Class 25 – Bird Lake – Water Exercise
I missed last week class and was itching to paint!
Painting Water
There was a general census by the class today that we wanted to try painting some lake, or water and shorelines. We’ve painted skies, we’ve painted landscapes, we’ve painted objects (or at least we tried!) … but, sitting in our class was some beautiful paintings by Guy St. Godard that included water that peaked our interest.
Our Inspiration
Here is a photograph taken by Guy at Bird Lake, Manitoba that we were going to paint. It was a really nice class! We were all on the same page, and even Guy was painting along with us to teach us some techniques for painting such an image that includes water and shorelines.
Bird Lake – Water Exercise 1 – 17″x11″ canvas “canvas”
I managed to paint this picture twice. The first time was on a 17″x10″ canvas “canvas” and I did take my time! but, I finished in 1 hr 50 minutes. I was at the point where I didn’t want to ruin it, so while I still had 40 minutes I could either pack it up, or paint another painting! So, I decided to paint the same painting “HART’s Speed Painting” style on an 10″x 8″ canvas “board” .. and had about 10 minutes to spare 🙂
One of the important things I got out of this class, and painting water is that I need to get more of the lighter sky colour blues in my water first .. before taking the long horizontal paint strokes of the darker colours which make the waves of the water and makes it come alive. You can use really any size of flat brush to do this, although further away from you in the painting you would put your brush sideways and stroke lightly where closer to you, you would want to leave more space between dark strokes and maybe press harder on the brush on the canvas instead of that natural feeling to turn the brush sideways to get that thicker line of paint.
Bird Lake – Water Exercise 2 – 10″x8″ canvas “board”
At the end of the day .. I like my paintings!! But, I think I my skies are improving and need more work on my water landscapes!~