Texture

Guana Island  12 x 16

Julie  Recently, I’ve been using a palette knife to create my oil paintings. It is easy to paint different textures with the use of the palette knife. In this example, I’ve kept the sky in the background smooth. It isn’t the focus of the painting and I want it to recede. The mountains have a lot of texture created with heavy paint and dark color choices. I wanted to give the effect of tropical vegetation. There is some texture in the water, but not a lot. It’s a fairly calm day at sea with lightly crashing waves on the shore. 

Annika with Fairy Wings  9.5 x 14.5

Marie  Texture gives a painting interest, mood, and the feeling that you know how things feel within a painting.  In watercolor, texture is created by granulating paint, hard edges, and value contrast.  A lack of texture can be as mood evoking as an abundance of texture.  In the painting above, I used texture sparingly to create a dreamy mood.  The colors in the skin blend softly together giving the appearance of a smooth texture.  The shirt contains granulating paint for a rougher texture.  I included a few hard, irregular brush strokes on the grass to show additional texture, although to keep the mood dreamy, I didn’t contrast the values much or make the brush strokes mimic grass.    The texture in the foliage in the background is also subdued to keep the mood dreamy, but, once again, a few hard edges and some value contrasts in addition to granulating paint tell us it’s plants without painting every leaf.  My favorite part of the painting, the edge of Annika’s wing with feathery edges, was made by blurring the edge between the wing and the background.  Sometimes dreamy paintings can appear blurry and uninteresting, but I tried to avoid this by making clear delineations between edges within Annika herself and including the touch of detail in blowing hair wisps. 

Stay tuned next week when Julie and I discuss color!

Transparent Watercolor Society Entries

Marie  Over the holidays, Julie and I gave ourselves the assignment of entering the Transparent Watercolor Society of America’s annual exhibition.   I began my paintings on January 3, when the kids went back to school, which didn’t leave me much time with a January 15 deadline.  I had known for some time I wanted one of the paintings to be from a photo I took of my brother many years ago.  The photo is wonderful—he’s smoking a cigar and you can see bits of his face smirking through the smoke.  I’ve attempted to paint it a few times before, and while this effort was significantly better than earlier ones, and while I really like the composition, colors and values, I am not happy with the technical details within the face.  It ended up, in my opinion, overworked and muddy. 

Uncle Mike 15.5 x 17.5"

Transparent Watercolor

While at a friend’s house over the holidays, I ran into a black and white photo taken by a friend of a high school swimmer adjusting her swim cap before a meet.  I loved the photo, got permission to paint it, and while I feel my painting is technically sound, in my opinion, it lacks pizzazz.  It just sort of turned out boring.  I’d love to know what I missed in the painting that I saw in the photo, and I think in time I will figure it out.  For now, I will get started on my paintings for next year now rather than waiting until two weeks before the deadline.

Swimmer 12.5 x 20"

Julie Entering the TWSA competition was difficult this year. I had worked very little in watercolor the past year and concentrated more on oil and pastels. In a last minute effort I decided to try a fall scene from a photo I had taken in southern Indiana. The photo is beautiful and I had a hard time portraying how vibrant and sunny it was that day. I had previously painted the scene in oil with a palette knife 

with some success and am currently working on the pastel version. It will be fun to compare the three when I finish. 

Fall Around the Bend 14 x 29

My second entry is of three banged up, but colorful, wooden boats docked in a coastal town in Chile. My good friend took the photo and gave me permission to paint the scene. I am happier with this painting but also put a lot more thought and time into it. I have also painted this photo successfully in pastels.

Chilean Boats 10 x 14

I agree with Marie- next year- be more prepared 

and start early!

Assignment for next week- texture