Mountain Painting Demonstration Part 2

Here is part 2 of my Mountain Painting demonstration in oil and cold wax. Please let me know if you have any comments or questions?
Enjoy!

Share |

More Watercolour Florals

 "Iris Power", 6 3/4 x 10 1/4", watercolour
available by auction here, starting bid $50

 Don't ask me why I cannot come up with more original titles for these paintings, any help would be appreciated! This is my watercolour demonstration from day 3 of my workshop. The idea was to combine methods from the previous 2 days into this painting. We worked on composition, trying to find good shapes, both the positive shapes (leaves and flowers) and the negative shapes (the shapes behind the positive shapes). Both must be interesting (ie: interesting edges, varying sizes) and compelling (powerful shapes) if you want to have a great painting.

We began this with doing our drawings on tracing paper, which made them easy to change without damaging the watercolour papers' surface. When the designs were good, we traced them onto our watercolour paper. Two ways to do this are#1) to place saral transfer paper under the tracing paper with its black side down on the wc paper (or make your own transfer paper by covering the back of another piece of paper with graphite) and then put the tracing on top and go over all the lines with a ball point pen or #2) hold the tracing paper design against a bright window and then put the wc paper on top -you should be able to see through 140lb wc paper well enough to see the lines, especially if you go over the tracing paper lines with marker. I used watercolour pencils to trace my drawing on the window, varying the colours as I went along (remember interest??)

Here is the painting part way in. I was careful to loose some of the edges into the white background space, bleeding them back with clear water so no hard edges were left. The colour was puddled in, at the correct values, thereby keeping things fresh and eliminating the need to wash over them again = the key to clear, clean colour! I have gone back with another watercolour pencil to define the centre left edge of the upper flower. Most of the watercolour pencil melts into the washes, so isn't a problem the way that graphite can be. This stage makes sure that you have some hard and soft edges.

In this step I have added more leaves at the bottom, and threaded one large leaf up the bare right side. I did this without drawing it first. I loaded up my brush with non-homogenized colours and let the brush make the form by twisting and turning it while drawing it up my paper. I did some scraping into it with a credit card, and drew into it while it was wet with a watercolour pencil.I dropped other colours into the bottom to suggest other flowers behind and relieve some of the green. I have gone in and separated some of the iris petals and to add some texture. Note that most of the original washes remain untouched. I also placed a bit more colour into the background at the top of the top iris to show more of its form.

There you have it! Some things done with a limited wet-on-wet method, and some negative painting. Both combine to provide interest, while the exciting purity of colour puddling lends the power.

Enjoy!

Share |

"Winter Sun" acrylic painting demonstration by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Winter Sun", acrylic on canvas, 14 x 14"
$695.00 framed

I did this painting over the holidays, trying to bring some life into this winter cold we are having. I have been tremendously impressed and inspired by the watercolours and acrylics of Scottish artist Chris Forsey. They touch on a way of painting that I explored several years ago, and had forgotten all about. I thought I would show you the steps so that you can see how it was done.

Step 1: First of all, I need to tell you that I had no idea how this was going to turn out -I love the challenge of working from chaos!! The painting begins with a random mess of fluid acrylics, quin gold, quin burnt orange, and Perm Violet dark with a touch of dioxazine violet. The paint was put on wet-on-wet and dry brushed, with splattering, stamping with hand carved stamps and scraping. While this underpainting is warm in colour temperature, the final painting will have a cool dominance, bringing attention to these lovely warm colours.

Step 2: Some translucent and opaque blues were begun to get the feeling of snow and sky. I was careful to keep all the edges soft at this stage, as I wasn't sure where I was going.

Step 3: More stamping was done with transparent and opaque colours, and hints of trunks laid in. The edges of the stamped patterns began to suggest a tangle of branches.

Step 4: Tinted opaque white mixed with modeling paste was added to the bottom area with a palette knife in a loose fashion to begin to model the snow.

Step 5: Splatter was added to the bottom snow as were some suggestions of cast shadows. Trunks and branches were added in darks and lights weaving throughout the brush. A suggestion of the warm sun breaking into the coldness was added. Also at this stage the tree tops were further suggested by negatively painting them with the sky colour. Some faint distant trees were added and the sun was softened further to suggest a haziness that I felt expressed the frostiness of the morning.

Step 6: I needed to change the size of the trees on the left, so I sponged in some white paint and let that dry with the intention of glazing all of it with the warm 'brush' colours. In the end, I only glazed some of the white and kept the rest as I thought it looked like snow caught in the branches amongst some yellowed leaves which remained on the trees.

Enjoy!

PS: I will post another clearance sale painting tomorrow. Please note that Poppy Surprise and Iris Garden have been sold. Glad that this clearance sale is working!!!

To purchase this, or commission your own painting, please email me.

"Twisted" -acrylic demonstration PART 3

Step 10: White paint was added to the snow once again, leaving some of the more neutral white to show in places.

Step 11: Light blue/violet was used where the snow on the boughs would be in the shade. My imaginary light source is coming from the upper left.

Step 12: More sky washes to increase depth and interest.

The final painting. Smaller branches were added, the light shadow patterns refined, more foliage added, the sun more pronounced and sky holes refined. I hope that you have enjoyed this demonstration as much as I did painting it!

Enjoy!

To purchase this, or commission your own painting, please email me.

"Twisted", acrylic demonstration by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Twisted", 11 x 15", textured acrylic on watercolour paper

I did this demonstration for my last mixed media class of the year. It features working on a textured ground, and building up of translucent layers of acrylics. See below and the next 2 posts for the process.
Step 1: I textured the paper with light moulding paste in the centre where the tree will be, trying to be random with the paste, and applying it with a palette knife. The outer edges have gesso and gel medium on them, which were then imprinted with the lid of the gel jar. Care was taken to make sure that the negative space between the tree and the edging was interesting. Remember: Shapes first!! After the texturing had dried and cured for a week, a quinacridone magenta wash was brushed over the surface and allowed to dry.

Step 2: A quinacridone gold transparent wash was then brushed over the surface in areas, and was wiped back in others. Here you can see how the different mediums take the paint differently. The gel is non-absorbent, the gesso semi-absorbent and the moulding paste very absorbent. This gives an interesting quality to the paint surface.


Step 3: Brushloads of green paint were applied with the brush flat to the surface so the paint would be deposited on the high places in a random way.

Step 4: Green folliage applied, along with some browns for the trunk.
See next post for more steps!

Mixed Media demonstration -part 2

Here I am still at the make shapes and values stage. I have added a thin very dark glaze of acrylic, and while it is still wet, I spritz some rubbing alcohol with my handy Chloraseptic bottle (gives spotty spray rather than a fine mist). The rubbing alcohol pushes the dark glaze aside, revealing donut shapes of the lighter under glaze. I also stamped into this glaze with a dry stamp. I have also eliminated any distracting white shapes near the edges of the paper with transparent glazes.

Now I am working upright sometimes, so that I can get back and see what is happenind -trying to remember to get the big shapes right. I have glazed over various parts of the painting with transparent glazes of colour to give a wonderful glow and to link areas together, thereby creating larger shapes. You can still see some of my chalk outlines, which I have now changed since I first put them on. I am trying to play with the illusion of depth, making some of the boxes appear to be in front of others. It's fun to play with depth in an abstract painting, and to flatten the perspective in a realistic one!

Here I have removed the chalk outlines. This is it for the darks, for right now anyway. Up to now I have only been working with transparent layers.

This is the way it was left at the end of class. While working on it I have rotated it around many times and worked in that new orientation for a while, trying to keep my options open. Bad to fall in love too early! At this stage I have begun to add opaque lights into the painting. I am still just using the colours I began with, only this time they are added to gesso (my easy white) to make opaque layers. I have put some on translucently (thined with a bit of water) so that I could do my alcohol trick(see the light blue shape on the upper right edge) -repetition with variation, the key to a successful painting. Light against dark/dark against light. I applied some of the opaques through stencils to create new interesting textures. I really hated to leave it at this stage as I felt it was really beginning to come together. I will try to work on it this week to bring it to a finish -or maybe I will wait and do that so the class can watch next Monday. And thanks to Lindsay for providing the photos :)

Stay tuned for part 3... to come!

New Mixed Media demonstration -part 1

This is the end of the first step of the demo that I did on Monday for my Mixed media class. The objective was to make a 'start' using fluid acrylics, stamps and stencils, and then working our way to a finished abstract painting. I began this painting by squeezing Quin Gold, Quin Crimson and Ultramarine blue from the bottles in squirts around the gloss medium coated Aquarius paper, then squirts of Acrylic Glazing Liquid were added on top. Then a scraper was used to squeegie this around the page a bit to make some wonderful stained areas-these are the brilliant colour areas. Very cool as you get very unexpected patterns. The excess was then scraped off, drawn through and played with. Dry stamps were pressed into the wet paint areas to lift the paint, paint was added to stamps and stamped for a positive image, and a rubber shapper was used to draw lines back to the white of the coated paper. Sure enough, we have chaos here, but I have lots of textures and colours to work with.

Here I am hard at work -remember to wash off your scraper between scrapings or else you will end up with mud. I save most of the scrapped paint to use as darks later on. This stage is all about texture and colour.

While the first stage is still wet, I go back with my scraper and begin to define some geometric shapes. I am looking to get a flow between organic shapes in the foreground and geometric shapes in the background.

At this stage I have drawn some shapes with white chalk to suggest a direction I might like to go in. Of course, all this is subject to change as you shall see. I begin to place in some darks to define some of the geometric shapes. I also lift with some rubbing alcohol to get some white paper back. That is the beauty of working on a sealed surface! This stage is all about adding shape and value to the colour and texture we got on step one.

Stay tuned tomorrow for part 2!