Out with the old, in with the new.

So, it's time. I'm kind of bummed, but kind of ready for something new.

I am paying a fond farewell to my old website, at least it's look and feel. It seems the website software I had been using is old, old being a relative term, in the digital world. So, after carefully considering my options, I've decided a new look and feel to nancybarrywatercolors is on the horizon.

The current nancybarrywatercolors.com website will go down in just a few days (today is June 6, 2019) A new website, with an entirely different look will emerge in the next few months. Those of you who know me, know I am very busy with other commitments and endeavors, plus, you know...I like to enjoy time with friends and family! In between my commitments (and my fun) I will be building a lovely new website, one that will reflect what I am involved in today and one that will be easier to update and maintain. I will let you all know when it's ready. Stay tuned.

Peace and love,

Nancy

Join me for a 2-Day Watercolor Workshop on Sept 29th & 30th, 2014 at the Eastern Shore Arts Center in Fairhope, Alabama

We're finally settled into our new home here on the Gulf Coast and I have begun to get out and about and involved. I am happy to announce that I will be teaching a 2-Day Watercolor Workshop at the Eastern Shore Arts Center (ESAC) in Fairhope, Alabama in the Fall. Thank you to the lovely folks at the ESAC for the wonderful opportunity.
Details of the workshop and where to register are included below. Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions!

Windows and Doorways - How to transform your photo into a successful painting. A watercolor workshop with Nancy Barry.    September 29, 30, 9:30 - 3:30pm.  $185, $175 Family members and above. 

We have all seen them, beautiful windows or doorways that beckon us to step inside, some comforting, many quite intriguing. Over the years, these have been some of my favorite subject matter to photograph and to paint. In this 2-Day workshop, we will go through the ‘thinking process’  of transforming a photo into a successful painting; how to edit your snapshot, learning what to keep and what to leave out, how to create visual and special perspective and how to render the many textures and surfaces we find within the hardscape around us. You will learn how to create brick, stone, pottery, foliage, window reflections and more. 

For more information or to register: Call Melinda Hicks at 251.928.2228, ext. 107

For complete class listings: http://www.esartcenter.com/adult-classes.php

Fall Watercolor Class Schedule

I will again offer Fall Watercolor Classes at the Artists Guild Gallery of Greenville for both Intermediate and Beginner Level. Intermediate classes begin Tues. Sept 18th and Beginner classes begin on Wed Sept 19th.

See EVENTS page for class description, fees and full schedule.

Waiting for a bird..

North American Goldfinch lit upon purple coneflowers in my garden.

Terrible terrible picture, I know, but I finally got a shot of this little fellow who has been visiting my garden all summer long. I have waited patiently for him, since my husband and I first saw him at the end of May, lightly holding onto a fresh new coneflower in my garden. Some days, I was very methodical about it all...setting my camera on the tripod and setting just the right angle and all that (though I am a far cry from a photographer!) But he wouldn't come. At least not while I was there and ready for him. Several times I would open the back door from the kitchen and walk out onto the porch to take Lily, our golden retriever puppy out in the yard and I would see his golden body through a corner of my eye, softly lit upon a flower, head down, nibbling a drying seedhead and as soon as I could move to turn toward him, he was off, flying deep into the green of a neighbors tree. As the summer wore on and the air became still and heavy, and the neighboring yards quiet, but for the chirping of the cicada's, he would come to eat and stay. Even my walking onto the porch didn't frighten him off. I had stopped trying to photograph him weeks before, stopped trying to be the bird papparazzi...let him eat in peace, I said to myself. Let me just enjoy him, let him enjoy too. Except for that one last day that I thought I'd just see...see if he came back...and see if I could get a photo...because, like everything else, memories fade and I wanted to remember this summer and this little visitor...and all the waiting. 

And he did not disappoint. 

Thank you, goldfinch.

In their words

“You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.
- What mood is that?
Last-minute panic.”

 

Calvin & Hobbes

I have said this. To my husband (often!), to friends and if I am honest here, I have said it to myself. I think most of us have. But, how many of us truly believe it?

Do you have to be in the right mood to create? 

Can you turn it on and off like a faucet? Or is the creativity there, always present and (as Picasso said) "it just has to find you working"?

I think it's a little of both. What do you think?

Study for Folly Island Marsh Scene



           "Folly Sunset"  5"x 9.25"               

Watercolor                            $125



Working on several small studies for a larger marsh scene I want to paint. The smaller pieces allow me to work out my palette and play around with different techniques and textures. I've kept my palette very limited at this point, with a cool dominance. Using: Winsor Blue (red shade), Winsor Blue (green shade), Cobalt Blue, Cerulean, Raw Sienna, Aereolin, Rose Madder Genuine - all Winsor Newton brand. I have not used masking fluid, but lifted or scraped in the highlighted grasses. No detail has been put in at this point. I'm really just exploring the subject matter and trying to keep it loose and suggestive, letting my impression of the scene come through. Thinking of trying out a slightly different color palette to see if I can get the feeling of more distance. Also noticing that the values are mainly in the mid-range and I will need to develop a full range of values in future studies.

In Their Words

"It seems to me that today, if the artist wishes to be serious - cut out a little original niche for himself, or at least preserve his own innocence of personality - he must once more sink himself in solitude. There is too much talk and gossip; pictures are apparently made, like stock market prices, by the competition of people eager for profit; in order to do anything at all we need (so to speak) the wit and ideas of our neighbors as much as the businessmen need the funds of others in order to win on the market. All this traffic sharpens our intelligence and falisifies our judgement."  ~ Edgar Degas, 1834 - 1917, taken from an early notebook.  


I am adding a new section entitled In Their Words located on the sidebar to the right side of this page. I also hope,  from time to time, to post what I hope to become a series of blog posts for discussion under the same title. The inspiration for this new material comes from a little paperback book I stumbled upon at a used bookstore. I have been reading (off and on for the past year),  Artists on Art, from the XIV to the XX Century by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves. It's an anthology of writings, on the subject of art, gleaned from 142 artists throughout the centuries. A few of the writings are taken from more formal "academic" talks given by the artist themselves, but most are from personal letters or journals the artists wrote in their own hand. I love this book. It is a gem. It is direct and intimate, a view into the lives and experiences of the 'masters' and beyond, a view into the social and cultural values of their times and an insight into the difficulty of creating. It is also, in my opinion, a view into the present, as the journey we are on as artists, is not so different from those that went before us. I hope you enjoy these 'pearls' as much as I do and I hope they provoke some thought. ~ Nancy

The "Perfect" is the enemy of good.

"The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right, solely on the quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the 'quantity' group: fifty pounds of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B" and so on. Those being graded on 'quality' needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of the highest quality were all being produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seemed that the 'quantity' group was busy churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the 'quality' group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay."  - Excerpted from the book - Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles & Ted Orland

I have been making art my whole life. Really...well maybe not my whole life but pretty much since I was 4 or 5 years old..or so my mother tells me. My father, a very sentimental saver of all things that he deems interesting or important, has alot of my childhood drawings to prove it. To look at those 'works' is to see pure joy. Joy in the process, joy in the creating and joy in discovering. If you are lucky, as I was as a child, your 'works' are received with joy and encouragement and you continue to explore and create until one day someone calls you an artist. Fast forward 40 plus years (okay, more than that!) and suddenly the joy is replaced by hesitation...and doubt. What is going on, I ask myself. How did this happen? And why? I was enjoying myself, or so I thought. I was getting somewhere - making headway. For Godsakes I am teaching fellow artists, how can this be happening to me?!  How can I encourage them when I am suddenly so unsure of myself?

I  KNOW that inner critic. I have been down that road as a student of the arts and I know how to listen to that inner voice and have trusted it to help make me better. It has always been my trusted friend, the thing that I could count on for balance and truth, when the world around you is full of nothing but warm praise or the flip side of that coin, harsh criticism. What, exactly, is my inner voice trying to say? Why is it stopping me in my tracks? And......what is UP with THAT??

"We have met the enemy and he is us" - Pogo

"If you think good work is somehow synonomous with perfect work, you are headed for big trouble". "...to require perfection is to invite paralysis." "The patten is predictable: as you see error in what you have done, you steer your work toward what you imagine you can do perfectly. You cling ever more tightly to what you already know you can do - away from risk and exploration, and possibly further from the work of your heart. You find reasons to procrastinate, since to not work is to not make mistakes." - the authors write, in the book Art and Fear.

Hmmm. OK. I get that, I see myself in that story, as I see much of the book Art & Fear. I am very much like the student(s) in that second group, who fear not being able to produce that "perfect" piece. Not so much 'perfect', as in no mistakes, but my own version of perfect that is measured by the criteria I have set up for myself, in my mind's eye. Procrastinate though? Yes, if I'm to be honest I suppose I do to some extent (although I have been calling it 'busy').

As I read further comes this pearl of wisdom that somewhere deep down I already knew but had buried deep:

"The seed for your next work, lies imbedded in the imperfections of your current piece. Such imperfections (or mistakes, if you are feeling particularly depressed about them today) are your guides - valuable, reliable, objective, non-judgemental guides - to matters you need to reconsider or develop further."  (page 31, Art & Fear)

Imperfections are our guides to matters we need to develop further; they are our roadmap for development, for betterment as an artist, in honing our skills. I have always embraced this concept, and believed it to be true for all growth..no matter what you are doing in your life. We are human, we err; and if we are smart, we learn from our mistakes....we grow.  "That's why they put erasers on pencils", my husband loves to say! But I'd forgotten that and had become stiff and self-conscious, letting the door open, so that 'doubt' could walk in.

Self doubt -> Magic?

MAGIC

"There's a myth amoung amateurs, optimists and fools

that beyond a certain level of achievement,

famous artists retire to some kind of Elysium

where criticism no longer wounds

and work materializes without their effort."

- Mark Matousek
(page 33, Art & Fear)

Even as artists we buy into the misconception that art is Magic. And maybe, just maybe, that psyches us out just a little every now and again. We look around us and work seems to flow out of others. What is wrong with us, we think? Have we lost 'the magic'? But it is not magic. It is effort that draws on knowledge. Knowledge that is earned by doing, by experience. To believe that it is magic, is to invalidate the incredible accomplishments of the creative (and scientific) world, to invalidate what masters such as Michaelangelo, DaVinci, Bach & Beethoven have accomplished and to turn a blind eye to the hard work behind the theories of Einstein and the great inventions of Alexander Graham Bell and the Wright Brothers amoung others. Without failure, without mistakes, there would be no progress.

I begin to realize that the "Imperfect" is the ally of good. And the critic within me, can be again, a trusted friend.

Keep painting, friends, and keep making mistakes. Imperfect is the friend of good....

- Nancy

Following the Muse - Experiments with Gelatin Printing



gelatin monotype on mulberry paper





So,  I have been playing. And it's been contagious, because I have others playing now too. Truth be told, I caught this bug after doing some serious research on varied methods for experimental watermedia and it has been the most fun that I've had doing anything in a long time. (except for spending time with my sweeet sweet 5 month old golden retriever, Lily) I am refering to Gelatin Printing. There is something about this process that has just intrigued me. Maybe it's the unpredictable nature of the printmaking process, maybe it's the organic feel to the gelatin plate, but I am hooked, mesmerized and totally in love with the process. And me, a watercolor painter and a pretty representational one at that. Go figure. But art is not restrictive...shouldn't be. And so, the playing, the exploration of other methods and other mediums. Following the muse. 

gelatin monotype on mulberry paper

Now, I haven't done any printmaking since my college days, which was quite a few years ago, but I loved it then. I remember a whole year of walking around with black ink inbedded in every groove and wrinkle in my hands. Oil based ink in those days...hard to get out completely, so you just wore what wouldn't come off. It was ok. Was the badge of being a printmaker. Being more of an illustrator, I gravitated to lithography and intaglio back then. Black and white mostly, occasionally color. But, like I said, I loved it. I enjoyed the process of printmaking. Making gelatin prints is the same, but different. It's just as messy, but since you are using waterbased inks and paints, the clean up is better. Gelatin printing, in my opinion, is a much more organic process and the results are more exciting due to it's unpredictable nature. (as you get used to the process, you can manipulate the outcome a good bit, but the end result is still in large part a big surprise) There are numerous websites and YouTube video's out there on the wild wild web, but the one I found most useful is Linda Germain's website and accompanying blog. She gives full directions for making the gelatin plates (there are many recipes, but hers are the most sturdy, in my opinion). She also has a nice little video showing you the basics of how to go about inking up your plate and pulling your prints.

So. Ready to explore? Go for it. Experiment. Let your hair down and have some fun.

   

Dale Cochran - New Member at Artists Guild Gallery of Greenville

I'm excited to announce that Dale Cochran is our newest member of the Artists Guild Gallery! We will host Dale with a First Friday Opening Reception on Friday March 2nd from 6 - 9 pm.  Please drop by the gallery this Friday evening and join us in welcoming Dale!
http://www.artistsguildgalleryofgreenville.com/

Farmers Market Painting - Step by Step update

Continuing with the Step-by-Step blog entries for the Farmers Market painting demo for the Tuesday afternoon and evening class, but making a new entry today. To see the painting in it's initial stages see the following post: http://nancybarrywatercolorblog.blogspot.com/2011_09_01_archive.html

The last 2 weeks have been geared toward completing the Squash paintings. Shown here are mid to late stages on most of the painting. Have begun to add most of the dark recesses behind and between the vegetables and have added several shadows which serves to pull the painting together and to pop many of the objects forward. Finishing details are still yet to be added.

Worked on the purple-ish stem on this particular carnival squash. Typical to the watercolor process, I added the lightest washes first, and then built up the detail and shadows. I might still add some textural effects by 'stamping' with my thumb or index finger picking up some of the ''palette wash' and applying it to the stem. The pigments I used for the stem included: Rose Madder, Burnt Sienna, Cobalt Blue.



I added a cerulean and burnt sienna wash to the top surface of the crate's sides to mimic light reflecting off of the dark black plastic of the crate. I washed in a cerulean underglaze on any of the surfaces that I thought would reflect light, particularly in the corners and crevices of the 'vents' on the sides of the crate and to the inner areas of the handles. After the underglazes were dry, I went ahead and mixed up a thick soupy dark mixture, bordering on the blue/black, and painted the remainder of the crate.  Pigments used to create the blue/black included: french ultramarine, antwerp blue, alizarin crimson and burnt sienna. Lastly, I shadowed the inner areas of the crate vents and handles (not shown in thie view)



To the stem I washed in a cerulean underglaze, let dry and then glazed over this with antwerp blue, rose madder genuine and/or aureolin yellow, depending on whether I needed a purplish or greenish wash, often mingling the 3 directly on the stem. (photo below) Since these pigments are all transparent, non-staining, they do not create 'mud' but a beautiful transparent jewel-like combination. After the second wash was completely dried, I began to 'lift' highlights and details with a clean damp brush. (not shown here)





Added darks between the vegetables using combinations of ultramarine, burnt sienna, and occasionally adding alizarin crimson and/or antwerp to punch up the intensity of the dark. Added shadows behind the slate chalkboard in the top right of the painting to pop the chalkboard forward and push the vegetables back in the composition. Worked on the stems of the spaghetti squash which I will post shortly. Still need to work on pushing several areas 'back' to create more depth and I need to complete the wood surrounding the chalkboards as they are still only showing the initial underglaze. Textural details to the skin of the squash, stems and possibly chalkboards will be added after a final evaluation.

Frame Warehouse Holiday Open House on Nov. 10th raises over 850 dollars for the Boys Home of the South!

It was a wonderful night at the Frame Warehouse & Gallery Holiday Open House in Greer this past Thursday night! Debbie Beauchemin's never tiring efforts raised over 850 dollars with the final count not in yet. As the economy and in kind donations to charities in general have taken a downturn in recent years, Debbie has risen to the occasion. Each year at the start of the holiday season, she chooses a local charity or organization in need for her Hudson Road shop to raise funds for. In years past, Debbie, who I have a special place in my heart for, has raised several thousand dollars all totalled for organizations such as the Greer Soup Kitchen, the local chapter of the National Association for Mental Illness and this years recipient, the Boys Home of the South. More than 16 local artists, including myself, participated in last weeks fundraiser by donating over $2,000 of artwork and merchandise to the event. Participating artists for this event were: Sandra Roper, Dick Mitchell, Tom Stewart, Edith McBee Hardaway, Michelle Giles, myself (Nancy Barry), Joan Zepf, Sherry Elrod, Stella Schaefer, Judy Taylor, Karl Voss, Andrew and Ruth Banovic, Susan Linn, Richard Campbell, Joanne Reed, Cheryl Bradfute, Danny Carnes, and Gary Roderer.

Artists from left to right: Edith Hardaway (red), Sandra Roper, Nancy Barry

Artists left to right: Danny Carnes (back left of photo), Stella Schaefer (facing)

Artists left to right: Joan Zepf (center)

Artists left to right: Sherry Elrod (back), Judy Taylor (center), Joan Zepf

Left to right: Andrew and Ruth Banovic (left)



Artists left to right: Edith Hardaway (rear left), Joan Zepf, Sherry Elrod and Bill Lester

 As one of the participating artists, I would like to personally thank all of my own friends and family and followers along with Debbie's loyal customers for their generosity and support. We could not do what we do without you.

Tuesday Afternoon Watercolor Class Pics

Julie and her in-progress painting

Kathy putting some of the finishing touches on her painting.

Bert with her first watercolor painting!

As the holiday season swiftly approaches, the last of my Fall session watercolor classes draws to a close. These photos are just a few from my Tuesday afternoon ladies, who, I have to say, have been a huge amount of fun to work with. Kudos to those in the class who were 'first-timers' to the medium of watercolor! I threw a good bit of information at them and gave them an intermediate level painting subject for their first time out of the gate! Watercolor, when you're a beginner, can often feel like you're tightrope walking without a net, but they handled the process with grace and from what I saw, had a few 'lightbulb' moments along the way. Everyone did a terrific job on their painting. Posted here are 3 of the 5 paintings. Will catch photos of Carol's and Dori's and post an update with their pics next week. Great job all! And thanks to all of you for a very enjoyable 6 weeks!

Tuesday night watercolor class completed Farmers Market paintings

Here are the completed farmers market paintings from the Tuesday night Fall 2011 class. Photos courtesy of Stella Schaefer.

Radishes and Turnips - Stella Schaefer

Rhubarb - Joan Zepf (almost completed photo)

Japanese Eggplant - Susan Buteau

Rhubarb Study - Joan Zepf

Tuesday Night Painting Class

Stella Schaefer adding finishing detail to painting of radishes and turnips.

Susan Buteau working on a study from the book "Problem Solving in Watercolor"

Joan Zepf discussing her painting with Susan

Tuesday night watercolor class - Painting in progress



Nov 5 Update: Continuing to develop the painting, I carefully observe the variety of greens and yellows that create unique patterns over  the carnival squash. Using several yellows and a variety of earth tones, I allow the pigments to mingle directly on the paper, rather than overmix on my palette. You can see where I have dropped in burnt sienna and sap green in the warm yellow/gold washes. I continued to develop the green pattern, varying my greens from warm to cool, and again letting many of the pigments marry directly on the paper. I am working here on dry paper, as these patterns are abstract and have crisp hard edges that can only be retained by keeping the paper dry and applying wet washes and pigment directly to the watercolor drawing. I am also keeping the lighting direction, tonal value change and the overall form of the squash in mind as I paint and deepen or lighten the values as necessary.  





Started the Tuesday night Watercolor classes up again for the Fall and have everyone working on a Farmers Market theme. Everyone had a great start to their paintings on Tuesday night and I'm looking forward to seeing the progress of each painting next week. Will take some photos of student work and post when I get a chance. Here is what I am working on and will demo on for the class. At this point, I am just getting started. I laid in most of the soft yellow washes for the squash and have started defining the most prominent object in the foreground, shown in this photo. In the overall shot, you can see that I have also dropped in one of my darkest darks - the chalkboard. Although this is not the darkest dark in this composition, laying it in early in the painting process allows me to really get a handle on the overall tonal value of the painting. In other words, I have something to compare adjacent areas to. I like to get some of my darks in early, rather than waiting till the end. This way, I can work towards the correct tonal values all throughout the painting process and do not have to worry toward the end that I have to make drastic adjustments. For me, it's the way I balance my painting.





Wide shot of painting-in-progress with the inspiration photo taken at the Chicago Farmers Market clipped to board. Note: this is very early in the painting process. Pigments I am using: Raw Sienna, New Gamboge, Aereolin, Quinacridone Gold, French Ultramarine Blue, Winsor Blue, Sap Green, Rose Madder Genuine, Alizarin Crimson and Burnt Sienna.  



New Blog Format

Yes, my blog format has changed! I loved my old blog, but it was not very user friendly for visitors. In visiting several other blogs, I noticed that many of the bloggers were using this format, and so, I decided to make the switch. Hope you like it and hope you find it friendlier to work with.

Experimental Watermedia - Monoprinting

I am a very structured watercolorist. I think that everyone who knows me will agree to that statement! That being said, I love the unexpected and exciting things that happen in watercolor when you least expect them to happen. I think this is part of what keeps me coming back to this medium. These are what seasoned watercolorists call "Happy Accidents". What better way to grow creatively than to play with your medium and let these 'accidents' happen on purpose? Below is an example of a day of experimenting with my medium. The main thing is to have fun, wear gloves (I didn't and had interesting 'nail polish' for several days), and work outside!! I found doing this to be very freeing and unexpectedly rewarding. I hope you do too!

 

Using 300lb Arches watercolor paper I layered cheesecloth, peppercorns, riverrock and various grasses on top of the watercolor paper. Be sure to cover your entire area with plastic. I used dry cleaning bags that were opened up, but you could use large lawn and leaf bags if you don't have dry cleaning bags.

I poured several watercolor washes over the paper/materials beginning with the lightest color first and working toward my darkest colors. I also added sea salt to selected areas. I kept to a minimum of colors here, knowing that the final mixture could get muddy. The colors I chose were transparent with the exception of cerulean blue, which is opaque. I kept the opaque cerulean almost off to itself, although I knew there would be some mingling. After the pours were competed, I folded the remaining plastic over the paper and placed a large piece of tempered glass on top to weight everything down. I let this dry almost the entire day, unfolded, unwrapped and removed the items placed on top of the paper (with care) and brushed off the areas where salt was added to the pour.  

Close-up of cheesecloth and peppercorns.

Finished piece before all materials are removed. You can see the pattern the cheesecloth leaves (brown-ish area, middle left).



Finished piece - mixed media. Materials used were similar to the above, except I changed out the river rocks for shards of clay pots and sea shells.



Sea shells, clay pot shards, weeds, cheesecloth, salt, watercolor and acrylic metalic paint.

Close-up of pottery shards pushing up against cheesecloth that has been stained by the watercolor poured over it.



Painting Deconstructed - Geranium Still Life

  
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Fig 1

Here is the still life on my porch that the Spring watercolor class worked on in the gallery. I start with a detailed drawing and then begin to add my darks, being careful to cut in with my brush around any of the shapes that overlap the darker forms. I usually jump right into developing the darkest areas and/or forms on my paintings as this sets the 'tone' of the overall painting for me. In figures 2 and 3 you will see that compared to the rest of the painting, these areas look very dark. At this point in the painting I try to establish many of the middle values. (You will see in later images that the dark in the plastic flower pot at this stage, become its highlights and middle values.)

For the flower pot, I mixed a fairly thick wash of ultramarine, alizarin crimson and burnt sienna (a good black) and applied this to the pot, all the while being mindful that the pot, although dark, still had many highlighted areas where the light was hitting it. I dipped my brush into cerulean blue and charged this color into the wet 'black' in areas where I wanted 'highlights'. I let this dry completely.

 

The rust texture on the roof of the lantern was created by first laying in a glaze (wash) of raw sienna, which I let dry completely. Then I mixed up a thick soupy mixture of burnt sienna and french ultramarine and washed that over the entire roof area, (being careful to stop at the 'seams'). While this was was wet, I threw a generous amount of kosher salt onto it in no particular pattern and left this area to dry thoroughly for 1 day before I brushed off the salt. This photo reveals the texture that is left behind without any touching up or altering on my part.









As the lantern and flower pot are drying, I begin to develop the stems and form of each one of the leaves on the geranium. Again, I am laying in the paint in glazes on the leaves, meaning that I am laying in an 'underwash' or 'glaze', letting this dry and then going back in with another wash (or glaze) and developing the recessed and folded areas of my leaves. I'm careful to paint 'around' the veining in the leaves. I drew these 'directional veins' in when I did my preliminary drawing. (not every vein, but enough so that I had an idea of how the leaves were growing and turning toward the sun)

For the stems, I wet the entire stem with clean water and dropped in my yellows and blues, and then hit it with a tad more clean water and let them 'run' and 'mingle' on the paper and let this dry. I find this makes for a nice natural stem look. Later I come back to define the shadow side of the stems more. But not till much later...

As the painting develops, I have moved around and worked on various areas surrounding the bird scuptures. I have painted in the tablecloth, in stages, so that I can retain hard edges where I need them and let the color in other areas 'merge' using soft edges (as in the flower shapes on the tablecloth). All the while my focus is on developing FORM in each object, through the use of TONAL VALUE.  As you can see in the two images at left and right above, I begin to move into developing the birds in the very same way, glazing carefully where I see color being reflected onto them from the tablecloth, from the pot and from the sunlight that is cast over the scene. Since these are essentially 'off white' I have to look carefully to see the colors that are reflected onto them, but these reflected colors and shadow tones are what make up the form of these birds. I always try to repeat the colors I use elsewhere in my paintings so there is unity, so I used raw sienna glazed by itself, the purpley-black mixture of ultramarine/burnt sienna/aliz crimson in some of the shadow areas and where the pot reflects, burnt sienna glazed by itself, and cerulean blue by itself, again, in the shadow areas.

The plastic pots have been developed further. Now you can see how the intitial washes that looked so dark at the beginning of the painting, are now 'reading' as highlights and middle values. I have used hard edges (cut in with my brush and maintained crisp, hard edges) to define where the light hits the pot. To do this I painted AROUND the light areas that I wanted to keep (negative painting). You have to keep focused and imagine the space you are painting around or you can lose the highlight you worked so hard to establish. I also did some LIFTING to the pot edge on the top, near the leaves and to the lips where the pot rim and the belly of the pot meet. I want to define these edges so we can see the form of the pot and the planes that make it up.

I will show additional stages and the completed painting in a future blog post! Still working on completion..mainly working on individual leaves and adjusting my tonal values throughout the composition.