Watercolor Painting for Dummies (52 page)
Read Watercolor Painting for Dummies Online
Authors: Colette Pitcher
Tags: #Art, #Techniques, #Watercolor Painting, #General
Landscapes aren’t just about land; they’re about the land and everything on it. Buildings, animals, roads, fences, streetlights, telephone poles, and vehicles are just some of the items that can show up in a landscape. Some people view the evidence of human habitation as a sign of encroachment on nature. Others look on structures as just a design element to make a center of interest. Why or whether you add a building to your landscape is up to you. Personally, I like to just enjoy the scenery.
Houses and other structures make for great subjects, but they also can be a challenge to get perspective correct, so review Chapter 8 to get comfortable with geometric shapes and perspective. Most buildings and most typical houses start with a simple cube bottom with a pyramid roof. Breaking down the shapes into geometric patterns helps you simplify a complex structure.
When painting buildings, paint the big shapes first. Approach painting a building in the same order the builder did when he constructed it:
1.
Put the walls up first.
Pay attention to shadows on the different walls so you get a building someone could walk into, and not just a few two-dimensional squares. Review Chapter 8 for tips on shading a cube. Get the shapes and lines right.
2.
Put the roof on.
Make sure the shadows agree. For example, make the roof darkest on the same side of the house as the wall where you put the deepest shadow.
3.
Add the windows and doors after the house is built.
4.
Put in the details like shingles, bricks, and curtains.
Leave all the details until last.
Because details are so tempting, you may want to paint them first, but waiting until later can save you much heartache. Believe me, you don’t want to add a shadow next to some detail you already painted and have the detail disappear underneath the shadow wash.
Greeley, Colorado, the town I live in, was founded by Nathan Meeker. Horace Greeley sent the young newspaper man to “Go west, young man” and start a town more than 100 years ago. Meeker’s home is now a museum that just happens to be next door to my studio/gallery and provides a perfect starter house for beginning painters.
Figures 10-17a, 10-17b, and 10-17c show three views of the Meeker house. It would be easy to make the simple structure look less than sophisticated. But hopefully you can enjoy these paintings because of the different angles I chose to paint, the lead-in of the trees, and the extra elements of flowers and the well. You also get a look at painting snow. (For more on snow, see the “Drifting into snow” section earlier in the chapter.)
Figure 10-17:
Three views of a geometric house, the Meeker Museum.
These views also remind you of one of the nicer thing about art: You can make anything you wish. Emphasize the flowers, push the color, and make it better. Why paint the one measly petunia that exists in reality when you can paint an abundant garden to embellish your world? If you want to make the world a better place, that becomes much easier in a painting than in reality.
City scenes are exciting and brimming with life. The tall buildings are a vertical contrast to horizontal roads. Lights, signs, and people add to the flavor. Streets and sidewalks are a nice visual lead-in to the picture plane.
The way you choreograph the lines and shapes determines how long a viewer’s eye stays at your picture or how quickly that eye turns to the next picture. A line can lead you into a picture, but it can also lead you out. Vertical lines, such as the tall buildings in Figure 10-18, stop the eye from wandering away.
Figure 10-18:
Cityscapes are interesting and busy subjects.
Cityscapes are full of lines, so begin by deciding which lines to use, which to move, and which to simplify. Draw the buildings, roads, cars, stoplights, and any other elements as simple lines and geometric shapes. Organize the shapes you choose with lines and directions. Figure 10-18 is an example of a cityscape.
Decide on your center of interest. Perhaps it’s the small people in the lower third quadrant. When surrounded by tall gray buildings, colorful people become the center of interest even though they are tiny. Or you may choose the vanishing point in a one-point perspective. All lines converge to this point and lead the eye to the focal point as well. The opportunities to solve the cityscape design problem are infinite.
You are the manipulator of space. You tell your audience where to look and what to see by the choices you make. (Check Chapter 8 for advice on using geometric shapes and perspective; Chapter 7 covers composition.)
With cityscapes, the complexity can be a bit daunting to paint when you’re starting out, but they’re very rewarding when you’re ready to tackle them.
I feel a duty to record rural scenes, because they’re fast becoming an endangered vista. Farmland is vanishing quickly and being replaced by unscenic housing developments. Barns aren’t being renovated because of the cost. Agriculture is becoming corporate and less quaint.
The sweeping vistas, fields, and country lanes leading the eye into the picture make great reasons to paint a country scene. A farm and some livestock add interest. Barns have long entertained artists, and here’s the secret why: If the sides lean and the top is a little crooked, it just adds charm. In fact, it makes it better! The pressure for drawing perfection is off.
Rural scenes are naturally horizontal. The horizontal format immediately sets the viewer up for calmness and tranquility. Colors usually reinforce this by using a lot of blue (sky) and green (grass). Figure 10-19 shows these ideas. Make the transitions between colors and values slow, subtle gradations to keep the painting interesting without disturbing the mood. Country scenes should be relaxing, and these methods will help get the job done.
You may want to send a different message, though, and use a vertical format to portray the vastness of space and the comparison to a small human scale. Use your art tools of design to convey your feelings toward what you are painting.
Figure 10-19:
Country scenes make charming paintings.
Many artists, including me, love to paint
en plein-air.
Plein-air (pronounced
plain air
) is French for
outdoors.
I guess it sounds more appealing in French. That, and outdoor painting was made popular by the French impressionists in the 1800s. They could paint outside because someone invented tubes to hold paint, and artists no longer had to laboriously grind paint pigments and mix them fresh every time they painted. Modern artists take the tubes for granted as well as the many other art supplies that make painting outdoors easier.
A basic checklist of take-alongs includes:
Weather gear:
A sun shade such as a hat or umbrella, and sunscreen and/or bug spray if you need them.
Creature comforts:
Snacks and something to drink let you extend your stay. If you don’t anticipate a picnic table or rock being available to sit on, you may want a folding chair, too.
Camera:
Record your scene, or take several viewpoints to capture all the details. If the weather changes, you want a record so you can finish your masterpiece.
Painting gear:
Don’t forget to bring the tools of the trade, which I itemize in the next sections.
Think safety when you go into the wild to paint, even if the wild is just the local zoo. Go with a friend. Take a cellphone if you have one. Let someone know where you’re going and when you’ll return. Ask permission if you want to paint on private property. Park in designated parking spots and stay well off the road.
