, and White Gouache.

I also added a few “extra” colors to play with: Lapis Lazuli Genuine (24), Rose Madder Genuine (25), and Natural Sleeping Beauty Turquoise (26).

As a note of these three last colors, they are all kind of problematic and I’ve really put them in here just for fun. Rose Madder Genuine is one of my favorite mixing colors, producing some of the best neutrals I have ever seen when mixed with a clean yellow and a clean blue. However, the downside is that it's a highly fugitive color with almost no lightfastness. So, unfortunately, it’ll fade in light quite quickly. I've tried before to replace it in my palette with Potter's Pink, which is much more lightfast, but I just don't like it nearly as much as a mixing color.

Lapis Lazuli Genuine is new color to me, a very delicate cool blue, perhaps too delicate to be of any real use, we’ll see. It may work well as a tint for cool white objects or snow, so that's probably where I'll try it at first.

New palette and color key

I’ve tried several times to use Natural Sleeping Beauty Turquoise in palettes and never end up using it. I’m not sure why. When looking for a Turquoise I tend to reach for either Ultramarine or Phthalo Turquoise before this one. But as the Sleeping Beauty is a very clean, transparent Turquoise it will likely create some harmonious neutrals when mixed with Alizarin Crimson…so I’m hopeful I can put it to some good use in this palette.