The perils of washing and buttered toast

Published by neil on May 13th, 2006

I worked my butt off this past week to give me some R&R time this weekend. Unfortunately the planned day out today turned into a locally focused relaxing time after my body decided to give me a little clip around the ear for working to intensely while still recovering from illness a week ago - venturing too far from home would be ill advised. The advantage to this was that although adventures were postponed, time was available to fulfill the urges to paint.

The grand landscapes immediately visible from the flat consist of the apartment block across the street, the communal parking area, or the mostly tree obscured A4 main road. So it was down to picking an exercise from the book - the one which had intrigued me the most was on using a very limited colour palette.

The exercise describes using only French Ultramarine, Burnt Sienna and Raw Sienna to render a simple landscape. I do not have Raw Sienna, so used Yellow Ochre in place of it - a little more potent, but acceptable.

My initial attempt was something of a failure. Having been distracted at a critical moment by a piece of stomach-growlingly tasty fresh buttered toast being placed under my nose*, I allowed the initial Ultramarine wash to dry just a little too much which meant it refused to behave properly with the following Ultramarine/Burnt Sienna wash of the lower part of the sky (see first image). Argh. Strip that one off the watercolour block and begin again. At least that sheet, once dry, would serve for some additional experimentation.

Attempt two. The sky washes went on just fine. Then I realised that I had completely forgotten to pencil sketch the composition. Doh! I’ll put this down to the excitement of actually getting around to painting after many weeks. While the washes were drying I experimented the next stages on the failed piece just for a little practice.
Following the washes - once fully dried - the distant trees were added (light mix of Ultramarine/Burnt Sienna) and some foreground tone built up. Again, once dry, a dark mix of Ultramarine/Burnt Sienna was used to paint the bush, fence and tree silhouettes, and add some vegetation detail in the foreground. A touch of sky reflection in the central water area and it was done.

Under the circumstances of not having done much painting, the result is satisfactory. The very foreground is a little busy and mucky, the distant trees on the far right are a little too strong and the sky on the far left could do with some more tonal variation. Oddly enough, I actually like the area of yellow in the sky near above the large tree, despite my panic early on when I realised I was creating it. There’s a lot more wrong with it than this meagre list, of course, but self criticism has to be suitably tempered in the face of inexperience, and this was an exercise, not a painting - if you see what I mean.

A very successful exercise, a lot learned and a visually acceptable result. Now it’s a matter of finding the time for at least one such exercise each week… how hard can that be?

* Do not panic, the toast did not appear as some floating apparition or disembodied tasty snack. Jen had not realised the critical nature of laying down watercolour washes and decided to tempt me with the warm munchie. I realise, however, that this post might have been more interesting had it involved an Unidentified Toasted Object, but that would be just a shallow gimmick.

Tags: Watercolour
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