Showing posts with label glazing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label glazing. Show all posts

Monday, March 28, 2011

Patience and Possibilities

Patient Pelican  Watercolors 6"x7"

I have been rereading  (or rather re-looking at the illustrations/paintings from) Jeanne Dobie's Making Color SingThis was my very first purchase when I started painting in watercolors many years ago. Two days ago, her chapter on 'Mouse Power - achieving luminous grays' prompted me to finally paint the photograph of this pelican I had taken a while back. According to her 'mouse colors are like the bit players who support the stars.' 

I didn't quite follow her instructions or do the exercises,  but selected a transparent red, aureolin yellow, cobalt blue and viridian to make my grays, and used the grays to paint everything but the little yellow and orange patches on the bird :) A smaller brush than I normally use and waiting patiently for the paint to dry between the layers helped too.

Reading parts of the chapter while waiting for the paint to dry showed me the weakness in my  usual method of studying only the pictures in an art book rather than reading the chapters in detail!  I guess I need to change my ways a bit and not try to reinvent the wheel on my own!

I had moved away from her suggested rose madder genuine a few years ago since it had been rated poorly for color fastness in "The Wilcox Guide to the Best Watercolor Paints."   While linking her book to amazon.com, I noticed that there is a newer edition of her book- hope  she has replacements for the fugitive colors in the new version.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Parade


I painted this bright eyed boy from a series of photographs taken by my daughter during the Chinese New Year parade (watch her video here) in New York city.  I combined elements from three different photographs, even flipping the shadows in the background from one to match the direction of the sun on the boy. I glazed the background of painting with a light wash of purple to bring out the young wide eyed parade participant.  

Today is my special 'photographer's' birthday and I wish her a wonderful, bright eyed fun ride in her life's parade :) 
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