POPPY ON ARCHES BOARD

THIS POPPY is what I would consider a botanical painting: realistic, includes the buds and leaf shapes for identification, no background except the white. This poppy is a combination of one I found on Pixabay and a photo I took. 

COLORS USED: permanent rose (or magenta); quin coral; new gamboge; cobalt or cerulean blue; dioxizine purple or you can mix magenta and cobalt. For QoR lovers you can crack open your transparent pyrol orange. BRUSHES: I used a #8 round throughout and a small lifting brush at the end; also a small fan brush. 

STEP ONE

Sketch or trace the poppy onto Arches board. Miskit a few white drops in the center. Wet the petals and apply yellows and reds wet into wet. Before it can dry, wrinkle a piece of plastic wrap, tracing paper, or wax paper and press it over the flower. Weigh it down and allow it to dry until you have a wrinkled effect.

While waiting for that to dry, glaze a green made from new gamboge and cerulean over the buds. Apply a light wash of purple (made from magenta and cerulean or cobalt) to the sides. These are just underglazes. Also glaze green over the stems and leaves. In the leaves, try to leave a thin white line down the middle. I also added drops of cobalt into the wet green mixture.

When the petals are dry glaze over the center with a light purple, leaving tiny bits of white. (In this picture it looks darker; but I wanted to do it with purple.) While the purple is wet, pull some of the paint up at the top of the dark center with a thirsty brush, leaving a lighter purple. Remove miskit when dry.

STEP TWO

Check your reference and find the darkest parts of the flower. (especially near the center, underneath other petals, etc.) Paint those in with Quin coral, and fade the color out gently with water. Find the deepest wrinkles and paint those in: hard line on one side, softened away on the other. 

TIP: When painting or drawing in the crinkles, paint them emanating from the center and curving in the direction of the petals. Don't try to space them too evenly apart, not the same length or width. To paint a crease, paint a hard edge on one side and soften the other side with water. (You will use that in clothing folds, flowers, etc.)

Continue to deepen darks in the creases. On the right side, the deep part of the petals

should have a deeper red, such as alizarin crimson; or make it by adding some purple to your reds.

STEP THREE

After all your creases are done, wash over the flower with some transparent pyrol orange (or a mix of coral and new gamboge.)

STEP FOUR: THE BUDS, STEMS

Darken the green mix that you used before by adding a little blue. Wash that over the buds, and while damp, add some purple along the sides. Before that loses its shine USE YOUR FAN BRUSH to lightly pull out some "hairs" along the edges. Do the same with the stems: Lay down the green, and while wet, add purplein shaded areas (along one side and underneath where stems cross or go behind a bud or flower). Before it loses its shine use the fan brush again to pull out "hairs" or fuzz from the stems. Also strengthen the greens in the leaves, adding some cobalt or purple in more shaded areas.

Darken the stem underneath the flower with some orange. Also glaze some orange over the bottom leaf where it might reflect the color of the poppy.

FINISHING UP

Since I can never leave a flower alone, I used my scrub brush and clean water to first get rid of any spots/drops of paint that reached the white surface. Then I chose a few wrinkles to hilight by lifting paint from the top part of the wrinkle. Concentrate on the ones that you want to appear to come forward. I also lifted a bit on the part of the bud stems that curve downward, where the sun would hit them, and a bit on the left side. 

CLASS DATES AT THE BARN IN MARIEMONT

CLASSES AT THE BARN 2017

HERE IS THE PROPOSED CLASS SCHEDULE:

JUNE 29: LAST CLASS OF THIS SESSION

JULY: NO CLASS DUE TO KIDS CAMPS AT THE BARN

AUGUST 3 - SEPTEMBER 21: 8 WEEK SESSION

SEPTEMBER 28: PROBABLY A BREAK

OCTOBER 5 - NOVEMBER 16: 7 WEEK SESSION

NO FURTHER CLASSES IN NOVEMBER & DECEMBEr

Prothonotary Warbler Part 2

GLAZING THE WOOD STUMPS & BRANCH

First use paynes gray OR blue with sienna to paint the darkest crevices and places where the wood is shadowed or separated. Let this dry. Then use warm brown (can be burnt sienna with French ultra marine, or lunar earth, or ochre with blue in it) to glaze over the wood stumps. Before it dries use one or more of these texture techniques: sprinkle with salt; spatter with water drops; spatter with other colors. Let it dry again. Leave the stem lighter for now except for an underpainting where the shadow underneath will be. One student just used a dry-brush technique,  below, which worked well also. Another student wanted a blue-grey for the stumps, also below.

(dry-brushed logs)

(blue-gray logs)

To finish the wood, strenghthen the darks in the crevices and dry brush some of the bark. Spatter some on the dry paint. You can also make dark marks and lines to create bark. 

I wanted to recreate a wetlands look, since these birds live and nest in the bark in the Oxbow area near our home. To make it look like the stumps are in flooded waters, I put a muddy blue/green wash for the water. I darkened the bottoms of the stumps, at the water line to make it look wetter. I painted a reflection of the stumps in the water. Then I lifted horizontal lines in the water to create ripples. I did also paint some water grasses and their reflections in the water. 

CREATING A "BOKEH" EFFECT BACKGROUND

Bokeh is an effect achieved through certain camera lenses that put an object in sharp focus, but blur the background. That blurred background is the bokeh. This part will require:

1. about 15 minutes of uninterrupted time
2. two containers of water, one clean, one for rinsing
3. TWO brushes: one for applying paint, one for applying clean water
4. 3 colors in well-dissolved puddles
5. (I used cerulean, hansa yellow, dioxozine purple)
6. 
   
7. You don't want to be trying to reconstitute paint while your doing this.This is wet on wet. You want wet, shiny, but not puddles. Wet an area with your clean brush, going an inch or 2 beyond where you will drop paint. Your paint will go where you have put the water. Then drop in cerulean, adding a little yellow. Add some purple in areas that you want a darker contrast.

Continue working around the birds, always keeping the leading edge wet so that you can continually add paint. If you get blossoms, you can either add more (by spattering water drops onto damp paint) or wait until they dry and gently blend them in. Please remember the 3" rule: don't go more than 3" before making a change in your color. 

FINISHING TOUCHES & TIPS

When the background is dry, soften the downy feathers of the birds in the head and breast areas. You can use a scrubbing brush or just a softer lifting brush. This will create a soft blend of the background with the birds.

If your stumps need to have some light on them, tear a length of masking tape in half lengthewise. Tape half of the tape on the left side of the crack you want to make and the other half of the tape on the right side. Run a wet lifting brush along the crack in the tape, and when it is dry, remove the tape.

This is a good method for getting back some of your lights on a rought texture.

Darken the shadowed part of the stem, if you have one. 

Strenghthen the shadows underneath the wings. Be sure the eyes are very dark. Create some little feathers in the tops of the wings. Paint the legs with a blue gray, leaving some white for hightlight.

Prothonotary Warblers

In honor of the Oxbow show that Southeastern Indiana Art Guild is participating in next week, we are painting two warblers that live and nest in our little wetlands in Indiana/Cincinnati area. Using a photo found on pixabay (website for free usage of photos), we started with a sketch. I got some good tips from The Mind of Watercolor on drawing these birds. #1: Use watercolor pencil the color of the bird or #2: after drawing, lighten the pencil lines with gum eraser. Since these are yellow birds, I and pencil lines would definitely show through, I thought these were good tips.

YES, I FINALLY USED PAYNES GRAY!

To show a little bit about GLAZING and UNDERPAINTING, I used paynes gray, very lightly, to shade the underbelly. It is hard to make yellows go to a dark enough value to show roundness, so you often have to "push" the color a bit. The bird on the left is underpainted with a bit of paynes gray on the underside. The bird on the right is underpainted with yellow ochre mixed with paynes gray. You can also use a light violet mix made from cobalt blue and magenta. DRY COMPLETELY, as this is a glaze technique.

If you want, you can underpaint the top wing feathers with an olive green. In class we did the yellow first, then added green.

Using two yellows (I used Hansa light and New Gamboge), paint the heads and bellies of the birds. Start with the light, then add New Gamboge in the more shaded areas as you go. Let it dry. Then add as many layers of yellows as you need to get the effect you want. Paint the yellow over the green top feathers. (Prothonotary Warblers males are warmer yellow while females are more lemon yellow). If you want to add some quin gold in some shaded areas, that looks good too. 

I was pleased with how the underpainting contributed to the round feeling of the birds.

THE WINGS

Bird wings are generally in three sections: short, fat wings over the "shoulder" area; longer feathers just beneath that; and the longest flight feathers last of all. If a bird has a short tail and long flight feathers, you will often see the flight feathers look crossed in the back. 

Starting with the tail area, put a glaze of cobalt blue over the wing feathers, gradually blending them out in the shoulder area so there is no definite line. On the right bird I did short strokes of cobalt, painting in the direction of the feathers, so I could leave tiny bits of white.  When it is dry, use a darker mix of blue to make the lines between the feathers. The shoulder feathers just have soft short lines that are softened away. The other feathers have hard small lines. Try to leave bits of white if you did not mask out any whites.

You will want to emphasize the space between the wing and the body. I used burnt orange to paint along the edge of the wing and body, then added French ultramarine and blended out toward the body, leaving a hard edge against the wing, but softening it toward the belly. (you can just mix some yellow and red for the orange.) I wish now that I'd let the orange dry first, then put in the blue, because it bled more than I wanted, and I'll have to clean up the backrun it made.

Mix a dark blue with burnt umber (or indigo) and carefully paint in the eyes, being sure to leave a white hilight. Paint the beaks with this dark color. For the beak on the right hand bird, just paint the bottom beak and the nostril on the top. Dry, then glaze with a bit of cobalt so there is some difference between the two. 

NEXT WEEK: FINISH THE BIRD AND BACKGROUND

Two New Paintings

Just wanted to show what the tennis shoe looked like after it was framed. Glenn helped me redo an imperfect frame. The inner mat is purple and the frame matches the shoe laces. I thought it needed something less traditional.

This is from a photo Glenn took at Oxbow. Photo is excellent. It is a pearl crescent butterfly on wildflowers. The butterfly wing span is probably just over an inch. This is for the Oxbow Show in Lawrenceburg June 23-25.

FINISHING THE 55 FORD TRUCK

I did a lot of finishing touches here. I removed all the miskit after I put in the background. So here's the rundown:

Background: I started with a piece of tracing paper to decide how I wanted my background. I set the tracing paper over the truck, then experimented. Doing it on tracing paper lets you see if you have the perspective correct before committing it to the paper. To find my horizon line I tried to figure out where my eye level on the truck would be....probably around the level of the medallion on the hood. Since all the background elements are made up, I needed to be sure if I put in a building, animals, or other items that they fit the angle and perspective of the truck. So decide where you want to put things on your tracing paper first.

Also decide the placement of your elements. Try to avoid lining up hills, trees, or fences with horizontal lines in the truck. In other words, don't end a hill at the roof or other line in the truck. Also, choose colors that will enhance the truck, not fight it for attention. Don't paint a value that is too close to the value of the truck.

I did a wash of cerulean for the sky, pulling out some faint clouds with a large, thirsty brush. Then I put some faint golden hills beneath the sky, and some dulled green trees in faintly under the hills. Think about aerial perspective. The farther back your trees, hills, etc., the duller in color and less detailed they will be. I put in a faint pond on a dull green field and added some fence posts.

For the foreground, I drybrushed some burnts sienna, leaving some white spots. While wet I spattered some burnt sienna, red, and greens. Then when it dried I spattered some more to create the feeling of gravel. Then I added some grasses poking through the gravel. Make sure to have some shadow underneath the back tires so they don't lok like they are floating in air.

A word of caution on backgrounds. Don't just add something because it's in the reference or because you  think it would look good. If it doesn't add to the composition, then don't put it in. Or put it in a different place. On a small picture like this, only add what is going to improve the composition or the feeling you are trying to convey.



DETAILS: I removed all miskit. To get the rust on the white painted grill, I softened the paint in the dark areas above each grill piece and pulled some of it out onto the white to dull the white. If it needed rust, I added some lunar earth or burnt sienna/French ultramarine.

 I added rust to the bars over the rectangular mirror and to the small square mirror. I used a dulled yellow for the rectangular mirror. I painted the amber pyramid lights at the top. For the headlights, I painted the chrome by painting the bottom blue and putting in some reflections. On the glass I lightly shaded the top half and left most of the bottom half white. I painted in the dark part of the windshield wipers and carefully painted the darks in the V8 sign. I added a little detail to the wheels to make them pop out a little.  Then I redarkened parts that I thought needed to have a little more emphasis, like behind the front tire. I put shadow in underneath the Ford sign on the side panel.

On the window wipers chrome I cheated just a bit and used white ink pen. I just can't paint that small!

I did demo how to use a razor blade/exacto to scrape some white into parts of the rust on the front bumper. You can also scrape a bit of white into the gravel area for more texture.