It's Plein Air Season!!

And to celebrate, I have put my "Watercolour on Location" DVD on SALE for 50% off. Back by popular demand! From altering the scene to tell YOUR story, choosing a palette, materials, techniques, all the way to the finished painting, this professionally filmed video has it all.There are only 20 copies left, so get one while they are available. After they are gone, there will NOT be any more. To purchase one, simply go HERE  and follow the prompts.

You might notice that this email looks a bit different than in the past. Blogger has discontinued using Feedburner for their subscription service, so I have moved to Follow.It. Hope this service works even better than before. If you have any trouble, please let me know!!

Blessings

Sharon

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"Sunset ii", watercolour painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Sunset ii", watercolour painting, 7.5 x 11"
SOLD

This is the second sunset demo from my class on Wednesday morning. This time, I painted the clouds on dry, white paper, puddling in the colour, and then put the lower sky with the pale yellow in afterwards. When that was dry, I put in another layer in the lower sky of duller orange, leaving the bright yellow to shine underneath the clouds. The colours of the clouds are a bit brighter on this painting, because they were put on white paper instead of the yellow-orange of the previous post, but it was a bit more difficult to place in the sky colours around the cloud shapes. I think it is kind of interesting that both painting methods worked equally as well.

Enjoy!

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

"Sunset i", watercolour painting by Sharon Lynn Williams

"Sunset i", watercolour painting, 7.5 x 11"
SOLD

I did two sunset demonstrations for my experienced beginner watercolour class this morning. This is the first one. It began by painting a graded wash over the entire sky area, lemon yellow at the horizon and grading through gamboge, to an orange made with gamboge and quinacridone rose and/or scarlet lake, and ending with pale thalo blue. Then the clouds were painted on top of the dry sky. Edges were softened and colour puddled to add interest to the clouds, and then the orange sky colour was painted at the horizon up to the bright yellow 'halo' beneath the lower cloud bank. Edges of the topmost cloud were lifted and yellow-orange to pink painted in the lifted area. The water was painted with a combination of phalo and ultramarine blues, then a damp brush with orange paint on it was placed in thin horizontal bands while the blue was still wet -this pushed the blue away and deposited the orange cleanly with no back runs. It is all in the control of the water on the brush compared to the amount of water on the paper, and takes lots of practice to get it right. (Too much water on the brush would lay too much paint down and it would swamp the blue -too little water on the brush (mixed with paint of course) and the blue would lift up into the brush load, mix with the orange and make a muddy neutral.) Lastly, the suns reflection was lifted in the lower water and orange painted in it. Of course there was lots of playing around with the cloud shapes to get them just right! Below is the photo reference -taken on Lake Superior one summer on our way to the cottage.



I will post the second demonstration, done in a different method tomorrow, so stay tuned. If you would like some great instruction in watercolours, please consider my "Watercolour Workshop" DVD -see the sidebar on the blog for more information and a preview.

Enjoy!

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

Watercolour demonstration continued

Here I have completed the lower buds and stem from the upper iris. I decided not to go with my original plan for the leaves, but chose instead to keep the 'to the right' balance of the painting and added some leaves to the right side. These were made the same way as the first leaf, just using different colour mixtures. I lifted out the lights on the leaf while the wash was still damp. I like the resulting negative spaces better this way, plus I got to break into the space on the right between the two flowers.

This is a close-up of the completed top flower. In the shadow areas I had fun with warm and cool deep darks, puddling them in with juicy paint. It is nice to paint shadows full of colour. I also added some cast and form shadows on the flower itself.

This is a closeup of the lower flower. I added some light and shadow patterns to the front fall to make it more interesting. The last thing I did to the flowers was to add a very dilute yellow wash to the white of the petals, so you could feel the sunshine on them.

"Iris For Katherine", watercolour, 6 x 16"
SOLD 

This is the final painting, with all the pencil marks erased. I am very pleased that I was able to capture this beauty cleanly and oozing with colour. One of my students even bought it! Such a bonus.

This is the photo that I used as my reference. You can see that I took a lot of liberties with the negative shapes -they were just too equal in the photo to garner much interest. I also like my colour much better!

I hope you enjoyed this demonstration. Next week is my last watercolour class of the year, which is kind of bitter sweet. I will miss the students and their tremendous growth, many of them have become close friends. However, I will be glad to have only my own painting to plan for. I am happy to have done this little painting, as I am really excited about continuing to paint in watercolour.

New Watercolour Demonstration by Sharon Lynn Williams

I began a new demonstration for my morning class today. This is from a photo of some Iris I had -forgot to post the original photo, but will do so tomorrow with the completed painting. This is the sketch I made (I know it is hard to see, but it is important!) My intention with this painting is to leave the background as white paper, which puts a lot of pressure on those white negative spaces, so designing them carefully was of utmost importance. I took great care to have all the negative as well as positive shapes interesting and varied, and planned the spacing very carefully. Notice how the large leaf curls back in to point to the focal flower? That was no mistake or happy accident! I have put an X on the negative areas so I wouldn't get confused while painting.

You will have to bear with these photos -the lighting in the classroom wasn't the best. I began the painting with the large leaf, just to get my flow and establish the bright colours I wanted to exist in the painting. I rubbed out the pencil line before making the leaf by double loading my 1" flat brush (azo yellow on one edge and a mixed green of phalo blue and yellow on the other) and twisting my brush to make the leaf. I was lucky and got a neat end for the leaf. Then I widened the leaf and painted around the end of the lower iris petal, and then I puddled some mixed violet into the shadow side. This is to move the colour of the (yet to be) purple iris into the foliage, ensuring colour unity. Next I prewet the iris fall and tipped in a variety of violets to the edge and let the colour soften towards the white middle. I puddled some yellow-orange into the inside edges while it was wet. I also scraped some veins into the wet wash. Note that I did each of the falls separately so I had the most amount of time to play with the wet washes. If you click on the photos, you will see them larger.


Next I painted the iris petals, again using different mixes of bright (ultra. blue & quin. rose) and dull (phalo blue and scarlet lake) violets in differing values to give variety to the colour. One of the biggest mistakes I see learners make is to paint an entire flower with only l tube of paint -even with varying the values, the colour just isn't dynamic enough to hold the viewers interest. I will later come into this wash to add some cast shadows, but this is as far as I can go with wet paint. My rule of thumb is to do as much with colour and value in the first wet wash as this ensures a luminous result.

I lifted out some lights out of the damp wash on the top flower, which you can see here. That is also easier to do while the wash is just drying. Then I tackled the lower flower, which I have made to nestle around the base of an adjacent bud. I painted it the same way as the first flower, except I didn't scrape veins -I wanted the more detail in my focal flower. I did vary the way I used the colour though, so they would be different. When the first washes were dry, I popped in the cast shadow from that bud, using a rich mix of differing violets. I painted the base of the bud by puddling in mixtures of azo yellow, phalo blue, gamboge and scarlet lake. The top of the bud is in shadow, so I left that part for later, as I want the cast shadow edge to be crisp.

You will have to wait until tomorrow for the rest of this lesson I am afraid -blogger has a limit on the number of photos per post, so I have divided the pics up into two days.

Enjoy!

New Demonstration by Sharon Lynn Williams

I snapped these lovely Irises last year, and thought that they would make a good subject for a painting. The light and shadow patterns are super, but the composition needs some imagining. Perfect fodder for the floral unit my advanced watermedia class is doing.

We have covered value studies before, but this time I had them paint, rather than draw them. Each person was to cover their support with a middle gray. Then they were to put in the white gouache and black paint to develop the composition, moving back and forth until a satisfactory composition is found. It is a great exercise that forces you to ensure that values are linked, and puts more pressure on the design than on the objects in the design. You can see I took a lot of liberties with the photo. The tricky part is to only keep to 3 values, so parts of the flower that are in middle value would be the same middle gray as the background, creating a linkage from the flower to the ground. Very different way to use your brain.

Then we did colour studies from our black and whites. To be successful at this part, you have to remember the other biggies: contrasts of saturation (bright against dull) and colour temperatures (warm against cool), as well as use of complementary colours. After the chosen colours are blocked in with hard edges, as in the B&W, some edges are chosen to be softened to create transitions between value shapes. You can have some of the different values in the larger value shapes, as long as the shape remains dominantly the value you have chosen. These studies are only 4x6", so there isn't a lot of room to play around! It is fun to then work from the B&W to make the painting any colour you chose -another way to get past using the photo as a direct reference, allowing your creativity to come into play. We then painted 22x30" works from the two studies. I will post mine tomorrow.

Enjoy!

Watercolour Demonstration continued

This is how the left corner of the painting looked when I stopped at the last post. I focused here so you could see the before and after.

I cut a mask using a heavy piece of plastic (the kind from boxes) and scissors. I cut around the large petal in the front of the flower. Then with a damp soft silk sponge, I gently lifted the colour from the petal, blotting with a dry kleenex before lifting up the plastic. I could have lifted all the way back to white if I wanted, without harming the paper, this way.

You can see that the front petal now stands out nicely in front of the back petals.

This time, I cut a mask from some 'watercolour washout tape' with an exacto knife. The tape is heavier than regular packing tape and has less stick so it is less likely to damage the paper when it is removed. Packing tape will work however, you just need to be a bit more careful with the knife not to score the paper. For some reason you can tell when you have gone through the washout tape and it doesn't damage the paper. I lifted with the soft sponge the same way.

"My Poppies", watercolour, 6.5 x 10.5"

This is the final painting. You can compare this with the end of the last post to see the results of the lifting. Because the paint is put on in a juicy way without rubbing the paint into the paper, it is easy to lift back. This lifting not only sets petals in better approximation to the others, the lifted petal takes on a velvety translucent texture, just what you want a petal to look like. I also lifted out the bud in the centre with a mask, and then put a light yellow-green wash over it. Voila, a bud that looks like it is behind the flower.

Enjoy!

New Watercolour Demonstration

We are into a floral unit in my Wednesday morning watercolour class. This is a demo I did to show the students how to begin with a dark yet lively background wash, before putting in the flower colours. This is especially important for white or light coloured flowers, because the tendency is to make the petals too dark in the beginning, when painting them against the white of the paper. The dark washes remain lively if painted with very juicy paint, changing the colours every few strokes using a 1" flat brush. As shown in the above photo, I chose a large, but defined negative shape to begin with, puddling in the colour. While that wash was still wet, I softened some of the edges with a clean, slightly damp brush. This ensures that the flowers will not look cut-out and pasted on the background.

I continued in this same way, painting in all the negative spaces, softening their edges before moving on to the next shape. I puddled some orange into the dark wash to give the hint of other flowers in the background.

Then I began putting the first washes into the poppies, moving around to let some areas dry before coming back in with further washes to they wouldn't bleed together. I tried to use a variety of reds, yellows and violets to keep the colour interesting. The colour near the middles of the flowers is warm, and then it cools as it moves away from the centre. It is important to paint from a puddle of rich colour so that it will stay wet long enough to be able to puddle other colours into it.

Now all the orangey reds are in. I have left some white space that I will come into later with some lighter yellows and peaches.

Now all the white paper has been covered up, and this is the end of this stage of the painting. Notice how the original softening of the edges remain, making the flowers blend a bit with the background. Stay tuned next week for the exciting (I hope!) conclusion, where I will be demonstrating lifting out -something that I believe is very important to get the look of translucency of the petals.

Enjoy!

Another floral demonstration

This is the demo I did for my Wed morning class. For this one I had several photos of mixed flower bouquets to use as my source material. I followed exactly the same process as the last demo, except that I added reds to my palette. I splashed some water droplets into the damp wash to create some texture, thinking that perhaps if it looked like small flowers later, then I could incorporate some. I looked for flower shapes in the dry washes and did some drawing to show me where they could be.
Here the negative painting process has begun. I try to be careful not to take any one area too far at this point, and work all over the paper.
At this stage, most of the major flower forms have been found. I haven't done much inside any of the flowers yet, but have tried to give myself some large negative shapes where I can lay some more negatives to get more depth, so that all the flowers aren't on the same level.
"Flower Jungle", watercolour, 11 x 15"
This is the finished painting. You can see the negative areas are more developed as are the flowers themselves. My goal in the painting was to try to give the feeling of a mass of flowers, in varying shapes and colours, that flowed together to create a harmonious whole. I think I accomplished that, so I am happy.
Enjoy!

New watercolor demonstration - continued

More work on tying the composition together. When this stage was done I rubbed out the pencil lines, which increased the feeling of looseness, as I had only defined parts of each flower, and this let them blend together a bit.

"Daffodil Jungle", watercolour, 10.5 x 14.5"
This is the final painting. I did some lifting to define some shapes rather than paint darker negatively as I wanted to keep the final painting light and airy. I found more flowers in the background washes -this works because if I set the context for the painting (daffodils) then anywhere the viewer sees yellow, they read daffodils, even though I haven't spelled it out to them. I laid in some more dark leaves both behind and in front of the flowers to create a pattern of darks to anchor the design. I like this approach as each shape flows into the next in places as not every leaf and petal is detailed. This prevents the 'cut out and pasted on' look that I dislike, and shows watercolour off to its best advantage IMHO.
Enjoy!

New watercolor demonstration -Daffodil Jungle

This is a demonstration of a fun way to handle florals to ensure they remain loose and full of colour, plus it leaves a lot of room for creative exploration -which to me is why I paint. I began this painting with daffodils in mind, and I brought a small bouquet to class as an inspiration. I began by RANDOMLY wetting the paper in places, leaving some dry spots. Then I brushed and splattered azo yellow, gamboge hue, and some of the yellows with a touch of scarlet lake or phalo blue added. I paid no particular attention to where the paint went, other than trying to look for balance of colour. You can see where the random washes hit a wet area as then there are soft edges, and when the paint hit splatters of water, it created interesting shapes. Then I set it aside to dry.
The next step was to 'find' the daffodil shapes in the random washes. This takes some practice, but most of us can see animal shapes in cloud formations, and it is just developing that skill. I held one daffodil in my hand and where there could be a daffodil shape, I just turned the flower I was holding around til it seemed to fit and then drew it carefully onto the paper. It is critical to take your time at this stage as the painting will only be as good as the drawing is. I tried to make the petal shapes interesting and varied, whether or not they were actually like that in reality. Try to show the flowers from all angles as well as from the back for a sense of reality. After the drawing was finished, I began to bring out some of the flowers using negative painting as well as positively showing the bell of the flower from the petals. The goal here is to keep as much of the original paint untouched as possible to keep the freshness of the first washes.
At this stage I began to add in some background colour using ultramarine blue and quinacridone violet. I keep all the paint fairly light at this stage so I have leeway to do more negative painting if I choose later. At all stages of the painting I put it up at a distance to assess how things are going. If you only work at a close distance, you may lose the forest for the trees! My goal is 'how much do I have to do to enable my viewers to see a jungle of daffodils blowing in the breeze', and not a touch more!
Here I have begun to put in some positive darks to pop out the lighter flowers. Playing with calligraphy and my 1" brush allowed the leaves to twist and turn, without drawing the shapes on first and then filling in the lines with paint. This keeps some spontaneity.
More work on bringing out the flower shapes (notice the shapes along the bottom for example).
I will continue the demonstration in the next post...

Continuing with the wet-on-wet demo

OK, I have now decided to superimpose 2 boxes (making 2 frames of reference; in a box or outside of a box) onto the painting to 'hold' the rock scenes. I made them different widths to add interest. Then I decided which rock shapes would be wholly contained on one or the other boxes and which would overlap the two frames. This sounds confusing at this point I know, but it was done to hold my interest, and hopefully the viewers. Here I have begun to play with the frames, in some cases painting inside the edges of a box, and at others painting outside the box, to make a counter-change.
Here is the initial start of the painting. It is hard to see at this small size I know, so I will continue to show you the two views.
Here is the left side developed a little bit more. I 'found/invented' a twig form in the upper part just to add variety.
A longer look at this stage. This is as far as I went on Tuesday night; saving the right side for the demo on Wednesday.
Here I have done more work on both sides. I added some leaf forms to the right side. I am not happy at this stage as I don't feel you can tell what's going on. It's amazing how different it looks from 8" away, where it all makes perfect sense. As blogger will only let me post 5 images in one post, I will later on what happened next.
Enjoy!

Another New Step by Step Watercolour Demo

This is another flower demo in watercolours, done in the same style as the one I posted yesterday. This one was done for my Wed. morning class and the flower is Cosmos.
Step 1: begin with the main flower shapes on dry paper. Remember to puddle the colour and let them mix together on their own. For this step I used combinations of Azo Yellow, Gamboge Hue, Quinacridone Rose, Scarlet Lake and Ultramarine Blue (all M Graham watercolours, except the Scarlet Lake which is Winsor Newton).
Step 2: begin to puddle in colours for the background, making sure to puddle in some of the flower colour. Keep this stage fairly light at this point. When you cut around the flowers, you can soften the interactions with the flower edges in places. This is still done on dry paper using juicy wet paint.
Step 3: finish the first layer on the background. I splashed some water droplets into the damp background washes to make some blossoms for texture. At this point, the background has 'caught up' to the foreground, so it is now time to go back into the main flowers to pull them up from the background.
Step 4: The main flowers now have more colour and detail than the background. Make sure not to cover up all of the original washes on the flowers to keep the colour bright.
Step 5: Go back into the background and begin painting both negatively and positively to form the middle ground elements of flowers and leaves. To do this I used darker combinations of Azo Yellow, Phalo blue and Ultramarine blue as well as some of the previous flower colours on the found flowers.
Step 6: Continue to paint in the background to increase complexity. At this point mark making becomes very important, as I merely painted in the suggestion of things that will read as folliage. I let the blue cross the painting in a diagonal from upper right to lower left to counteract the diagonal of the flowers which move from upper left to lower right.
"Cosmos", 7 x 11", watercolour -A bit more tweeking of colour, shape and value and the painting is complete.
Enjoy!

New Step by Step Watercolour Demo

This is a new demo that I did for my Tuesday night class.
Step 1:
I began this by drawing the 3 central poppies only. Then I puddled azo yellow, gamboge hue, napthol red lt, and quinacridone rose for the petals and added some ultramarine blue and rose for the centers. When this was dry, I painted in the background colours working very wetly on dry paper so that the colours would flow and mingle and still be strong colours -if you prewet the paper, the colour gets diluted. I made sure to put some flower colour into the background so that I could 'find' some flowers there later.
After the background was dry, I went back into the main flowers and added a bunch of pure, strong colour, to bring them forward from the background. In doing this I could give them a 3D look.
Then it was back into the background again. I found flowers there, working both positively (painting the flower shapes) and negatively (painting around the flower/leaf/bud shapes). I used darker versions of the colours that were already on the paper for this.
"Poppies Return", watercolour, 10 x 7"
This is the final painting. I went back into the main flowers once more, mostly concentrating on the detail in the centers. Then I went back into the background negatively a couple more times to find more leaves and stems and give the painting more depth. I also painted some positive forms of leaves and grasses, and did some more painting to bring out the found flowers in the background, as well as lifting some shapes from the dried washes. I really like the way this turned out. It is colourful and fresh, which is what I was aiming for.
Enjoy!