by Diane: Watercolors, brushes and rags workshop

At the November 2nd  ODFW and Oregon State Fish Hatchery and Research Center Fall Creek Arts and Crafts Festival there were no students who used my demonstrated idea in the morning.

Waly ( the surviving partner of high school class mate, Mike Mayer) myself
and co-teacher Cheryl French gather for a photo shoot by Ann Holyfield.
Waly is a successful designer of commercial needlepoint designs.
Recently he started doing custom work
 painting in acrylic on the backing.
This was his first experience with watercolors.
Unfortunately Crayola brand food coloring in glue
is different from artist quality paints. If he was really
serious about taking up watercolors, this workshop was not a good sample
of what the medium could offer him. 

I demonstrated how to fully saturate a brush by first spraying water on Crayola pan colors, then  making a puddle of water and paint on the palette.  The brush is rolled on its side to make it hold as much as it can possibly hold. And then the brush was ready to easily slide across the paper making shapes that look like watercolor paint.

 The number of brush fulls of paint to make the right concentration on the palette is guesswork.  After painting it on your paper and the estimate is incorrect, make the paint lighter by picking up excessive wet areas with a dry brush or rag. 

Also demonstrated how a dry corner of the rag dipped into the paint sucks up paint. Drying up excessive puddles on the paper prevents an irregular blooms as the paint dries. If desired the wet paint can be darkened by dropping more color into the paint before the paint is completely dry. 

I always learn more from these workshops than I think my students do.  For one, I learned that most students who come to these fairs just enjoy the labor of brushing back and forth gradually building their shapes. Every touch of their brush showed the scrubbing force behind the paint. Most of the students in the morning had no interest in trying a new way from how they painted maybe years before. Some were more joyfully engaged in care taking. Their clients' faces sometimes brightened with joy. They were loud and happy in no way wanting to concentrate on the painting process. Painting should also be a relaxed way to enjoy an activity with others as these care givers were doing.

The families with young children were engaged in introducing painting to their children as they had obviously painted with them before. This year's instruction on the use of brush and rag was less useful for both these families and care givers.


 I also learned from a seriously involved painter. Above is a painting done in about 15 minutes during lunch break by a watercolorist who did not take the morning watercolor class nor was she signed up to take my afternoon class. Because she was interested in looking at my stack of demo paintings, I invited her to see my demo and paint. She definitely knew how to incorporate my demo ideas. She had a considerable amount of painting experience. She dropped color into the background to make the impression of water.  She dropped purple spots on the body She motified the value with the rag, and in addition she knew she needed pencils and something to scratch into the paint.

The best part of the workshop experience was what I learned in doing the demonstration. I am excited to do more watercolors.

by Diane: About the header painting

 

The header is a detail  from "Rock and Snow," an oil painting on cradled 12" square by 1 1/2" deep board. It is one of a series begun the summer before my senior year in high school. The first painting was of Humbug Creek with a big moss covered rock - my first oil painting on location.

1960

I have been back to Humbug Creek camp ground two more times and painted the rock and creek. Abstracts often evolve into this series at isolated times.

July 2,000

 

Nov. 3, 2019, down stream from Fall Creek Fish Hatchery and Research Center

 

My demonstration for afternoon watercolor workshop

at

2019 Fall Creek Arts and Crafts Festival

November 2, 2019

 

Painting the rock is always a comfort zone painting reminding me of pleasurable outings into the out of doors. The most recent was done on a marvelous sunny day with not even a breeze at the Fall Creek Festival.  More on the festival watercolor workshops I taught in my next blog Wednesday, Nov. 13.

Diane Widler Wenzel's Negative Space Demo

Last Wednesday's blog was my lesson plan for a November 4 class at ODFW Fish Hatchery and Research Center.  I explained one approach selected from many ways to watercolor paint.
 In Summary:  Consider beginning by choosing what object or living thing is most important.  Decide what size it will be in relation to the entire surface area. Decide where it will be on the paper.  Be mindful that the surrounding shape helps to make the painting expressive.

 Lesson on technique of putting down watercolor paint on paper: Once you have a rough idea of size and placement of the most important thing,  make an outline of the subject with wet watercolors. While the puddle in the line is wet, load the brush with a little more paint. Touching the wet line with the loaded brush pull the paint outward to the edges of the picture filling the space around your subject.
Or use a masking technique like brushing outward from the center of a leaf.

 

 

Absolute control is not necessarily desirable. Watercolor painting has a way of doing what it likes and it's rewards are happy, accidental effects that can suggest a fun carefree ride to new imaginings. Watercolors have character in uneven coverage that often surprises the painter. Some surprises are happy accidents while others are not acceptable even after considering changing some of your goals for the painting.
Tip: In case of a loss of white paper blot with damp towel and paint over with Golden absorbent ground. It is an opaque acrylic primer for water media that looks like and accepts paint like paper when it dries.  In the illustration the head of the girl was too small until several layers of opaque, absorbent ground formed a hard edge. The profile of her face was further developed by carving into the white with more background color making a smaller more delicate cameo profile.
The leg was enlarged by just blotting the paint to make a larger light area. Then I added a very wet paint in the newly formed negative area.  The extra wet area will form a line on the edge as it dries.

Below is a sample of my landscape painting: Landscapes tend to be more complex with a dominate subject and one or more supportive subjects. In very strong landscapes a group of subjects can be the focal point that draws the eye first. Secondary objects group together and will group with the space surrounding the dominate group or object.

This is cropped from a much larger painting. It was the part of the painting most expressive of springtime.

 

 

A student's landscape with a dominate tree is a focal point because of the great dark light contrast. The road is a secondary focal point grouping with the dark grasses, trees and sky.

 

 

 

During these two classes I was reminded that my students have some different needs and desires when they start to paint. Some come with an idea in their head but they don't have the skill set to paint. Some want to be entertained and expect to find painting relaxing. Some want their children to have the experience. The youngest child just is excited about the experience without any interest in the end product. Snatching their fun away before they are done is like taking away a toy.

 The class reminds me of a painter who loved an evening ritual of turning on her favorite music, lighting candles then making a puddle of water on her paper in which she drops several different colors and watches as it dries. Very relaxing!

 

There are two different directions for watercolor painting. The best book for the traditional path  is The Complete Watercolorist's Essential Notebook, by Gordon MacKenzie, North Light Books, ISBN-13: 978-1-4403-0905  The other direction is like the one in  my exercise. For this  more fluid approach using the character of paint an excellent guide is A Passion for Water Color, Painting the Inner Experience, by Stefan Draughon. Watson Guptilll publisher, ISBN 0-8230-0102-4
 

My next blog post will have links to artists who have used the principles in my painting exercise to advantage. They include Edward Hooper and Gustav Klimt.