Category: Techniques

Techniques, Watercolour

Greens

Featuredby Jane Hannah4 Comments on Greens

Do not try to do extraordinary things
but do ordinary things with intensity.
— Emily Carr.

Testing out different green swatches today for my next trip to Costa Rica this year. These look quite boring but they are quite difficult to do, well for me anyway. I could have chosen for each swatch more saturation or less, more intensity for one colour as opposed to the other, so I tried to do to get consistently equal washes in both colours. That was the main difficulty. Some of the colours that really stand out for me are the following. The spring green, olive, khaki, dark green, rich green, mahogany, grey, and moss green. Generally, Lemon Yellow and Cobalt Green gave the lightest greens and the Hansa Medium made the brightest greens. The Raw Sienna gave the dullest greens and the phthalo green gave the most intense, bright greens.

I have always bought the DS Ultramarine, but the last one has been granulating, which I do not like, so I did another Ultramarine by W&N, which I prefer. The Prussian DS makes gorgeous greens; I will add this colour to my palette for Costa Rica in April.

If you like learning, you could look at Shari’s online classes. This is one of the exercises in her new “trees” course. She is well organized and her classes are always fun, especially since they are online.

DS: Daniel Smith :: DV: Da Vinci :: H: Holbein :: W&N: Winsor & Newton

Paper: 12″x9″ Hahnemulhe CP

Sketchbook Molesine, Techniques

Chill Mama

Featuredby Jane Hannah2 Comments on Chill Mama

For art and joy go together, with bold openness,
and high head, and ready hand — fearing nought and dreading no exposure.
— James Abbot McNeill Whistler

Forget everything I wrote about my scanner problems as I have resolved them. So here goes. Mac OS Ventura and Silverfast software 8.8 on my Epson Perfection V600 Scanner — which I love by the way. So I twiddled around with the settings and looked up info on Google. Hah! Who doesn’t do that nowadays? Anyway, I listened to one of the “specialists”. Argh! Everything that he mentioned was causing more problems than resolving them.

So yesterday I started tweaking the settings again and Eureka! Now everything is fine. Can’t believe it. Under “Preferences” –> CMS Input at Epson Perfection V600 –> Reflective –> Internal at EPSON sRGB. And that’s it. Everything is back to normal. So this is the image that I tested everything with.

This is my Chill Mama that started out as a tree and ended up as the Chill Mama. Sometimes I just let my brain and fingers do their own thing, without any guidance whatsoever. This can end in utter disaster, or just plain fun. For me, it was the latter.

Paper: Moleskine Sketchbook 5″x8″

Techniques

Scanner problems with MacOS Ventura

Featuredby Jane HannahLeave a Comment on Scanner problems with MacOS Ventura

I’ve been having problems with my Epson Perfection V600 since I updated my iMac to the latest MacOS Ventura and eureka! I have just figured everything out. You can disable the colour management completely in the preferences’ CMS tab and lo and behold, it worked.

I just wanted to let you know, if ever anyone is stuck with the same problem as I was having. Of course, you have to do the colour correction yourself, and I went to the histogram tab and readjusted my painting in no time. So here is the same painting as today, but with a new scan.

I had been using Apple’s default Image Capture application which is far below the Silverfast 8.8 application that I am currently using. The Silverfast is so much better. You can see for yourself right here. It is much closer to the real painting.

Techniques

Pretty colours palette

Featuredby Jane HannahLeave a Comment on Pretty colours palette

Quarrel
Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh
Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh
He who asks for much
Has much to give
I don’t ask for much
Just enough to live
Ooh, in the light
Morning will reveal the spoils of night
Through the walls of Jericho
Ooh-ooh, lies a heart of stone
With you, half the battle is proving that we’re at war
I would give my life just for the privilege to ignore
Don’t call it a lovers’ quarrel
Don’t call it a lovers’ quarrel
— Moses Sumney on Aromanticism Album

I’ve been working digitally on my watercolour palette’s next colour combos. I think that this one will work out fine -) This song, Quarrel, has a softness to it that feels so good in these troubled times.

Painting, Techniques, Thumbnails, Watercolour

Light & Shadows

Featuredby Jane HannahLeave a Comment on Light & Shadows

In art, the journey outshines the destination.
In art, mistakes are golden.
— Painters’ Keys

I am presently following a class with Uma Kelkar and boy is it hard… and so gratifying at the same time. We are looking at how light bounces off objects and how it reflects, on shadows, cast shadows, etc. Here are two preliminary sketches that I did. I used Payne’s Grey on Strathmore paper.

Sketchbook Molesine, Techniques, Thumbnails, Watercolour

Greyscale Study

Featuredby Jane Hannah2 Comments on Greyscale Study

For a strong composition, you want the values to be in quite different amounts, not similar.
Try this rule to start: two-thirds, one-third, and a little bit.
— Marion Boddy-Evans

This is a quick way to see if a painting will pull it off, without having to spend time on a painting that lacks contrast or composition or something else…

In a sketchbook, I created a thumbnail about 2″ x 2″. I quickly sketched the shapes (not the textures) and then created a low, mid and high-value tone painting, with only one colour. In this instance, I used Payne’s Grey as it is capable of very dark values and very light values. It is also quite staining. I painted over the entire area with the lightest of values, reserving the whites, and then painted over with the mid and darker values. I can now see where some darks should be darker and where lights are necessary. The second door on the left-hand side should have a darker value but everything else seems about right. So next step is to draw it on full-size watercolour paper and then paint it.

By the way, I am totally loving my retirement! When I wake up in the mornings, I still cannot believe it! After having worked all of my life on one job and another for over 50 years, mostly full-time, some part-time, some jobs that I totally hated and some that I loved, to now have the luxury of time, I am grateful!!! And the best job that I ever had was teaching for 27 years in the public sector and the best employer was Cégep John Abbott College for 21 years!

Greyscale Values

Paper: Moleskine Sketchbook #25
Colour: W&N Payne’s Grey
Ink: Noodler’s Lexington Grey
Fountain Pen: Pilot Penmanship, Clear, EF Nib, Japan (8$) bought at http://www.JetPens.com

Techniques, Watercolour

Values & Saturation Levels

Featuredby Jane Hannah2 Comments on Values & Saturation Levels

“The harder I work the luckier I get.” 
— Samuel Goldwyn from the Painter’s Keys

This looks like a really easy experiment, but in reality, it was difficult. But oh so bloody interesting to do!!! For this, I wanted to check out the saturation capacity of the paper, in this case, Fabriano Artistico Cold Press and test out different values of the same colour with different increments of value. I used Prussian Blue and Carbazole Violet.

To create this experiment I created a 10% wash over the entire area and let it dry completely. Leaving a strip of the previous layer and darkening the rest till I had 10 patches with white on one end and black on the other. The real difficulty was making uniform value jumps… hah! That was the killer. Result? The last value jump of Prussian Blue is oh so beautiful! It is almost like velvet to the touch while the Carbazole Violet is shiny and black. Different results, different intensities, different colours.

Paper: Fabriano Artistico CP 140 lbs
Colours: Prussian Blue & Carbazole Violet

Painting, Techniques

Gradients & Saturation Levels

Featuredby Jane Hannah2 Comments on Gradients & Saturation Levels

“Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.”
— Pablo Picasso

So today is another fun exercise. Playing with saturation levels results in beautiful gradients. The idea here is to start with your paper tilted to at least 30 degrees so that the “bead” of water can run downwards. Secondly, prepare your colour so that you have enough to cover the paper and by saturating it to the correct level (meaning that the watercolour should not be wishy-washy but swirl when putting your brush in it). Pressing firmly on the mop, the first horizontal stroke is with clear water, make sure that you have a bead before continuing. Next stroke with a higher saturation level, until, in the end, you reach 100% saturation (meaning no water). I used a brush Mop #4 for this exercise. After the first stroke of water, do not add any more water to the mix. Midway you will dip directly into your colours to get the saturation level higher.

My favourite is the mix of Ultramarine with Burnt Sienna and I don’t know if you can see it, but at the bottom of the gradient, the texture almost looks like wood or wool. So interesting. My second favourite is the middle one. So which one do you think would be best for a stormy sky? Which one would be best for an early morning sunrise? Let me know what you think…

Now the trick to all of this is being able to apply this technique in an actual painting. Hah! Peut-être qu’il y en a entre vous qui comprennent ce que je veux dire…

Paper: Etchr Sketchbook, size A4, 11.4 x 8.3 in [29 x 21 cm]
Colours Left: DS Ultramarine Blue + W&N Burnt Sienna
Colours Centre: DS Ultramarine Blue + W&N Burnt Umber
Colour Right: DS Cobalt Blue + W&N Burnt Umber
Brush mop: da Vinci, casaneo #4