Aquarelle - Tuesdays 2-4.30 pm with Marina Kulik

Painting the light

 

Where is the light in this picture??

 

Last week the aquarellistas got together and worked on a theme: 'light'. What is light in a painting... Simply said, it it the lightest possible colour. It works like that also in actual life, and it is relative. If you are outside in the dark, the stars or the moon or the streetlanterns are the lightest - but often that 'light' is pretty blue (or orange or grey) compared to 'white'...

Same goes for your painting in aquarelle: the lightest colour is the coulour of your paper - in other words the spots that you don't paint...

To illustrate all this, I brought a picture of John Singer Sargent's masterpiece "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose". The lanterns in this painting are really shining - although they are not white... 

The reason why they appear to be lights, is that they are the lightest in the painting: the 'white' of the dresses and the flowers is darker than the lanterns. And suggestion helps a lot too: the contrast (bluish versus orange) and the warm orange reflection on the faces, the hands, the dresses and the hair of the girls makes your brain believe that there is actual light... all in all, it works...

In this black and white version, you can see (you see it even better when you squint) that the lightest colour is indeed in the lanterns.

We did an exercise, trying to achieve this effect, some using the original painting as their guide, some choosing another subject. And here are the first results:

This version works well because of the contrast blue/orange and the dress is a fraction darker than the light!

Good job here! The lantern really stands out in the dark background...

 

An interesting combination of three versions

 

 

In the next version of this poetic painting the background will be darker!

And that will definitely make the painting stronger, I agree :)

 

Same for this one - it is a lovely image with all these flowers !

yet the lantern doesn't really shine...

here's one of the reasons why:

 

And then there were some other images with light in them:

 Work in progress by Liz... what a beautiful transparency!

Reaching out - an interesting watercolour with lots of extras by starter Wendy

 

Sandra accidentally dripped a brushh full of Payne's grey in her light source (on another painting).

While contemplating if she would just tear it up or try to repair, she created this little beauty!

And talking about beauty - work in progress by Cathie - despite the fact that there's a lot of white still-of the paper itself, the lantern already shines...

 

All in all it was a worthwhile exercise and we will proceed with it in the next session...





Aquarelle Tuesdays 2-4.30pm with Marina Kulik

WET IN WET

 

In this first session of the new year, the aquarellistas started off with a video, about the Polish aquarelle artist Ewa Karpinska. She works wet-in-wet and in this video demonstrates how she works... with paper soaked in water for 5 minutes (so that's really VERY wet) and then with jars full of high-in-pigment watery paint. In this way of working there is much more coincidence, though it was clear that with experience comes some form of mastery of most of the effects. It was very interesting and we spent the rest of the afternoon trying it out - with explicitly no 'result' obligation!

 As always Jim was the one who uninhibited experimented with it - and he came to the conclusion that Ewa must use some kind of medium because her paper doesn't dry! Our atelier Le Hangar is quite humid, but the paper dries pretty quickly... We decided that she probably uses Arabic gom in her water and Jim will experiment with that this week (conclusions will be presented later).

Anyway, we all worked with hands and biggg brushes and kitchenpaper and creditcards and sponges, and made a great mess...

 

...yet still the results (although that wasn't an important issue) were impressive and sometimes even stunning!

NB: the titles are mine, let me know if you hate them and I'll change 'em ☺

 

'Cheetahs'

by Agnès McLaughlin

'Bamboo'

by Cathie van der Stel

 'Pebbles'

by Anna-Karin Fast

'Red flare falling'

by Cathy Dariel

'Bouquet drifting'

by Constanza

 

'Watery Landscape'

by Christiane Halsey

 'Magic Light'

by Edith Alborni

 

'Heavy seas'

by Jim Kane

'Red feathers & Fireworks'

by Liz Douglas

I am pretty sure that you will agree with me that the ones with white in them (white = not painted) are the most interesting!!!

Aquarelle - Tuesdays 2 - 4.30 with Marina

Brigitte finished her colourful autumn fruit.

An amazing still life that took her 3 afternoons and it has been Worth It, what a great result!

 

Last Tuesday there were a couple of other projects going on , but the sujet du jour was...

 

ORNAMENTS!

 

Below some previews, I expect I'll be able to present the final results in the next post - but they are already worthwhile!

'Bacchus' an ornament in progress by Liz, she is using bright colours and achieves a lively image, while keeping the sculpture-like impression...

 

Mieke's painting is definitely going somewhere! It's clearly a light stone and there's already something ornamental...Watch this space to see the result...

 

This painting of 10 different gargoyles in comic book style by Agnès is (as we by now expect from her) painted with humor. Expect a funny tagline and click the picture to enlarge it and appreciate it even more 

Sandra, original as always, has started a cathedral like  construction - seen through something... What that something is? Can't wait to see the next stage (will be shown in the next post) ☻ Very promising!

 

As often, Cathie is working on several projects, also on ornaments, but this is so gorgeous in its warm red rusty colour... It is inspired by a kind of vague purple printout! The shiny bits are masking fluid...

 

Starter Wendy worked on the 'Layering' exercise... The sea is not yet finished, but the rest looks so good! Although in this exercise you have to work according to strict rules, the image is your own fantasy - and in this one the stars are amazing, and the buildings are so futuristic, I wonder, is this actually on our planet??

Last but not least Jim's misantropic guy, I cut the picture so that you can see his try-out paper, cleverly punaised to the painting!

By no means finished, this one, but getting more and more interesting! As you can see the the white (not painted) parts on the face begin to get meaning, because of the darker background. To be continued!



Aquarelle - Tuesday afternoons 2pm with Marina

Sunsets & Vitamins

...in all possible styles, by the Aquarellistas!

 

Agnès's Amazing African sundown... a passionate painting with brush and knife

 

Subtle Sunset by Anna-Karin

 

Rhoda Seymour-Dale visits France from time to time and then passes by to paint with us.

She painted two beautiful aquarelles, the one up here and the one below...

 

Sandra's Sunset, another completely different impression! Sandra used the typical watercolour 'cauliflowers' to create a snowy landscape. Very fragile, misty and cold!

Both starters Jim and Cathy created wonderful sunset landscapes, inspired by the same pictures. They both worked out fine, and for both I had a remark to improve their work. Because I like photoshop so much, I changed the pictures to show what I meant...

The horizon in Jim's aquarelle was not a straight line...

In the version on the right I have straightened the horizon for an even better image!

 

The reflection of the hill in the water needed a bit of tweaking, in the picture on the right I added a bit of reflection (not sure if it really improved things ☺

 

In the meantime starter Wendy did a GREAT job on the 'Volume' exercise, very well done on that!

 

And then on to the volume of healthy, vitamine rich fruit!

Here for example the juicy apples and pears by Liz...

Almost finished: Brigitte's Atmospheric Autumn still life

 

And last but not least, Cathie's unbelievable fruity fruit!!

 

 

 

Aquarelle - Tuesdays from 2pm with Marina Kulik

Last Tuesday we were with a small group (it's holiday in the South of France) and there were several projects that the 'select six' worked on. One of them was a portrait from the Help section in l'Aquarelle... read more about that following this link to the Aquarellista blog

 

Jim Kane started another portrait in the best and most efficient way for watercolours: determine where the light (in other words 'the white') is, and leave those areas unpainted, then paint everything else in the lightest colour... and in the next stage, add shadow and other colours, then start with the details... We will see more of it in the next post I'm sure!

 

We have a new aquarellista, Wendy Boyer, who is a painter in other media but just started with watercolours! She did a very good job on the colour transparency exercise and than happily started experimenting with colours, mixing them wet-in-wet and noticing all the interesting effects... The painting above is not finished but already looks great!

 

And then there are two paintings that I really want to show you because they are soooo great:

 

A perfect pinguin by Anna-Karin - not yet completely finished but already so much character! Click picture to see bigger version...

 

Anna-Karin Fast has discovered a new way of using colours, involving black - a colour we tried to avoid up to now because I always said, black is boring... But it looks like I was wrong!! I hope to get Anna-Karin to write a guest-post about her technique, or maybe tell us all about it and I'll do the posting.

Old cracked paint - a try-out by Cathie

Cathie van der Stel has also discovered something she likes and that involves old walls and ornaments... This is one of her first tries, she combined a couple of things like the ornament on the left, and the combination with rusty bolts  and handle and it looks so well together! Can't wait to see future versions of this!

Aquarelle - Tuesday 2 - 4.30pm with MArina Kulik

Because of the exciting things in our near future, the preparations and then the actual exhibition in Valbonne and the calendar we produced that will be published one of these days, I thought I wouldn't have time to post, but seeing some of last week's work I couldn't help myself... The paintings shown here are not all finished yet already make their mark! And they are all created by artists who will also be present in the Salle St Esprit!

Rusty old car - Agnès McLaughlin

Grandson - Brenda Moorhouse

Old painted wall - Cathie van der Stel

Woody Allen - Jim Kane

Eagle - Liz Douglas

Next week - work by others who are exhibiting!