Watercolor Painting for Dummies (53 page)

What kind of easel you take depends on how far you’re hiking to paint. I personally have a 7-foot rule: “Paint no more than 7 feet from the car.” If you stay close, you can haul heavy things more easily.

A nice luxury is a portable easel. Most of the time they are wooden, although you can get metal models too. A portable easel folds compactly into a small suitcase size. Most have a drawer to hold supplies and a shelf with a support to hold your paper, which adjusts to any angle or lays flat. They have legs that
telescope
or fold out. You can leave the legs folded up and use it on a tabletop. Most importantly, using an easel makes you look like an artist. And, if you’re performing in front of the public, sometimes how you look is important.

You can choose from many brands and sizes of travel easels. The traditional wooden French easel is a little heavy, but I like it. It has side shelf supports to hold your palette and other extras. French easels come in full size and a half size. The full box measures 61/2 inches x 16 inches x 211/2 inches all folded up and weighs 13 pounds empty. The half box weighs 12 pounds and is half as wide: 2 inches x 6 inches x 11 inches; but it only carries a third of the stuff.

You can get a backpack to carry your easel if you want to venture farther than a few feet from the car.

You face plenty of challenges when painting outdoors. The wind blows over your easel, bugs get in the paint, it’s either too hot or too cold, and then it starts to rain.

I’ve painted in every condition. One cold winter day while painting on location, my paints started crystallizing on the paper, and my palette turned to an ice cream–like consistency. I had to put those little chemical warmers in my shoes and gloves. Okay, it can be too cold. I’ve put sand in a gallon paint can and hung it on my easel to weight it against the wind. Okay, it can be too windy. I’ve huddled under my car hatchback because it was pouring all around. My painting even had rain dots on it. Okay, it can be too wet. But do you know what? I sold every painting I did in those conditions. Each painting had a great story and carried the feeling of the elements. There is nothing like really feeling the outdoors to make you incorporate those feelings into your painting. Also, working from life gives you a better sense of roundness and reality. Working from a flat photograph often results in a flat painting. Besides, any time you can enjoy the outdoors is a good day.

One time I was painting near Rocky Mountain National Park. My palette was flat on a picnic table. A magpie flew down and landed on the palette. He was fascinated with the bright colors. I got a good close-up view of him. I have also been visited by other Rocky Mountain residents while painting; deer, elk, chipmunks, beavers, raccoons, fox, bighorn sheep, groundhogs, and numerous birds all have been curious and patient models.

You also should be prepared to meet the human animals. People are fascinated with artists working on location. One beautiful Sunday morning while in Taos, New Mexico, I decided to paint in front of the old St. Francis de Asis church. Because I was vacationing, I could enjoy making a painting on a gorgeous morning and go to church by listening outside too. A tourist came by and bought my painting! It was the first time that had ever happened. Now I take a few prints and business cards along just in case.

I don’t recommend traveling with the watercolors you use every day at home. Instead, buy a small travel set of watercolors.

You can choose from oodles of brands, prices, and sizes of travel paint sets. Get one that has at least the basic primary and secondary colors. Usually a set of a dozen colors includes what you need. Most travel paint sets have a built-in palette or mixing area and include a brush. Some of these brushes are pretty small, so I like to take my favorite brush too.

If I don’t want to tote the entire dog-and-pony show, I pick up my mini set of paints with a folding brush and a postcard set of paper, put everything in my pocket, and off I go. These little tools are great for being inconspicuous. I like to take them to restaurants to paint or concerts where the performers sit still for long periods of time (this doesn’t work at a rock concert, of course).

And to do watercolor painting, you need water. To hold this essential element, you can choose from collapsible or inflatable water containers that fold flat and are lightweight.

Usually a river, lake, or some other water source is available where you’re painting, but depending on where you go, you may want to bring along your own water. Liquid laundry detergent jugs recycle wonderfully well into traveling water containers. Bring some drinkable water for yourself as well.

A half-day outing is a good amount of time to plan. If you’re fast, you can do a couple of sketches or paintings in that time.

Some artists collect data by doing sketches on location. Then they take the information back to the studio where they can do their painting under controlled lighting and in comfort. You can “sketch” with your camera, but there’s no replacement for studying a subject and sketching it with watercolor and paper. Your hand, eye, and brain learn so much more this way. A camera over- and underexposes light and distorts proportions. Watercolor is a perfect way to record the colors, shapes, and angles you see.

The biggest frustration in painting outdoors is the changing light. As the sun moves, so do the shadows. Here’s how I handle the shadows outdoors. If I’m painting the image of a house, I paint the house, its descriptive shadows (like different planes), and all its details, ignoring the shadows cast by the sun. When I have the house under control, I glaze in the shadows at that point and don’t worry about them changing. (A
glaze
is a wash using lots of water with a little pigment, and fully explained in Chapter 4.) When you paint shadows, you’re essentially painting air, so use a light touch, thinking “air” while applying your glaze.

The very best shadow conditions are at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. The angle of the sun creates more-interesting shadows at these two times.

1.
Choose a piece of 8-x-10-inch watercolor paper.

Cold-press or rough paper is necessary so the rough texture technique works well. Hot-press paper won’t give you rough texture as easily. (See Chapter 2 for more about different papers.)

2.
Activate your paints.

I used ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, alizarin crimson, white or yellow, lemon yellow, cadmium yellow, cadmium red, yellow ochre, hookers green, cadmium orange, and yellow ochre.

3.
Paint the top edge of the sky.

With a round brush held parallel to the paper, paint a blue-gray mixed from ultramarine blue and burnt sienna at the top edge of the paper. As you paint, roll the brush in your hand and wiggle it up and down so that the heel of the brush leaves an interesting edge suitable for clouds. Figure 10-20 shows the result of this technique. Where you choose to leave white will become clouds.

Soften some edges by adding water. Allow some water to make blooms for cloud edge surprises.

4.
Paint the lower portion of the sky.

Below the white paper left for clouds, paint a band of blue-gray, using the same brush technique described in Step 2 to define the lower edges of the clouds. Refer to Figure 10-20.

You can add a touch of diluted alizarin crimson to the bottom edge of the clouds, if you like. Make pink by adding a bit of white to alizarin crimson or add some alizarin to yellow to make peach.

Soften the bottom edge of the sky area by adding water so you can cover it with mountains in Step 7.

5.
Let the sky dry.

6.
Paint the next lightest area — the deciduous aspen trees.

Plan where you want to have the yellow aspens and paint them next. See Figure 10-21 for guidance.

With a round brush, dot lemon yellow paint at the top of the aspen foliage. As you continue the round shape of the foliage, paint cadmium yellow. Drop in a bit of cadmium red and yellow ochre toward the bottom.

7.
Let the aspens dry.

8.
Add a light layer of mountains using rough texture.

Mix some alizarin crimson with ultramarine blue and a touch of burnt sienna to neutralize the mixture to a gray-purple for the mountains.

Apply the paint quickly and dry (not a lot of water in the paint) around the tops of the aspen trees, using the side of the brush to create rough texture. The mountains define the tree shapes. Figure 10-22 is an example.

9.
While the mountains dry, work on the bottom of the painting.

Put in some pale gray tree trunks, plan and paint a few burnt sienna rocks and a burnt sienna path as well. See Figure 10-22. You’ll add some shadows to the path and rocks in Step 12.

10.
Paint in the coniferous trees to outline the deciduous aspens and define the trunks.

Check Figure 10-23 to see my final placement.

Mix a dark green by adding alizarin crimson to hookers green. With the tip of the round brush, paint the pine trees around the aspens. The pine trees define the aspen shapes. Dot in some dark green in the aspens to show the pine trees behind them.

Paint around the aspen trunks with the dark green. The light aspen trunks show well against the dark.

When painting the pine trees, try to vary the trees’ heights and widths, and the spaces between the trees.

11.
Warm up the foreground with a glaze of yellow.

12.
Paint shadows on the rocks and down the path, and add any last details.

See Figure 10-24. The shadows on the rocks and path are a blue-gray made from a mix of ultramarine blue and burnt sienna. Some rough texture strokes using gray on the path look like tire ruts in the road.