Half Moon Scribbles

As I mentioned in my previous Class 23 post, last week’s exercise was to try to mimic water colour techniques using acrylic paint. We were to take the top half (sky) of one picture used in the last class along with the bottom half (rolling hills) of another picture. I only brought canvas boards to art class last week and was unable to do this technique at all, so I ended up doing the entire first picture top and bottom.

Water Colour Technique Do-Over

In today’s art class, our teacher Guy St. Godard had set up another sketch class. On a table under lighting in the center of the group were a couple of pears we were to sketch and (optional) paint. This was to hone in on our sketching skill, beyond a flower vase. But I deliberately brought a “canvas” canvas so I can try the water colour technique over and see if I can figure out how this thing works. And, it is an interesting technique.

From what I gather, water colour techiques for landscape and skies is quite popular, and can look great if you can figure out how to do it. Basically, you wet the canvas with a brush and just water where the water is really soaking in the canvas or, even sitting in a water soaked puddle on the canvas. When you mix your paint colour, or just use a raw colour .. you also make it more watery than painty (if that makes sense). You then just drop the watery paint onto the watery canvas and let the paint sort of …. slide around. My guess is that it works best if you work on a flat surface, instead of an ease and then manually lift the canvas around to spread it through the water, rather than it all looking like it dripped downwards – at least, that’s what I did on my picture below :-D. When I add new colours I rather than adding paint on edges of other colours and meshing them together I would drop the watery colors just close enough to the edges of other colors, but not actually mix my paint brush. I know – I sound mad trying to explain that!

Here is what my painting looked like – Water Colour Technique Do-Over

This took me about 30 minutes to paint using the water colour technique … my colour scanner is having problems scanning full 17″x11″ sizes lately since I disconnected it from my computer and a little is cut off at the bottom – but, I used the technique for both the top skies and bottom landscape. I had a cup of coffee waiting for the paint to dry before adding more acrylic paint and touching it up before I decided that if I didn’t put my initials on it I would probably ruin the painting! In case it wasn’t obvious .. the sky is supposed to mimic the sky on that little thumbnail at the top in the first paragraph~

Second Painting – The Pear Tree

By the time I let the first painting dry, other class members were still working on sketching pears and I didn’t want to sketch today, so I started a second painting .. with about 1hr 20 min left to go in class. Over the years, when I saw an interesting image or “free wallpaper” for my computer, I would print it out and keep it in my suitcase that I took to each painting class and, this was one of them.

The original inspiration

I do not recall where I got it from or who took the original picture but I am including it here for your perusal. If you know the original source please let me know in the comments so I can properly attribute the image. I know with my CHROME “TinEye” extension the image shows up on various sites such as this one > http://feedyourdesktop.com/wallpaper/misty-mountains_w56.html

My Insipiration – The Pear Tree

I thought I nailed it with my sketch although not sure how the fog turned out. I know by the end of the class it just seemed too “two-dimensional” and I decided to add a little colour (blues, greens, purples, etc). I also redid the main tree to make it look larger than it really was in the image and, in honour of the class theme today (pears) I made that tree into a pear tree!

:Pttffft … it can happen! Pear trees can grow in the mountains! lol … Oh well, anyway – same thing with my scanner cutting off the bottom part. I need to figure get a 25′ USB cable to hook it up to my computer so the software for the scanner can better capture the images.

I should also note, that I first tried to do the initial fog and white clouds using the water color technique and then I wiped it off that led to a white smur, because it is on the canvas “board” not a canvas “canvas”. I did paint over it with my older familiar techniques, but you can kind of see both techniques in the top right section on the original.

Next week I will be preparing for a bus trip to Twin Cities Marathon St. Paul, Minnesota and will not be attending class