Ellen Crimi Trent:Mini Monday Madness

 Ellen Crimi Trent was born in Massachusetts and graduated from the prestigious Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.  First she went into designing children's wear before deciding to become a freelance print designer. She branched into licensing. She leads art tours in Europe yearly. She now has a YouTube channel and Patreon. You can definitely hear that Eastern accent when she speaks!

Ellen's Patreon has a sketch level for $3 a month, another level for $6, and one for $12. 

The $6 level includes sketches and references and her YouTubes without any commercial interruptions. 

She started doing Monday Mini Madness, painting small, about 4" by 4" or on special cards made by Stonehenge that are 2.5 by 3.75 in. (These are available at Blicks or Jerry's for $1.99 each. Amazon is a bit more, since you have to buy 12) I enjoy referencing her when I want to get some ideas for making cards. (Although she does have a lot of regular sized painting projects).

Painting small has some distinct advantages:

   You aren't using a lot of paper or paint. 

   You have to focus on the most important parts of the painting. There's not a lot of space for        special effects or techniques. 

    And it doesn't take a lot of time. It's great when you don't have a lot of time to paint but still     want to keep your brushes wet. 

   It's good for experimenting with composition.

Usually with her minis, Ellen will tape down two cards, side by side, and teach both pictures in the same video. Often they follow a similar theme. Here is a link to some of them:

hot and cool flowers mini

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Py8ZOWzSJhQ

abstract landscape mini

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=mk5OxZWufoU

Each mini teaches about an art concept: hot and cool colors; painting loose; negative space; etc.

When I did mine, I wanted to have a theme. I took a walk in our local park by the river, Lesko Park, and took some photos and made mini paintings from them. 

I prepared the paper by dividing my 9 x 12 paper into squares (4 squares and 2 smaller rectangles). I taped off each to give me a border around each one. I drew a scene onto each square. (Top left to right: bird feeder and iris buds, spring blossoms, large, and a lady walking her 2 dogs. Bottom left to right: house with pink tree, small blossoms, and blank.)

The bird feeder scene was inked off with permanent micron. The large buds only have a bit of Miskit on the stamens. The house scene has Miskit loosely sponged (or use paper towel wadded up) over the pink tree. The small buds were completely covered in Miskit. Each one to show a different process.

Bird feeder: Ink and wash is one of my favorite ways to paint! If this were a larger piece, I would be using several widths of water proof ink. I used an 05 Micron for this size. I just washed in a sky (opportunity for practicing clouds or sunsets here). I washed in some yellows and greens for the stems and leaves. It had to dry to do the bird feeder, but it dried pretty quickly. Besides ink and wash, I wanted to show using an "underpainting." I painted all the shadows with a cobalt blue. (Mine are on the right side of the feeder) when that dried, I washed over it all with burnt umber and some ochre. Instant shadow! You can add whatever details you like after that, such as a little color in the iris buds.

Small blossoms: This was a demo on negative space. While Miskit is on the buds, loosely wash in some blues and yellows to create sky and some greens by the flowers. You wash color over everything, including the stems. This has to dry completely. Then draw in some leaves or stems. Mix a darker green. Then paint AROUND the newly drawn leaves and stems, to make them stand out. If it is to be sky, use a darker blue around it. Be sure to blend the new color into the background so you don't have any hard edges except around the leaves. You can do this several times, going darker each time. 

Remove the Miskit and paint in the blossoms. If you want white blossoms, just paint in blue in the shadows. 

House and pink tree: There is just a bit of Miskit where I want to paint the pink buds on the tree, and maybe on the tiny flowers around the house. I applied this with a crumbled up towel (or you can use an old sponge) so that there would be little spaces and not just a big solid white space. Paint greens around the background trees, grass, etc. The background trees should be a little bluer or duller than the foreground. The yellow green should be in the foreground.

Paint the house any color you want, but the left side should be a darker versions of that color to suggest it is the shadow part. (in mine, the light source is on the right, shadows to the left) While painting the house, be aware of the perspective, especially doing the windows. They should all slant the same way. Paint in the roof and windows if the area around them are dry. 

To do the pink tree, remove the Miskit. Be sure to leave some of the white. Wet some of the white and drop in pink dots. These wet ones will give a softer look. When dry, add some darker pink to give volume to the tree. Paint in the trunk and a few branches. 

I didn't have time to do the larger blossoms. On it, I only used masking fluid on the tiny stems. The flowers are large enough to just paint around. I wet the entire background and dropped in colors I liked: cerulean blue, yellows, etc. I wanted a very loose background, and all the attention to be on those white buds. I wanted white buds, so just painted the shadows a pale cerulean with a little burnt sienna in it. I painted the centers yellow (wet in wet), and painted in the stamens with yellow, making a blue shadow under each stamen. 

The other picture is a woman I saw walking her two little dogs in the park. The sun was casting a pink reflection on the river, but the river was a muddy color from all the rain and mud. 

Mini sketches:   

Progress photo: House pic still has Miskit on the tree; small blossoms Pic has just the first color wash.

Progress photo: House pic has blossoms on tree. Blossom pic has negatively painted leaves and stems.

Still has the masking.

Last Progress photo: Large blossoms are finished. Small white blossoms have Miskit removed, and are ready to paint any color you wish.

Karen Rice: Abstract City Skyline

Karen uses cut up credit cards to create abstract designs. One of the easiest and most fun is a city skyline reflected in water.

For class, we created a loose sunset and reflection, then let it dry.

Then we practiced making marks with credit cards. You need to be sure your paint is right from the tube. Just three of four colors you really want to try together. On mine, I tried it on rough paper, hot press, and cold press. 

On the practice, we wet a strip across the paper where the horizon line would be. Then we practiced pressing the card edge into the paint, making marks, scraping across, making semi-circles, all kinds of marks to indicated buildings. Then we sprayed the bottom of the buildings and allowed the paint to drip down, using a wide soft brush to drag down some drips to look like reflections.

This one was one rough press paper.

After our "sunset" wash had dried, we did the same thing to that. I was born in St. Louis, so I wanted to create the Arch on my skyline. This was on cold press. I think I needed more practice doing an arch.

Here is Karen Rice's tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GokfkBPIj2M

She makes corrections after it is dry, sometimes using gouache (opaque watercolor) to create 

lights. 

Karen has a lot of YouTube's with this process, including some seascapes and landscapes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Hs_tsT-5ag

She does have a Patreon, and I believe it is $6.50 a month. 

I like the idea of adding things in the foreground: sailboats, a shoreline, docks, ships, etc.

Have fun with this!!!!

Karen rice florals

 

Karen Rice is a YouTube artist from London, UK, and over the last 30 years has accumulated a large following. Her tutorials on YouTube tend to be 14 to 20 minutes, and her patreon ones are longer and more complete. Patreon costs $6 a month. For $4550 you can join her group painting in Portugal. OK, I wish.

Karen is known for using a sharpened twig for branches, stems, and veins in flowers. She is also known for creating abstracts using the edge of a cut credit card. This week was focused on two ways she does florals. One is by masking out the flowers and doing a very loose and free background. The other is a wet into wet technique for flower petals.

Below is her tutorial for poppies in a field. Basically, she used masking fluid to mask off the poppies in the foreground and stems and grasses. I don't love Miskit, so I used contact paper instead for the larger flowers. If your paper is 100% cotton, you can use masking tape/packing tape/contact paper for this.

There are two methods of applying contact paper. You can cut the shape out with scissor and then rub it onto the paper, removing any air pockets and sealing the edges. OR you can put a square over the area you want---cut it gently with a craft knife--then remove the parts you don't need.

If you want to dry with a dryer, use a low setting only. Heat will adhere the masking fluid or tape to your paper, and make your life miserable.

After any masking is dry (contact paper doesn't require drying time), you wet the entire paper with a large brush and brush in quinacridone gold over the surface. While wet, apply some dark muted green and scrape in some grasses and stems with a sharpened twig. SPATTER red over the page. Choose a few spatters to enlarge and turn into background poppies. Let it all dry.

Remove the masking. Paint a light wash  of warm red with a little orange in it over the poppies and score some petal veins and crinkles with your twig or bottom of paint brush. Leave some whites. Paint in stems and any more grasses you may need. With dark purple or blue, paint some black on the bottom of the poppies, and moisten that area with water to soften the dark into the petals and onto the stem. For buds, I like to use a green with some purple dropped in. 

For stems I made a line of green on the right side of the stem. While it was still wet, I dropped dark blue every two inches or so. (I personally don't like to paint more than 3" of one color without breaking it up). Then I ran some clear water over the left side of the stem, and allowed the paint to soften and move to the other side, only lighter.

Here is the link to this YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Mg0syCZY7U

The other flower we tried today is cosmos. What I hope you take away from this was using wet into wet techniques. Cosmos can be any color, so you can use anything you like. 

In Karen Rice's tutorial she used just one color of pink for the flower petals. I prefer using two similar colors (lemon yellow/gold yellow; cool pink/coral; cerulean blue/cobalt; etc.) to give it variety, but that is up to you. She is just trying to keep it simple and not introduce too much at one time for beginners. If you do use more than one color, be sure each petal has those same colors in it.

I demonstrated the two main ideas here. One is called "flooding" the paper. You take "creamy" thickness of paint and apply it to the tips (or to the center) or dry paper,  then "flood" the area with clean water. In flooding, you start where there is no paint and push water toward the painted area before it has a chance to dry.

The second way to do it is to wet the petals with clean water, then drop in the color. I always drop it in where the darkest part will be and let it move toward the lighter parts. In either of these ways, you can "draw" veins in by using your twig or end of paint brush...start where the paint is darkest and draw it down the petals to create a vein. ALWAYS do veins toward the CENTER when doing flowers. 

(She will explain what she means by "creamy," but it mostly means thicker than thin and transparent, but not like straight out of the tube. The paint will not drip off the tip of the brush, but releases nicely on the paper.)

In this picture I allowed some petals to bleed into their neighbors, and others to look more separate. I also dropped in a different but similar paint color to add variety. I added the yellow center while the top petals were wet so the yellow would bleed into them, but left it dry on the bottom, leaving a fleck of white. 

In the picture above, you also see some lighter areas that have been "lifted" while the petals was wet. To do wet lifting, wipe the moisture from a clean brush, and let it soak up the color while wet. If the petal has dried, "lifting" involves wetting a clean brush with water, and gently rubbing over the area. Then pat it with a paper towel or tissue. 

Keep looking at the final photo of the cosmos. You will see some petals with "lost edges." We talked about lost edges when we did the goldfish. It prevents your picture from looking outlined, and can give the effect of distance. The first flower on the left has two petals with lost edges, one on the top and one on the bottom. It is achieved by gently loosening the paint at the edges so they are not hard and defined, but fade into the background a bit.

Here is Karen's YouTube on cosmos. You can get her reference from the YouTube, but it is from pexel.com. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T52C2Pb4VF0

FOR DIRECTIONS FOR APPLYING CONTACT PAPER AND MISKIT SEE THIS:

https://dearingcampbell.blogspot.com/2018/04/using-miskit-and-other-means-of-saving.html

ERIC YI LIN

Eric Yi Lin- Cafe Watercolor

Eric was born in Taiwan, and moved to the United States when he was 14. He lives in the Seattle area with his wife and three sons.  He attended art school, and worked in art fields before deciding to dedicating his time to Watercolor and his own art.

He has an online art school program that takes you from basic drawing skills to painting skills. He has a very loose style, which he demonstrates on YouTube . I love his gentle, conversational style. His focus is more on composition and making a successful painting. YouTube's do not include drawings...you watch him do the drawing...or references. If you subscribe to his Patreon page, you can get the references and final picture that you can download. The cheapest Patreon is $5. His higher ones include more personal attention, such as help with your painting.

                                                                                                                  

Here are some examples of his style.

   

           

    Here is one of his beautiful portraits of his wife. He can do landscapes, animals, flowers, anything. His main focus seems to be landscapes. 

Eric's mentor is Andy Evanson, (pronounced with a long e) a well-respected workshop artist. You will find that he emphasizes the importance of three basic things: value studies, connecting shapes, and simplifying into large shapes.

In order to give you a feel for his teaching process, I've chosen this photograph I took coming home from work one day, a barn about 5 miles from my house.

I put it on my Notanizer app to bring it down to 2 values, white and dark. I evaluated what I wanted to keep, what I wanted to treat as light or dark. Then I made a sketch, leaving out details. I also decided to take out the wire and the pole on the right. 

Next step is to make a puddle of gray paint. (You can use Paynes gray, neutral tint, or any dark brown or blue. The color just needs to be able to be a dark value as well as a medium value when you add water.)

I looked at my notanizer and painted everything that is not light or white a medium value. I tried to connect as many shapes as possible. I'm looking to see if my big shapes look interesting and connected. (I am using a rough paper, but that's not necessary)

Next I decided on what my darkest shapes will be. I made a darker mixture of my medium gray for this. Now I can really see whether or not I like this composition. If you don't see an interesting composition at this point, you should consider changing something about the picture.

Now to transfer this process to color. 

I picked three colors (just for simplification), a medium green, ultramarine, and burnt sienna. I wanted a medium value of all these colors. (We found that if you put a red plastic over the  3 puddles, they all looked the same value)

I'm going to start with the sky. Mixing a small amount of sienna to make the sky less blue, I wet the sky area (even the trees) and added the blue, lifting out the clouds. Then I started loosely adding some green to the trees, some gray into the barn areas (gray made from blue and sienna), and let them bleed together when they met. Then back to greens for the grasses and trees on the right. I didn't paint the sidewalk, stonework, or roofs. 

I let all that dry, then did my darks. I made darker versions of the previous colors: a darker, bluer green; a darker brown/gray version for the barns, keeping the burnt sienna ready to drop in to give the barn more interest. I paid more attention than I did with the value study, doing some dry brushing with the dark green in the trees. When adding the darks to the wood, I used a small brush (or credit card) to drag some lines down to indicate boards in the wood.

When I had the darks in, I added some light sienna to the stonework  and the sidewalk. It doesn't show where I added some shadow at the bottom left of the sidewalk to keep it from drawing the eye off the page. Also added some dark lines in some of the barn wood. And spattered some of the trees and bushes in the foreground.

I was pretty happy with my first try at this process.

Here Eric shows this process. Talking about simplifying by connections.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i3hIIKTgCI

value study lessons learned from Andy Evanson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBrMVl6ZbJQ&t=364s

As promised, Eric's YouTube on the 30/70 rule.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJaR0NXzR50

Paul Clark: Trees

 More about Paul Clark, and his tree methods.

In his videos, you'll see Paul Clark using the end of a paint brush to make smaller branches and to scratch texture into a trunk.  There are a few things about this technique that you need to know before you try it.

1. Sharpening the end of a paint brush. OK, I didn't want to ruin a brush doing this, so I tried it on some of my older wooden handle brushes. You have to sharpen it and then sand the end down to round it a bit. Must be wood. It doesn't work as well with smaller brush handles -- you need about a size 12 for it to work well.

Also, I practiced a LOT trying to make this work for me. I also tried other items: a palette knife, a credit card, a stick, etc. In the end I found that the point of my silicone shapers  (https://www.hobbylobby.com/Art-Supplies/Brushes/Silicone-Shaper-Paint-Brushes---Size-6/p/81072215 ) works the best for me. One student had Winsor Newton brushes that came to a nice point on the handles, and that worked well also. If you watch Karen Rice she uses a sharpened stick. 

2. The paint you lay down on the trunk must be very wet in order to use your device to make small branches. He doesn't stress this, but he continues to add paint to the trunk in small puddles in order to draw the paint out. If your paint dries out too soon, you won't be able to use a stick or something to pull the paint out. 

The link in the previous blog has one exercise on a tree with a background.

Here he tells several methods for simplified trees. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygV5PuvzjE4

The middle of this video has a cool African tree in a sunset.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5bR1PeS9d8

This is another by Paul Clark. This one contains the abstract credit card method we did in class. It also has some details from a more complex tree, including lifting to bring some branches forward. He also demos a palm tree and fir trees. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMVEuCfSVbs

There are many very good tree tutorials. Karen Rice has a very good one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UIo6FnX9KE  Here is a very loose video from Eric Yi Lin. He is even more loose than Paul Clark. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j3CSYZZMbQ&t=1249s

YouTubers: Paul Clark

 Paul Clark

Paul Clark is a professional artist and published author who has been teaching watercolour painting and drawing techniques to adult learners for over 25 years. He has taught art to adults at Bexhill and Claverham Community College, as well as running his own successful art school in Eastbourne. He lives in the UK, as you will catch on from his accent. 
Paul's ethos on teaching, is that students learn better when working in a happy and relaxed atmosphere.

He does still life, etc., but the main focus seems to be on landscapes. He has individual tutorials on YouTube on different subjects. Some are for a full tutorial, some of focusing on how to do a tree, rock, water, etc. Those are very helpful.

When he does a full tutorial from a sketch, he posts the sketch on his website: 

https://www.artbypaulclark.co.uk/

Most of the YouTube's are shortened versions of a full tutorial, but he does hit the most important parts.

Here are examples of some of his tutorials:

Class today was taken from the following video:

Three 20 minute demos techniques for landscape

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjLLwCz51n4

We did some clouds. I've never done clouds with this method, so it was fun for me. We also did the one on the reflections in the water, quick and fun. I liked two things about that: one, it was basically two or three colors, so you could focus on learning the technique instead of waffling about color; and two, he showed a dry brush technique using the side of a round brush, which I've not used before. Makes interesting edges for trees. 

We didn't get to work on the tree, but we will next week. 

Paul Clark wrote the following book, and his work is found in several other books, which are compilations from various artists.

Paul Clark's book for beginners

https://www.amazon.com/Watercolour-Techniques-Tutorials-Complete-Beginner/dp/1784943738/ref=asc_df_1784943738/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=266059698431&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=11693943649438947088&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9016422&hvtargid=pla-432273539168&psc=1&mcid=ee54f2134143397f9ad92fab6380b25e&gclid=CjwKCAiA6KWvBhAREiwAFPZM7v_1QfKUAmOlvWG-rpGY2YQuqvBL38BV4M58xb8OlMOAYeds0Jl4DRoCG8gQAvD_BwE

Louise DeMasi

LOUISE DE MASI

Today we painted a goldfish, Louise style. 

Louise is a delightful Australian with excellent teaching skills. She has tutorials on Skillshare, Youtube, and Patreon. Many of the youtube lessons are on Patreon, but the youtube one is usually condensed and does not include important features, such as: full scale drawing, reference material, and progress photos. There are also many tutorials on patreon that are not on other venues. (patreon is $6 a month)(My favorite thing she does is the progress photos, which most other artists do not provide)

Louise has an index of her lessons that indicate whether they are for beginners, intermediate, or experienced. They are divided up into florals, 

birds, 

and animals.

You will find that she often uses a limited palette of just 3 or 4 colors, especially her more recent ones. Each of her lessons stresses some technique: wet on wet, blending, color mixing, texture, lost edges, etc. I enjoy her painting style, which is realistic, but very clean and inviting. If you want to learn how to create using wet on wet, she's your gal.

Most of her tutorials are more than an hour; some more complex ones are broken into two parts. She keeps an easy pace. Her style is learning by doing...in other words, the intent is to emphasize a specific technique, but she does it by applying it to a specific subject, in this case, a fish. 

She also discusses supplies that she discovers, brushes, paper, etc. I like that she also lets you know if you can show or sell the artwork you do from her tutorials, places to find good references, and so on. 

Also, watch to the end for the out-takes. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAXHnemT0Og

I painted this goldfish, using her techniques for the most part. I changed to a reference photo that I found on Facebook's Reference Photos for Artists. I reversed the image to make it easier to follow. (It's very hard to paint an image facing the opposite direction.)

                                                  Reference photo in reverse

Reference in black and white

Sketch

The big eyed fish didn't appeal to me.

She used 3-4 basic colors: lemon yellow, warm red, French ultramarine and Burnt Sienna to make grays.

I later added some cerulean.

I began this the same as in the video: wet on wet in the body of the fish, leaving the tail and fins dry at first. IF YOU WANT TO DO THE black spots, make a thick black of burnt sienna and French Ultramarine (or cheat and just use paynes gray). When the paint on the body of the fish has lost its shine, drop in some dark spots. They should spread out a little and make soft edges. 

As the paint loses its shine, you can drop in clean water to make some small backruns on the fish.

TAIL AND FINS

This part gives some practice with making a line on dry paper, then quickly softening one side of the line. This is tricky, because paint dries much fast when it's on dry paper. 

Make a thin, watery gray from French Ultramarine and burnt sienna. Make a few lines on the fins, then soften one side. She shows this in the video. In addition, I used some soft light gray SHAPES where the fins appear to be shadowed. Don't try to do every spine on the fins. Let these dry.

I used cerulean to wash over some of these fins. I used bright orange (made from the red and yellow) in the areas indicated on the reference. I added some yellow to the dorsal fin. I also added some magenta to the side fin.

LOOK FOR OPPORTUNITIES to create lost edges. Lost edges are areas where the background and the object seem to disappear into each other. 

LIFTING

Louise has an "eradicator brush" which she loves to lift fine lines. Lifting is using clean water on a stiffer brush to soften the paint. You'll see her do that in the video. Until someone sweet buys me one of those, I will continue to use my stiff cheap brushes and my monarch brushes. For fine lines, I tape of the area and lift. 

I lifted between some of the fin spines, especially the top fin. I also used lifting on parts of the fins I wanted to have a softer edge. Softening the edge makes it recede into the background, and helps to lose that "outlined" effect.

THE EYE

For the eye area, carefully wet the area around the orange part of the eye, leaving the eye itself dry. All you are trying to do is make that orange part of the eye pop out. So keep the circle dry. Then put your red paint around the eye and help it disperse into the body of the fish. 

Blacken the center of the eye. When dry, use a white pen for the thin line around the black. 

FISH BODY

In my reference, the fish looks like it's got a bit of a belly. To make it seem more round, I added red orange behind that rounded area, and also darkened under the belly and side fin. If that area is already dark,

just lift the edge of the belly with water and a soft brush.

BACKGROUND

Louise's background is very simple, which I like. But I wanted a darker background. I just wet areas with a large brush, being careful around the fish, and dropped in ultramarine and cerulean blues, alternating to be sure the paint didn't look static and boring. As it lost its shine, I spattered water droplets to get backruns. 

So, in short, this tutorial showed four important ideas to master:

1. wet into wet

2. creating purposeful backruns

3. wet onto dry, then softening one edge

4. lifting

5. Losing or softening edges 

My version of the goldfish.