Rooftops in the Negative

Watercolor, 5 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches

I’m still playing around with negative painting. I’ve always been fascinated with rooftops, so I decided to try some negative painting with rooftops. It’s very loosely based on one of my sketches, which is pretty darned loose too. Anyway I like the way this turned out. I’ll have to try some more of these. I might try it a little differently next time though.

This was one of those times that I had a huge ah-ha moment. I haven’t done that much watercolor and I’ve struggled to find a style of my own that I was happy with. But lately I’ve been working on Linda Kemp’s Watercolor Painting Outside the Lines, Jeanne Dobie’s Making Color Sing, and Stephen Quiller’s Color Choices. Even though Stephen Quiller’s book isn’t strictly watercolor, I saw the connection between all of them. I could feel my style mentally taking form. Now all I have to do is find a way to make it take the form of actual paintings. So it looks like more practice is in store.

Negative Painting

Leaves, 5 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches, watercolor

I bought Watercolor Painting Outside the Lines by Linda Kemp the other day. I’ve been obsessed with it ever since I got it. It’s only 125 pages but it’s chock full of information and exercises. She covers supplies, paint qualities, underpaintings, negative shapes of objects, how to paint negative shapes, and composition and planning. Even if I decided that I didn’t want to do any more negative painting, I would still get a lot out of this book. The underpainting section seemed a little early and misplaced to me, but she admits at the beginning of the section that she debated where to put it. There’s probably not a perfect place to put it.

If you do get Linda Kemp’s book, be sure to check out her free video lessons at Jerry’s Artarama. There are eight video lessons that coordinate with her book. There’s also a DVD of the book which I haven’t seen. The painting above is one of the exercises from the book. Doing the exercises has been worth it for me. It’s more difficult than it looks. Below is another little exercise from the book, creating landscapes with layers of watercolor washes.

Landscape, 5 x 5 1/2 inches, watercolor.

I’m about halfway through the book right now, so I’ll let you know my progress as I go along.

Virtual Sketch Date – May 2009

14 x 11 inches, charcoal on paper

This month's reference for the Virtual Sketch Date was a photo of two sister's at a hoedown. I decided to focus on just one of the sisters. I also decided to do it in charcoal. It's been a while since I've used charcoal and I rarely do portraits. I ended up covered in charcoal so I must have had fun with it. I was nervous about it at first since I don’t often do portraits, but I’m kind of pleased with it, all things considered.

 

Sky Studies

I was out of town at a conference, so I’m a little behind on posting these. Vivien Blackburn is having a sky challenge. I don’t get enough practice painting skies with watercolor so I took her up on the challenge. We’ve had lots of rain lately and I was afraid I would be painting mostly rainy overcast skies. But one day before I left, I decided to paint whether it rained all day or not. I did all of these from our front porch. Luckily, we had a bit of clearing and some nice changes during the day. It was good practice and by the end of the day, I had started to find my rhythm. I might have to make this a regular practice.

May 9 1PM, watercolor in Moleskine

At this point it was still gloomy and rainy but I could see a bit of clearing in the distance.

May 9 3PM, watercolor in Moleskine

Finally there’s a bit of a blue sky. I grabbed my sketch kit and rushed out to paint it.

May 9 6PM, watercolor in Moleskine

By late afternoon, there was a lovely, interesting sky with a nice sunset behind some dark clouds.

I’m hoping to get in a few more sky paintings. You can view all of the works of the sky challenge participants at Vivien Blackburn's blog.

Backup Sketchbooks

The other day I wrote about my traveling sketch kit that goes almost everywhere with me. Sometimes I’m caught without my sketch kit when I want to get something down on paper or just fill up some time while I’m waiting. A while back someone mentioned buying a bunch of little notebooks and stashing them everywhere for jotting down ideas and notes. (I can’t remember who it was now. If you know, shout out in the comments.) It was such a good suggestion, I thought I would share it.

I ended up buying a pack of tiny spiral-bound notebooks (5 x 3 inches) at the dollar store. I put one in the car, one in my bag, and several more on desks and such. I use them all of the time now. I make tiny sketches. I draft out painting ideas and take notes of things I want to remember. If I need to write something down for someone else, it’s easy to rip out a page. I use them all of time when I’m talking to clients at work and need to make a quick note. The one in the car gets used all of the time for jotting down notes.

Here’s a couple of pages from two notebooks.

On the left is a sketch I did at the doctor’s office on an unusually busy day. On the right is a note of a color combination for a strong dark black (alizarin crimson, viridian green, phthalocyanine blue). I keep them in a ready available spot with a pencil or pen so there’s no searching around for a piece of paper and a pen. I don’t know how I managed without them.

Virtual Sketch Date: April 2009

Rhododendron Bud
Watercolor, 7 x 5 inches

The reference for this month’s Virtual Sketch Date was a beautiful photo of a rhododendron bud provided by Jeanette Jobson. I decided to use watercolor and focus on the main rhododendron bud. I had fun doing this one. I would lay down a wash and then do some other things. Then I would come back and lay down another wash. So it was a relaxed, enjoyable painting.

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See all of my Virtual Sketch Date posts.

Turtle Point Alabama

Turtle Point is a country club along the Tennessee River in Killen, Alabama. I was there one dreary, misty morning for a baby shower. The river (and the country club grounds) was just beautiful so I walked around for a while taking pictures for use in paintings later.

Turtle Point
5 x 7 inches. Acrylic on painting board

This is a view up the river from the main country club building. I took some artistic liberties with the painting. In reality there is a boat dock and a small pier there. It was the rest of the view that interested me though.

There’s a lot that I like about this painting. This is another limited palette painting. Actually given a choice, I prefer limited palettes. If I have too many colors on my palette, I get caught up in the colors rather than the painting.

I’m still going through Stephen Quiller’s Color Choices. I had to smile at his comment at the beginning of Chapter 3. “I recommend doing many small studies before working large and going for your ‘masterpiece’! You can cover a lot more ground with a series of small examples rather than laboring over a large piece that, when finished, may or may not work.” I know I’m enjoying working on the small pieces and I don’t feel so bad when they flop.