Emerging
 
 
 
This watermedia painting started out as an experiment in paint-pouring. I decided to pour paint only in the initial stages and use synthetic brushes later on for more control. I enjoyed this technique so much that I will continue to work with variations of it. There is a wonderful glow and color harmony to this scene that I find very pleasing. I'm excited to get started on another painting! Preparation Ritual - The Drawing I produced a drawing based upon an old photograph that was taken while driving away from Breckenridge. I had to adjust the composition in the drawing slightly and consider what the value structure should be carefully (darks and lights). I made sure the essential elements were captured on tracing paper. Once the watercolor paper was stapled and taped to the Artboard, I taped carbon paper down over the watercolor paper to make sure it would not move. I also taped one side of the tracing paper down over the carbon paper. I went over the major shapes again with a sharp pencil in order to transfer the drawing accurately to the support I would use for the actual painting. Time to Paint -- Finally! (aka, the cold, hard facts) I armed myself with archival Arches 300 lbs. watercolor paper, which I chose not to stretch, and Golden Fluid Acrylics. I applied some masking fluid where I wanted the white paper to remain. This is the only white in the painting. Choosing the keep the colors separate at all times, I mixed a few drops of a Hansa Yellow Light, Quinacridone Red, and Pthalo Blue (Green Shade) with a bit of water into different containers. I wanted to keep the colors pale, so there was more water than pigment. Once I made sure the paper was completely saturated, I poured the paint on keeping in mind where I wanted my warms and cools generally to end up. In essence, I manipulated the board in order to move the pigments across and off the paper and into a tub. As the run-off subsided, I wiped excess away from the sides so that “blooms” would not occur. I did a second pour with more saturated color once the previous pour was completely dry. As the second pour began to dry, I applied color with a 1in. synthetic brush. The first area to receive this treatment was the sky. I wet the sky exclusively and applied some juicy red and then less blue to the upper-most part. While allowing this to dry, I kept a watchful eye, and manipulated the board using the same process as mentioned above so that the pigments would flow where I wanted them to. Working from light to dark, I glazed the mountains and foreground with increasingly darker shades of blue, eventually adding Payne's Gray. I took a scrap of hardened candle wax and applied it to a small area of the trees as a resist-treatment. As I slowly added more color to the lake using a combination of wet-in-wet and glazing (wet in dry), I kept in mind what area of the sky the lake was reflecting, while the liquid mask kept certain places of the lake white. Once these areas dried, I used the side of a razor blade to carefully scrape away any area of the lake that needed to be paler. Why paler and not just white? Because the paper is so rubust, the paint soaked into the paper, so directly underneath, it wasn't totally white (not sure how I knew that would be the case, I just started doing it, and it worked!). Once the mask was removed, there were hard white areas that needed to appear softer, so I scraped with the razor until I went through to the white of the paper. This gave the look of white reflection, perhaps on a small wave. As the trees and mountains grew darker, I became looser with the trees making sure the edges near the lake were not as dark. Sometimes I would splatter a little red or blue in the trees, let it dry, then splatter some more. Sometimes I would do a pale wash of blue all over and let it dry half-way, then do the splatter technique with yellow, blue and a little red. The idea was to keep it as random as possible in the foreground, yet dark and still keep the color harmony and a little transparency in place. Naturally, it was a controlled splatter and I used the 1 in. synthetic brush at first and then switched to the 1/2 in the later stages. I wet the sky one last time to add a little more yellow – a slight adjustment. I removed the mask that had been applied just above the upper-most mountain. I adjusted this with some semi-dry brush-strokes, separating the brush with my fingers and digging into the paper to remove any hard lines from the mask. I touched up the lake with a rigger (brush) for slightly darker lines. I removed the tape and staples and waited for some sun in order to photograph it. In Summary— All of these techniques combined result in the painting; however, if I were to perform exactly the same techniques again, I could never reproduce this same painting. Lake Dillon Sunset is not only the result of a type of paint, paper or set of techniques, but is also the result of an interpretation of a moment in time, or rather, an interpretation of a view into a moment in time. This involves using a mind, a body, materials that include water, pigment, paper, candle wax, music, a razor and a rubbery mask. When it is described this way, it sounds more like a ritual...and now we are back at the beginning of this essay.
Lake Dillon Sunset
Monday, October 5, 2009