Rob’s Waterco☺ler

Came home from work and needed to at least finish the rough of this 14×17 drawing.  Now it can sit a few days until I figure out what to do with it next, or be done with it.

Friday Night I participated in the Manassas Galley Walk in Old Town Manassas.  I met some wonderful people strolling through the old town on an unseasonably warm November evening.  Sold a nice watercolor/graphite sketch I had done of the old landmark Episcopal Church to the new owners.  They are going to open an international restaurant and cafe in a few months and we are all looking forward to its opening.

I also put together the above clay pot watercolor (12×16 on Arches) and graphite sketch as a demonstration painting.  Not sure I achieved the exact effect I was looking for, but it was fun.  No telling what will come out of these live demos   Well see if it warms up on me.

Rob

Today I was painting en plein air at the International Children’s Festival with the Northern Virginia Artist League.  We were invited in to be a back drop for the performing arts going on around the park.  We had a good deal of traffic come and go between the events, and the day was fabulous!  I found a nice spot next to a stream and composed a 15 x 22 loose watercolor.  I am happier with the base sketch than I am with the painting.  Might be a defeat snatched from the jaws of victory and end up in the hall of shame, or I might put it through.  Needs contrast and some color simplification…hmmmm.

 Well it rained all day today which made for an interesting slant on lunch time sketching in the truck.  I parked by a split rail fence and enjoyed my lunch and this quick sketch.

I moved very quickly through the rails using Sepia, Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine Blue and Raw Sienna.  the background is May and Olive Greens.

The effort was useful in seeing how well the two greens and various browns worked together.

Rob

Here is a sketch I did today during the kid’s Tae Kwon Do practice.  It is a to the Koi I painted with my Maimeri watercolors  awhile back.  This was done in my , which is getting a good amount of use.  I will publish some of the sketches on slow days.

I also started transferring the onto a 30×40 canvass tonight and hope to be painting before the week is out!

Rob

Well I have been sketching daily and even started laying out the Fishing on a River peice on a 20 x 30 piece of vellum.  I have also purchased a 30 x 40 gallery wrap canvas for the impending oil painting of same.

Unfortunately, I have not photo’d or posted the progress.  Guess I am just plain feed up with all the work I had to do to move my site last week.

We are heading south (not too far south) for the spring break.  It will be a working vaction in more ways than one.  First we will be doing maintenace and cleaning on our house there, and second, I hope to get some good inspiration and drawing/painting done.

Loading the truck….

Rob

Well I have been back at the fishing on a river project.  Above are my latest sketches which may be included in the final drawing.  I have a general layout in my sketch book, along with a blank white 20 x 30 Strathmore illustration board.  The next step will be to start laying out a very detailed full sized drawing and adding in these misc sketches where they fit.  After that I will chose either oil or watercolor and proceed to transfer the drawing to a large gallery wrap canvass or full sheet watercolor paper.

Here is a close up detail of the gnarly rooted river bank.

Rob

Here is the continuation of my fishing on a river project.  I have drawn out a fish, tomboy and a scrub jay.  All are potential candidates for the river scene.  Not sure yet when I will have enough characters and features to start laying out a landscape.  I want a really gnarly root infested bank with some nice grass, moss and rocks.  I will need to do some of those details, and also a tackle-box.  The two boys are likely best friends and the tomboy is the younger sister of one of them.  The right age for the boys is about 12 years old.  Mom and dad made them take her along; they did not want to.  (Later in life the tables get turned, don’t they).  That’s the way the story goes so far.

I was going through my older artwork tonight and this one caught my eye.  It is 15 x 22 watercolor on 300lbs paper.  This was a turning point for me with watercolor medium.  I tried several new techniques here which helped me move on from my weak washes and uncontrasted earlier work.

The first thing that sets this painting apart is a very heavy use of Sepia for the intense darks.  This also started my use of Indigo Blue over Payne’s Gray for a period.  I also mixed my browns with blues and reds to produce more interesting color.  The splattering was a first.  Notice how conservative it is.  This is a very tight painting and I pained over each and every inch.  This took me a full week in 2006 and would likely take me 2 days today.  Today I would also approach the painting very differently compositionally and palette wise.

The question you have to ask yourself is not: ‘would I make a better painting’, rather ‘how would the paintings differ from each other’.  At the end of the day the progression of the artist is what matters.  The progression of the art is simply a by product.  The paintings may or may not be better than each other.  They should certainly be different.

I enjoy looking back and being able to learn from what I have done and then practice my progression each day in either drawing, sketching or painting. 

Rob

This is a 15×22 painting I finished up right after Thanksgiving 2007.  I had set it aside because I thought it needed some time to age.  What that really means is I had spent too many hours perched over it and needed some breathing room before I could properly evaluate it.  Most of the time when I put a painting aside for a few weeks, I can easily see what, if anything, might be missing and finish it up.  Sometimes, as was the case with “Blueberry Surprise”, I can easily call it done and move on.  This was a particularly interesting bit of work.  Here is how it came together.

The rabbit was a perfect model.  You can view him in the Washington DC Natural History Museum, Mammal exhibit.  That is where I took the reference photo for him.  The blueberries and snow came from the heart.  I did research rabbit foot prints and blueberry bushes online to get a pattern and idea I was happy with.

After sketching Mr. Rabbit out with a 6H pencil I went at him for several hours with a small bamboo skewer and liquid frisket.  At the end I had created a fur mask of thousands of intricate lines.  Next step was to pick and wash the colors into the bunny and repeat several times.  After that I removed all the frisket with a gum eraser and added dark highlights to many hairs with sharp tipped #8 round brush. 

The background is a random sequence of branches and berries.  It is what it is, much as in nature; a random twisting of twigs.  The branches and blueberries were supposed to stretch all the way across the back of the painting, but as I got halfway across, the light area behind the bunny jumped out as something which needed to be preserved to maintain an interesting painting.  The last step after adding the tracks and shadows was to wash the background with a Rose Madder Genuine and Alizarin Crimson Permanent mix.

The whole painting has highlighted by scratching critical white areas out with a sharp ink pen nib.  This added additional white fur lines to the rabbit and sharp highlights to several branches.  The effect brought additional dimension to the background.  Hope you enjoy looking at this piece as much as I did making it.

Rob