Moving Water Watercolour Demo – Crofton Group BC CANADA

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Here’s the second demo in our Crofton Art Group watercolour workshop April 2018. Thanks again to Evie Frisby for taking such excellent notes which I’ll post again here.

Here is a good example of letting watercolour be watercolour. Since it is wet, it does wet things! It spatters, flows and mists wet into wet, among other watery things. Let’s break this down into a few steps:
Try a limited palette: 1 dark value blue such as Prussian or Antwerp Blue, 1 dark value red such as Alizarin Crimson, 1 powerful yellow such as Quinacridone Gold.
Step 1: After planning your painting with a value thumbnail in your sketch book, consider where you might be leaving the white of the paper to describe the breaking surf and waves. This demonstration included areas of painted resist (latex “misket” “frisket”, “masking fluid” … all the same). Avoid over-use of resists, they show too much! Try leaving white areas by painting around them in soft wet-in-wets and a “scumbled” dragged brush leaving lost & found edges.
Step 2: Wet the paper – slight sheen. Big shapes first – wet-in-wet sky, water and land masses. Working from light to medium to dark values, try mixing paint right on the paper rather in the palette. Paint consistency is like whole milk to coffee cream – lots of it! Paper surface has a sheen yet not too wet. If it’s too wet it will wash out the colour and you’ll have a flood. This produces glorious “broken” colour rather than less interesting mixtures in the palette. Avoid small details for now.
Step 3: Think about where your light source is coming from and create wet-in-wet conjoined shadows on the shadow side of the surf. Note that the boat in the distance is shaded on the viewer’s side, telling us that the light is coming from behind to the left.
Step 4: Now the small stuff. Always wait for the small details and add them at the end. No fussing with small brushes up until now! With a good brush you can flood in the big shapes and work in the fine small shapes, all with the same tool. Generally the small final touches are the darkest darks, the sparkly whites with designer’s gouache.

Here are Edie Frisby’s notes (with her permission)

Workshop on painting “moving water”: April 11, 2018 – Crofton Painting Group
Notes taken by Evie Frisby

PRIMARY COLORS:

Red (Red & Green = Xmas colours)

Yellow (Yellow & Purple = Easter colours)

Blue (Blue & Orange = Fall colours)

.. Primary colours used beside each other = INTENSITY

.. Mixed together = NEUTRALIZING TONES (grey or brown = tones down colours)

.. Used to darken each other

OPAQUE COLOURS (earth colours)

Don’t mix more than 2 opaques together. This loses the lustre of the paint and makes it dull!  Opaque colours are the Cadmium Colours; Cerulean Blue; Indian Red; Yellow Ochre

COMPLEMENTARY PAIRS (opposites) makes work “shimmer”

Peggy’s favorite colours:  Ultramarine Blue (red in it); Prussian or Antwerp Blue (green shade); Windsor Phthalo Blue (green shade);  New Gamboge Yellow; Transparent Yellow; Quinacridone  Gold;  Cadmium Yellow Med.  She also uses Alizarin Crimson, Permanent Rose, Cadmium Red

Peggy’s Note: A limited palette: creates  harmony in a painting


VALUES (Mood): (squinting your eyes — takes the colours out of the composition so you don’t get distracted with the details and can see the values better)

  1. Lighter Values = HIGH KEY
  1. Darker Values = LOW KEY

Note:  Don’t have to use the values in the reference picture – change the value/mood to suit your what you decide!

THUMBNAIL SKETCHES!

Thumbnail sketches determine: 

  1. Value
  2. Focal Point
  3. Palette Colors
  4. Light Source
  5. Placement of Shapes (e.g. Horizon line) Horizon should not be in the middle of the picture; lower horizon gives a “vista” design.  Higher horizon gives a “local feeling”
  6. Linking shapes!  Where shapes are all connected!  This simplifies the painting.  Join the shapes in the value study/thumbnail!

WATERCOLOUR PAINT RATIO FACTORS: 

Water to pigment

Wetness to the paper and timing for drying

Content of pigment

Explaining Consistencies of washes:

Apple Juice

Milk

Cream

Butter

GLAZING:

Glaze on top while colour is still wet … this gives a “glow” (e.g. use yellow on paper then add blue on top directly on the paper to create a green color.

BRUSHES:  Peggy’s favorite – Quill Mop (holds loads of water and pigment) Brush Brands: Neptune; H.J. Kazan; Escoda.  Rigger Brushes:  different widths.  These make “lucy-juicy” marks and make “water squiggles” in the foam.

PAPER:  Peggy’s favorite paper is Fabriano (handmade and very soft paper good for lifting color)

Note:  Supports like plastic corrugated backing doesn’t let watercolor paper breath.  Peggy suggests Door-skin or plywood and use Bull Dog Clips and not masking tape to attach to paper!

TECHNIQUES:

  1. Work larger shapes first 
  1. Mix large pools of paint/water
  1. Direct Painting:  Plein Air and “in the moment – Alla Prima
  1. Indirect Painting:  When you are “planning” out the painting – doing glazing etc.
  1. Save the whites: Plan ahead
  1. Link Colours during the under-painting
  1. Introduce colour INTO colour in the wet underpainting:  put down water first then paint wet into wet
  1. Lifting to make white again:  while paint is still wet you can lift up paint around the shore line to create a lighter value and create movement, also lift off  with rubber eraser for waves coming up on the shore
  1. Lost and Found Edges:  when making water and waves
  1. Splatter:  Experiment with splatter – timing is important for splattering
  1. Think of big shapes — decide where to put; shadows; determine light source; the stronger the light source the “darker the shadows” should be.
  1. Mixing colour on wet paper – e.g. start with “Magenta” then add “Ultramarine”
  1. For reflected water pull up vertical strokes starting from the bottom of the paper; drop in darker colour and hold up the paper into the air to make the colour run
  1. Work in negative shapes: use thirsty brush to lift paint to make shape; lift paint while paper still has a sheen
  1. Water bottle misters:  have one that does very fine droplets spray as well as a regular sprayer for spraying over the dried paints.
  1. Kneaded Erasers:  they are better than the vinyl erasers for lifting off the graphite drawing pencil.
  1. Ruling Pens:  they give a varying thickness of lines
  1. Water Media Acetate can be used to lay on top of the painting while work in progress to see what colours/shapes will look like …. before diving into the painting to make the changes
  1. Working with “what has happened so far with the painting” and then reassessing the next steps
  1. Vignette style:  not painting realism to the edge of the picture … less painting around perimeter leaves more for the viewers imagination

RESISTS:  FRISKIT/MASKIT (liquid latex)

  1. Only apply to Dry Paper
  2. Put soap on brush first to save the bristles from hardening or rinse brush out with water continuously; use GooGone to remove resists from brushes
  3. Don’t leave frisket/maskit that is applied on the painting in the sunlight
  4. Substitutes for use of Frisket – White Gouache; Designer colour white; Dr. Martin’s Bleed-proof white (water based); White acrylic; Zinc White (transparent)

Techniques using Frisket/Maskit:

  1. Creating Waves:
    1. SCUMBLING the belly of the brush filled with Frisket across the paper
    2. SPLATTERING .. TAP DOWNWARD with Frisket on the brush to create splatter to make water breaking … splatter in the opposite direction of where the wave is breaking
    3. DESIGNER GOUCHE:  mix with water and tap brush to create water splashing form on the shoreline

Note:  Painters that Peggy suggests to view their work on YouTube:  Joseph Zbukvic, Alvaro Castagnet, Herman Pekel and Robert Wade.

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