Daily Agenda for Art 1 on 1/28/19

I am so sorry to miss class today, folks, but I've been sick since Thursday night.

Your main goal for the day is to, essentially, finish your watercolor that you drew out last week.
However, I want to remind you of some tips and best practices and frequent pitfalls. Please look at the bullet points below for all of those.
When you are finished for the day please do an extra strong cleanup job so I am not looking at a mess tomorrow when I know I will still be under the weather but on campus, and gingerly place your watercolor in your plastic tub.
Also, even though I am having you read this on the ipads, I don't want you listening to music today. The sub can put something on through the computer behind my desk, but I don't want you to have headphones in. I want you to converse and strategize with the peers that are doing the same landscape as you so that you can all have the best product possible.

• the biggest and lightest areas need to be done first
• this happens, usually, with a large brush and the wet-on-wet technique
• think in terms of layers
• this means that even though you may have grass covering some dirt, you prob need to paint the dirt first, let that dry, then come back over and paint the grass (this is how the lighthouse example by the board was done)
• never use black by itself, and use it sparingly 
• even that lighthouse with the stripes on it isn't black; yes, it has black in it, but you need something else in there; black by itself is way too stark (this is a lesson for pretty much every painting medium)
• color mixing is important
• think about the color chart we did, how can you use that? brown is rarely the brown from the paint palette; you may need three or four colors together
• test everything out on scrap paper ahead of time; colors, values, etc.
• have plenty of paper towels on hand
• use the hair dryers
• watercolor is a lot of hurry up and wait; if you try to paint a building right after you do the sky it will probably bleed together; you can't fix this
• I will often do sky, first ground layer, and then make sure everything is dry before I start to do the rest of my objects and details
• did I mention that the idea of layers is important? it adds depth, character, and dimension; you need to try to think several steps ahead in order to have the strongest painting possible

If you are finished "early", work on your sketchbook. I am getting better, but I'm not well. Have a great day and I will see you soon!

Smith

Daily Sketchbook 10/24

First, watercolors.
Second, mix up a bevy of monochromatic colors in your palette.
Third, make sure they are not very dark (so add a decent amount of water).
Fourth, with your big brush, create a regular series of brush strokes (each one separate from the other(s)) across a single or double page spread.

Make sure to cover the entire space.

Do not put this on top of something else, and please do not draw on top of this until you are asked. This is a precursor to another activity later - which is why we don't want it to be that dark.

Fifth, if you have questions because you don't feel like the directions are clear, please ask.

Daily Sketchbook 9/20

Remember that bird you began drawing in ink last week?
Go back to that page and spend some time adding watercolor to it some how to make it look better/more interesting/more complete.
Don't forget to photograph the entire page when you are done (without a shadow) and upload it!


Alternatively, you may continue inking if you don't feel like you got as far as you would have liked. Please just spend at least 13 min. working on this.

Daily Sketchbook 12/1

Continuation!
Go back to the same ipad you had on Tuesday and open up procreate. Continue working on your sandcastle drawing to make it better and more accurate.
When you have finished 12 minutes of working on it, export it as a jpg and upload that image to Canvas please.

Daily Sketchbook 10/12

Get your watercolors out and get the best and most interesting colors and techniques you can get in 13 minutes on your sandcastle drawing from a few class periods ago.
Don't forget about textures!

Daily Sketchbook 9/29

Go back to two previous daily sketchbook pages. The pages/dates I want you to reference are as follows:

• 9/13 - where you wrote a list of many things you are grateful for, and
• 9/19 - where you created a wash or a pattern of watercolor

I want you to take one of the statements/comments/items from the 13th and illustrate it on top of your watercolor wash/pattern from the 19th. Work in pencil for today please.

Daily Sketchbook 9/19

Step One: Get out your watercolor supplies
Step Two: Mix up 2-3 interesting colors that are LIGHT IN VALUE
Step Three: Create one of the following two options on the next blank page in your sketchbook

• a large wet on wet plus salt wash  that transitions between colors
• a regular series of small "hatch" marks which create a line across the page, and end up making a series of lines of "hatch" marks down the page

We will be adding to this page at some point in the future so please do not work on top of this until then.

Daily Sketchbook 5/11

Step one: go get an ipad
Step two: get your watercolors out
Step three: follow THE SAME LINK FROM LAST TIME
Step four: add awesome watercolor to the same image you were drawing last time

Daily Sketchbook 3/23

Take out your image from Monday (the pyramids and pine trees) and take out your watercolors. Add color and texture to your imagined landscape in a visually interesting way.

Daily Sketchbook Excerpts

There is a lot of good that comes out of the daily sketchbook, and I see a lot more than most do since I am the once looking at each photo online to "grade" them. Today was a day when a lot of that goodness was happening on the third day of working on the same page.
In my view it is/was a good way to take something that is already in existence but make it personal by having a "random" background.
Here are some of the in-process images from this morning.
Enjoy.

 

Art 4 Daily Drawing for 3/26

Ah, Scott C.
That is, the guy you drew from last time. You know, your pencil drawing.
Today I want you to go back to that image and add as much watercolor as you can in your 15 minutes to get it to look like the original.
Get your paints out and let's go!

Art 4 Daily Drawing for 1/22

Use watercolors (mix at least 2-3 colors together for each mixture) to fill in all remaining negative space from your hands drawings from Tuesday's class.
Please make sure that your value is lighter than a medium gray value.

Art 1 watercolor Landscape

It is that time of year again...when we are painting the lighthouse landscape.
As I have said, I have mixed feelings about this project - which I probably shouldn't admit to, but oh well. It is a great learning tool to comprehend some good ways of layering and combining multiple techniques all together; however, we all paint the same thing - including myself - which isn't super "creative".

With all that said, there is a very good chance this will be the best watercolor project you do for quite some time. Unless, that is, you give yourself plenty of time and practice outside of class.

If you want to see what the step by step process looks like - along with descriptions of the techniques and colors used in each area, you can look at the blog poss from last year.

You do need to go to the Dec. 2011 posts to find that information, though.

Happy painting, and have fun!

Water Water Color

I just realized the other day as I was cleaning up and getting ready for the semester break that I hadn't posted a finished version of the watercolor landscape that we did, so here it is.

Watercolor Landscape Step(s) 5 - ???

note that this example is still not finished, 

though all the steps for finishing the image, I think, are explained below

So there's a lot happening today that you need to be aware of, but I'm loading it on so I can give only reminders next week and (hopefully) you'll be done with demos/notes for this project.

1) Buildings
     color: brown, purple, orange
     technique: wet on dry
     Really we're just finishing these structures. There is a fence in front of the buildings on the right that
     we need to add, and there is some deck work (???) around the lighthouse up towards the windows.
     This is the color you want to use for that.
     Also, don't forget to add chimneys and such - you could use this color, or the same color as the
     shadows from before (blue + black).

2) Rocks - 1st and 2nd layer (see example below)
     Rocks on ground area above water & below the buildings - in the brown area. Really, we're, again,
     just looking for some texture there. Aim for variety of value, brushstrokes, and, slightly, color.
     color: orange, brown, black
     technique: wet on dry

     Rocks in water - this is the second layer on these, using the same color but with a darker value
     color: blue, black
     technique: wet on dry

3) Grassy Hill - below buildings (see example below)
     color: blue, green
     technique: wet on dry
     see notes for brownish rocks above and treat this entire strip in a similar manner while continuing
     to aim for VARIETY

4) Iceplant/Grass (see example below)
     There are two areas here, which should be defined by the difference in color you've already laid
     down - this is where you used salt texture.
     There is the greenish blue area and the greenish brown area.
     Greenish blue
     color: green, blue, yellow
     technique: wet on dry and dry on dry
     Greenish brown
     color: green, brown, yellow
     technique: wet on dry and dry on dry
     make sure you are working from top to bottom in these areas and allowing for slight variations in
     density of value and texture

5) Water
     color: blue, green, purple
     technique: wet on wet/dry
     Again, not aiming for homogenous color or technique, we just don't want the ocean to look flat.
     Really the only thing you have to be careful of is the horizon line and where you are going around
     your rocks. But definitely paint right up to these areas so that it looks like the water is going
     around and behind the rocks.

Watercolor Landscape Step "4"

Today is about a multitude of smaller steps as we have finished most of the "big" stuff.
Remember, watercolor is about layering and going from big areas with light value and little detail and progressively working towards smaller and darker and more detailed areas.

This is the order I did mine in today:

1) Shadows/Windows of buildings - including lighthouse
     color: blue/black
     technique: wet on dry

2) Rocks in water - layer 1
     color blue/black/purple/brown/orange
     technique: wet on dry

3) Trees - layer 2
     color: blue/green/black
     technique: wet on dry
     remember to not cover all of what you put on previously, we are aiming for a textured/dappled effect

4) Ground - layer 3
     color: I didn't mix these to be homogenous, but used brown/purple/black/orange
     technique: splatter
     make sure to cover your water area, and everything above that, so the splatter only goes where the
     sand/dirt and grass areas will be

5) Rooftops
     color: red/orange/brown
     technique: wet on dry
     do the top of the lighthouse as well ... and wait until the shadows are dry BEFORE attempting this

As always, test your value and color on scrap paper in the back of your study drawing book.


    

Watercolor Landscape Step "2"

After having the image sketched out; after the addition of masking tape to where the lighthouse will go; after adding rubber cement to where the whitest parts of the waves will go; do the following:

Sky, mix up a healthy amount of blue with a hint of yellow and green in it, testing your color and value, of course. With a BIG brush and clean water, get the entire sky portion of the paper wet - not soaking, but wet all the same, and then, working quickly, use that same big brush to apply your sky color to the paper.
Aim for big paint strokes and evenness.
Wet on wet helps with the even application, and since there is tape over the lighthouse, you don't have to avoid that area ... Just paint right over it.

Ground, mix up a large portion of brown and yellow.
With your big brush, use the same wet on wet technique to cover all of the ground.
As you can see in the pic, the ground below the lighthouse and the foreground all need to be covered.

Note that the color you test out on your acrap
scrap paper will be lighter on your actual painting because of the wet on wet technique - which has the same effect as adding just slightly more water to the pigment.