Copying Art, and Different Media

As I've been spending all of this time drawing, painting, thinking about drawing, thinking about painting, watching YouTube videos about.....etc, a couple of questions keep lingering at the fringes of my consciousness. The first question is...should I be concentrating on one kind of painting instead of dabbling in oils, acrylics and watercolors? Second, should I be spending less time copying other peoples' work and more time on creating my own original works?

At least at the moment, I think...

Dabbling in a number of different media is an invaluable learning experience. I might end up being better at some things than others. I might end up enjoying some things more than others. But you won't be able to get a feel for that unless you try different things. In that respect, I literally am a middle school or high school student. At this point I am content to immerse myself in as many different media as possible in the expectation that a path forward, at least in the immediate term, will reveal itself. If not, the dabbling continues, which is also fine, and will continue to be valuable.

Oils. I am loving painting in oils. You can blend for days. Literally. They are forgiving in the sense of being correctable while still wet (which again, is for days). There is a richness that you can't get from watercolors or acrylics. They are the classical media if you are into the snob-appeal thing. But they are finicky. And they are the one media that I wouldn't feel comfortable doing on my desk in my office or on the kitchen table. They are messy and complicated. But they are soooooo good.

Acrylics. I alternately love and am immensely frustrated by these. It's great that they dry so quickly from the perspective of adding to your work in layers. But they dry so quickly. You need to know what you are doing and commit, or the moment is gone. Blending is hard. I know there are various mediums and additives that will prolong working time, etc, but I am not that sophisticated yet. Quirky but fun.

Watercolors. Perhaps the most mysterious of the three painting media that I am fiddling with, at least to me. So simple looking. So hard to do well. Perhaps even more so than acrylics, you get one chance to do it right. In my very limited experience, you can fix errors in oils or acrylics, but not so much so in watercolors. Or not at all really. I have to admit watercolors intimidate me more than oils or acrylics. Easy to do kinda OK. Probably the hardest for a beginner to do well.

As for the second question, copying versus original pieces, that's a simpler answer, at least for the moment. I am so early on my learning curve that I just want to try as many techniques and styles as possible. I don't want to spend too much time worrying about composition or other considerations. I just want to practice. Almost everything I do these days is simply an attempt to answer the question "can I do that?"

For now, that's fine. It won't be forever. But it is for now.

Watercolors 5 and 6

I'm still finding watercolors puzzling, to say the least, but I continue to learn, so that's a good thing. I also continue to find copying a variety of other artists and styles to be a worthwhile endeavor.

The two shown below were painted this evening over the course of about an hour, sitting at the kitchen table and chatting with Amp and Grace. The ink drawings were done a week of more ago for the lighthouse, and earlier today for the castle.

The first (watercolor #5) is a heavy-handed ink and wash sketch of the iconic Eilean Donan castle in Scotland. I see this as more of a fail than not, since the first thing I did was the sky, and that went pretty badly off the rails. Discouragement set in and I kinda moped through the rest of this. I want to do this one again.

Eilean Donan castle, Scotland (after Lois Davidson)

The second (watercolor #6) is another lighthouse sketch, copying directly from a Peter Sheeler work. I love these lighthouses. I like how this one came out. Not without issues, but not bad over all.

Lighthouse (after Peter Sheeler)

One thing of note is that the lighthouse was painted on 90 pound Artist's Loft watercolor paper that warps like a potato chip. The castle was the first I have painted on my new stash of Strathmore 140 pound watercolor paper. The heavier paper curled just a little, but performed much better overall.

Tomorrow I have an new acrylic painting sketched out that I want to get started.

Watercolor 4 Redux, and Easter Wishes

The stream on this painting (Watercolor #4) was terrible and it gnawed at me. If only there were a way to fix it. I began thinking about gouache, which is basically a more opaque watercolor. I thought maybe we had an old beginner set in the basement with the kids craft stuff. I vaguely remembered buying the set for Grace years ago thinking that it was a watercolor set, which it sort of was but not in the sense we intended.

It turns out we did still have it, the colors were still good in their tubes, and it is opaque enough to fix the worst of my stream problems. So saying that this painting was done before was premature. But now it's done. Really.

Village scene (after Yasser Fayad)

Not perfect but better. I guess you can call me a mixed media artist now. Hehe.

On a different note.... Ryder is amazing in that he can get comfortable and sleep just about anywhere. But this was a new one. Amp wasn't real happy. He's cute though.

Ryder's New Nap Spot

Lastly, I'd like to wish everyone the sincerest happiness and good health on this holiday. I would have to admit that I was raised Lutheran but would consider myself an agnostic more than anything. While the major Christian holidays of Christmas and Easter don't have the same meaning for me as they do for those of the faith (or their true intended meaning I guess I should say), they are still a time for me to pause and reflect on what is important; to relax, be thankful and enjoy the company of family and friends. Which these days means family, and only very-immediate-lives-in-the-same-house-as-me family. But other family and friends are still out there somewhere, or at least Verizon Wireless tells me they are, and I wish them well. Likewise to anyone and everyone that stumbles upon this through an ill-fated Google search or any other randomness of the cosmos; blessings on you and those you hold dear. These are dark times, but they won't last forever. Some day we shall all meet again under happier skies. Until then, count you blessings, be thankful for what you have, and most of all stay safe. If you are in a position to be charitable, please try to do so. Whatever challenges you are facing, there are likely others out there worse off than you...

Today's thanks of the day go out to all the people that people like me never really think about - everyone who works on a farm, or an orchard, or a ranch, or a cannery, or on a fishing boat, or a meat packing plant, or a commercial bakery, or any other part of the vast and complicated food supply chain that makes my life easy. Many (or most) Americans, certainly including me, take for granted things that people in many other countries don't have the luxury of taking for granted - that we have all the food we need, in every type and variety imaginable, simply by driving to the store and sticking a little plastic card in the slot at the checkout. Before this is done, Americans like me will learn better. Probably in only a limited way, but it has probably been...I don't know...World War II, since most Americans have not had whatever they want whenever they want it. Certainly not in my lifetime of 50+ years.

Today, Smithfield indefinitely closed a pork producing plant in South Dakota due to a huge outbreak of employee Covid-19 illness. But it's only one plant, right? No big deal. Sure. Yes, only one plant. One big plant that supplies 4%-5% of all pork products in the United States.

Something to think about...

Let's be thankful for those that truly deserve our thanks.

Watercolors 3 and 4

Over the last week or so I've gotten a couple more watercolors done. Both are small 6" by 9" on 90 lb (thin) Artist's Loft paper. The first was a simple practice sketch, and the second I put a lot more effort into.

Watercolor #3 was a quick sketch of a pair of rune-covered standing stones suitable for our Dungeons and Dragons games. If we can ever play again... This was intended as an exercise in shading, and was a good learning experience. The whole thing took less than an hour, in several short sessions. I've been playing around with letting things dry in between different layers to see how the paint reacts. My skies are still very streaky with horizontal lines, which I think is because I am using too small a brush. For large areas like this I need to be using a larger "mop" brush. I'm not sure I have one but if not that's an easy enough fix.

Runestones for D&D

Watercolor #4 is loosely copied from an oil painting YouTube video by Yasser Fayad of an Egyptian village. I like his paintings a lot, and this was very evocative for me.

First I blocked in some of the basic colors, and then spent some time shading the buildings.

Sky, tree and houses

Then I put a bluish-green wash on the horizon to be the base for hazy trees in the background. In oils or acrylics, this would have been accomplished differently, but with watercolors I am learning to understand where the light areas need to be preserved, since you can't go back and paint light over dark. Very different planning from oils and acrylics...

Horizon wash

Then comes blocking in most of the remaining colors, although at this point I have no idea how I am going to get a stream effect with watercolors.

Blocking in remaining colors

Lastly comes fiddling around with shading, details, and doing something with the little stream. "Bleh" on the stream, but what's done is done.

Calling it finished

After a while, I had to put down the brushes and call it finished. There are some things that no amount of fiddling with are going to make better than they are, and it is more important to move on to another painting than to invest more time in this one.

Overall, I'm very pleased. As always, good bits and not so good bits, but I need to keep telling myself this is only the fourth watercolor of any kind I have ever done. Every one is a learning experience, and having done some actual painting myself, it makes watching YouTube tutorials much more meaningful in terms of understanding what they are trying to teach.

On to the next one...

Watercolor First Efforts

In looking at various painting demos and tutorials on YouTube, I stumbled across a watercolor artist named Peter Sheeler who does a lot of straightforward but very evocative "line and wash" watercolors of landscapes, lighthouses, farms and similar rustic subjects.

For a first attempt, I pulled out an old set of watercolors that had been in a drawer in the kids area of the basement for a few years, and tried to follow along with a simple country road scene. I'd have to say I was very pleased with the result. Watercolors are very different from the recent oil and acrylic paintings I have tried, and it took some getting used to how to mix the colors, how much water to use, how things blended on the paper, etc... These are both 6" by 9" paintings on cheap Artist's Loft basic watercolor paper.

Country Road (after Peter Sheeler)

My second attempt was a little more ambitious, and included a house, lighthouse, water and an evening sky. This was painted on the same paper as the first, but with a much better quality assortment of Turner Concentrated Artists watercolors mail ordered from Jerry's Artarama. Normally I would just drive the half hour to the Jerry's store in Newark Delaware, but....

I am pleased with the result here as well, but there are some things that I messed up that nag at me. I need to maintain reasonable expectations and just keep practicing without getting discouraged. As noted with the oil and acrylics, I have a better eye than I have skill at this point.

Key lessons here include the ordering of putting down certain colors. Sky becomes a green mess if you let your yellows run into your blues (which fortunately could be somewhat fixed by adding some magenta into that area once completely dry). Build shadows carefully. And perhaps most importantly, once a given area of the painting has begun to set, don't go back and fiddle with it, or you will end up pulling the wet paint out of the middle of an area and leaving a ring of dried paint around the edge. I really messed up the shadows in the water to the left by doing this, but managed to fix the worst of it by going back and evening out the colors after everything had completely dried.

Lighthouse (after Peter Sheeler)

I still have a lot to learn, but this was a lot of fun. It was also the most accessible in terms of being able to start painting with only a few minutes of set up, and can be done at my desk, the kitchen table, the island, or really anywhere. Required table space is tiny. All of which makes it perfect for those times when you have a little bit of time, but not enough to get into something more involved.