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Albany Painted Lady (watercolor 11 x 14) $175
Passing through old downtown Albany, Oregon, I was struck by the bright morning light on the Victorian houses. I stopped to photograph them. Some of the houses are the National Register of Historic places. This one is the Ralston House, 1889. But it’s not the history, its the beautiful shadows cast by the brickenbrack that caught my eye.
Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.
Watching the Photographer (10 x 14 watercolor) $200.00
I took the photos for the painting on the same Sunday I took the pictures for The Three Choppers. The alley is about a block east of The Book Bin on Court Street. My husband and I refer to this as the alley with the archway to nowhere because of the freestanding brick archway leading to more alley.
I had taken photos of the alley earlier, but the young woman photographing the plumbing caught my eye. It was only after I’d snapped the shot that I noticed the gentleman watching her curiously.
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216 (9.5 x 13.5 watercolor) $175
This is the same alley I painted for “Alley Shortcut,” but on the opposite side of the street facing the other way. Once again I’m looking into the sun as it peeks out from the clouds. This time it’s afternoon sun and it strikes the alley at an angle so the back lit effect is not quite so pronounced.
I must admit I like painting alleys. There’s something sublime about making trash cans beautiful.
Painted in multiple transparent washes. Most of the painting has at least five or six transparent layers of paint. The palette is brown madder, quinacridone rose, cobalt blue, phthalo blue, cerulean blue, and raw sienna.
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The Sun Peeks Out at 2nd Street (10 x 14 watercolor) $250
Once again the sun on wet pavement caught my eye. But this time it’s mid afternoon and threatening to rain again soon. The light was spectacular. Sunlight streaming from between the clouds always seems so much brighter.
The street is the Corvallis street I know best, SW 2nd looking south toward Art in the Valley and The New Morning Bakery.
The palate is what is becoming my new standard: phthalo blue, cobalt blue, quinacridone brown madder, and raw sienna. I painted conventionally working from light to dark in multiple transparent layers. The “blacks” are phthalo blue and brown madder.
Available through Art in the Valley, Corvallis, Oregon. Or purchase a print through Fine Art America.
Alley Shortcut (10 x 14 watercolor) $200
I drove into Corvallis a little early a couple mornings ago and spent the extra time before opening the gallery taking pictures of downtown. The sun was out, but it had just recently rained and the streets were still wet. The light was gorgeous. This little alley is just a couple blocks from Art in the Valley. The reflected light running up the damp pavement caught my eye.
I used a limited palate, but not as limited as my last cityscape: cobalt blue, phthalo blue, raw sienna and quinacridone brown madder. The vast bulk of the painting is brown madder and phthalo blue.
This painting is currently available through Art in the Valley, Corvallis, Oregon. Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.
Afternoon on SW 11th Street (watercolor 10 x 14) $200
This is downtown Portland about a block south of Burnside. The little building peaking out on the left is our Portland mecca, Powell’s Books. But it’s the bright old fashioned brick building lit up by the sun in contrast with the glass and steel building behind them that caught my eye.
I simplified the buildings considerably, taking out much brick ornamentation. I eliminated a few street lights and lamps too. I also moved the shadow forward a little to encompass all of the foreground cars. Before I made the change, the closest left-hand car stole the show. The pedestrian was on the on the scene, but not where I’ve placed him. My applogies to the Joyce Hotel whose name I removed from their canopy since it drew too much attention to itself.
The palate is simple, cobalt blue, phthalo blue, quinacridone brown madder, and raw sienna.
The Shady Side of the Street (watercolor 9 x 13) $200
I redid my Mexican Cafe from scratch and I like it much better. I used the same reference photo and the same palette. The real change is the composition. This time the shadow leads the eye right into the diners. And I eliminated much of the detail in the building to keep the eye there.
I took it to my critique group yesterday and it got rave reviews. Someone pointed out that the composition works so well that it even looks good upside down as an abstract painting. Now, if only I could figure out how to do this every time.
An Abstract?
This painting is currently for sale on line at my Etsy shop. Or purchase a print from my print gallery at Fine Art America. (Fine Art America offers many prints of fine watercolor paintings).
Mexican El Fresco (watercolor 10 x 13) $150.00
Another cityscape from downtown Portland. The day and the palette are the same. The light and consequently the painting couldn’t be more different.
Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.
10th and Washington (watercolor 11 x 15) $200
Last month, my husband and I were out and about in downtown Portland, after having spent the early afternoon at Powell’s Bookstore. Stephen patiently followed me around the hot pavement as I photographed street after street. The sun was brilliant after a cloudy spring, and the light on the streets and buildings almost blinding.
Here’s my first attempt at the heat and glow of that afternoon. I began by giving the paper of light wash of quinacridone gold. After the wash dried I very carefully sketched out the scene. Then I washed the sky with cobalt blue and the pavement with a mixture of quinacridone deep red rose and gold. Next, I masked a very few small light details.
With the paper ready to begin painting in earnest I began with the shadows and the lamp. The shadows are phthalo blue and deep red rose. The lamp is the same plus some burnt sienna. I painted the man in the window next and then glazed over him and the window multiple times. Then I loosely dropped in the tree and the background foliage at the end of the street. After that I worked up and down the buildings washing in the light and building up the darks.
In the end I think the shaded part of the building on the right takes up too much attention, but I’m not sure. I’ll try something similar again soon.
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The Sunlit Porch (watercolor 13 x 17) $225
I’ve always been intrigued by houses half hidden by trees. They arouse all of my worst instincts. The very fact the house is hidden makes me want to spy. I don’t of course, but I want to. The feeling is contradictory in any case because I want a house like that, private and treed. And I certainly wouldn’t want anyone else peering between the leaves.
The house I painted was particularly appealing because of the way the sunlit picked out the front porch. The tree sheltered privacy is an illusion though. And no private person’s privacy was injured by painting it. The house is one of the remaining officers’ houses at Fort Robinson Nebraska. Nor do the trees completely shelter the house, they merely screen it from the parade ground. From the porch one would have an unobstructed view of the northern bluffs. Not a bad thing that.
My painting methods were conventional. I began by tinting the paper with burnt sienna. Then I sketched the house and trees. I painted the house first working from light to dark. Then I added the trees beginning this the trunks. I painted the trees loosely working very wet. Then I scrubbed the edges to soften them and lifted color with a tissue.
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Winter Morning on Campus (11 x 14) $150
This is another painting from my winter morning walk on Oregon State University. Weatherford Hall is probably the photographed building on campus and with reason. That morning the sun lit up just the top eastern half of the building.
I decided to focus on the the central archway and so I cropped out the wings before I began to paint.
The palette is ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, quinacridone deep red rose, and hansa yellow. I kept the use on hansa to a minimum. I used only for the trees, lawn and the very darkest darks.
This painting is available on-line through my Etsy shop. Prints available from Fine Art America.com.
Craftsmen Lantern (11 x 14) reserved for La Salles show
Last week’s art show was on OSU campus in Corvallis. Early Friday morning it was dry and clear and the morning light was stunning, but I had no time to do anything but rush inside the Memorial Building to finish setting up. Sunday was dry, clear and cold too, so I went early and wandered the campus taking photos on the sunlit buildings. Not only was the light dramatic, but since all the leaves have fallen much more of the buildings were visible than last time I was on campus.
The reflected trees in the arch above the main entrance to the Womens Building caught my eye. Closer up I noticed the sun on the craftsmen lantern.
The palate is mostly cobalt blue, dioxin purple and burnt sienna. The extreme highlights are raw sienna and the deepest shadows contain phthalo blue.
I began by painting in the windows in cobalt. I added the reflected trees with a mixture on cobalt and burnt sienna. The metal mullions are layers of cobalt, violet, and burnt sienna built up one over another. I painted the lantern and its reflection next to establish the darkest values. I saved the raw sienna for the sunlit portion of the lamp and echoed it it the sunlit side of the arch.
I showed to my painting friend when I had finished. She introduced me to a new word, “tenebrism.” It means the use of extreme contrasts of light and dark with small amounts of light shining out of vast darkness. I love extreme contrast, and I’m happy to have a word to describe it. I’m not sure that this painting as a whole is an tenebristic, but the lantern and its shadow certainly are, and they make the painting.
Prints available at Fine Art America.com.
Shadows Glass and Leaves (12 x 14) $100.00
Driving down Commercial last summer, I was struck by the shadows of leaves on a stucco building. I reached for my camera and discovered I’d left it at home. I drove home hurriedly to get it. My daughters in the back seat were remarkable patient with me as I drove round the block twice looking for a parking space. Only eight or nine pictures later did it dawn on me what I was photographing. It’s a local mortuary. Never mind, the shadows and the glass bricks were beautiful.
The shapes were so simple that I drew them freehand onto the watercolor paper.
Most of the painting was done in what I think of as controlled wet-into-wet painting. First I moistened the the small area I wanted to paint and then I dropped the wet color in. I created each glass brick this way. After the paint dried I went back with a wet brush and added the darker shadows to each brick. I used phthallo blue, cobalt blue, cadmium yellow, and yellow ocher.
The shadows on the wall are two separate layers of controlled wet into wet. The first layer was phthallo blue, deep red rose quinacridone, dull a hair with cadmium yellow. The second layer was cobalt blue and deep red rose.
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Sweet Shoppe (10 x 13) $100.00
This is another Central City Painting. I started it this summer at the Artisan Village at the Oregon State Fair. But I felt it lacked something and set it aside. Yesterday when looking for something to paint at the gallery I picked it up again.
What got me started on the painting in the first place is the Victorian decoration. I brightened the colors to go with the sweet shoppe theme. The result was interesting, but lacked something.
Yesterday I decided what it needed was more omph, or in other words more contrast. So I darkened up both the sky and the shadows and here it is.
The palate is cobalt and phthalo blue, quinacridone deep red rose, and cadmium yellow.
Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.
Grass in the Window (10 x 14) $225.00
Most of Central City is so well maintained that period-town would be a better description than ghost-town. But some of the buildings have been left to nature for some time. Grass grows out of a low window in one such wall were two building used to abut each other.
If the wall ever had any mortar, it’s not visible now. The quality of the dry wall construction obviously varied greatly between the two buildings is backed. On the right hand side the wall is neatly constructed and looks purposeful and solid. On the left hand side the stones are hardly squared at all are stacked more and more erratically the higher the wall gets. Some stones near the window have fallen away, revealing the depth of the wall.
I began the stones by making an under-painting of phthalo blue. The under-painting showed the shadows between the stones and some of the stronger shadows in the stones. Phthalo blue is a great choice for under-painting because it is strongly staining and won’t wash up with successive layers of paint. After the under-painting dried, I washed the stones wetly with burnt sienna and burnt sienna mixed with rose madder quinacridone. Washes of cerulean blue and phthalo blue mixed with burnt sienna followed. I built up the shadows slowly using the under-painting as a guide. Finally I splattered the rocks with various combination of cerulean blue, burnt sienna and burnt umber using a toothbrush. I smudged the splatters with a paper towel.
The window casing is burnt sienna, cerulean blue, new gamgee, and burnt umber. I applied the paint wet first and then in dry brushed layers.
The grass I masked before beginning the painting. I finished it with greens mixed from new gamgee and phthalo blue. I added the shadows over the window sill last.
I’ve always shied away from building detailed rock and wood like this because I was afraid I couldn’t get the textures right. But I”m pleased with this and may do some more like it.
Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.
The Newport Bay Bridge I (13 x 19) $250
The Yaquina Bay Bridge, better and more informally known as the Newport Bridge, is one of the most photographed and painted objects on the Oregon coast. It’s a little daunting to add yet another painting to the stack. But it’s such a beautiful bridge that I just couldn’t resist.
This is the view of the bridge from the south side of bay standing on the ground looking up. Anyone who knows the area well will see immediately that I took major liberties with the landscape. I’ve placed tree covered hills in the foreground, where there is really a grassy flat area often used as an impromptu parking lot. My reference photo throws the parking lot and the bridge into silhouette against the late afternoon sky. Trees broke up the flat horizon. I expanded the treeline into undulating hills.
What I did not remove from the photo was the scaffolding. Somehow whenever I visit the bridge there is scaffolding somewhere in the picture. And with the light behind it, I found the scaffolding as beautiful as the bridge.
After transferring my sketch of the bridge to the paper, I began by painting the sky. I worked wet into wet beginning at the top with a combination of cobalt blue and cerulean Blue. Moving down the paper I added burnt sienna to the two blues to create the grays of the upper cloud masses. Then I dropped in dioxzine purple on the undersides and the dark areas of the clouds. I grayed the violet a hair and added some cobalt to it and washed in the lower cloud bank. Grayed cobalt brought the clouds to the horizon. The bay itself is grayed down cerulean.
The bridge is various dark combinations of burnt sienna, cobalt blue, french ultramarine, and dioxazine purple. The hills are are wet into wet layers of various mixes of the bridge colors plus cerulean blue and raw sienna.
When I finished the painting I was puzzeled about where to sign it. In the end, I signed the painting in removable liquid mask. The mask has a tendency to lift paint thus leaving a quiet signature behind when I removed it.
This painting is currently available on-line through my Etsy shop. Prints available on inquiry.
Queen Anne Nods to Shirley Jackson (11 x 15) $150
I set a challenge for myself this week. The idea was to paint a single subject in a variety of moods. The subject I choose was Deepwoods Estate, here in Salem. I took all of the photos for the painting in the same light and although the various aspects of the building gave me different ideas, the photos don’t convey much feeling to me.
Its Greener on the Other Side
Porch reference photo
I began with the front porch. I aimed to emphasize the softness of the light and the romance of the building. I also wanted to draw the viewer into the painting.
As you can see from my reference photo, my depiction is a little fanciful. I limited my palate to yellows and blues to mimic the soft shadowy light under the porch and the golden sunlight beyond it.
I think the painting works. The most common comment about it is that the viewer would like to step through the porch into the garden on the other side.
Turret and Cupola
Turret Reference Photo
Next I painted a detail of the roof-line from in back. This time I tried to contrast the harsh glittering light with the shaded parts of the building.
Because I intended to include many hard lines and less subtle variation in tone I looked for a place where the contrast between light and shade was particularly striking. But I didn’t want it to look like graphic art, so I poured this painting to ensure that the solid expanses of color were lively rather than flat. Once again I exaggerated, the light in the reference photo is not nearly as stark as the light I painted.
I like this painting, but it turned out rather softer than I had intended. I may try it again with an orange and blue palate.
House Reference Photo
The latest painting in this series is of the whole house. I’ve always found Victorian and Queen Anne houses a little creepy. Like wrought iron, they can be both sinister and charming all at once. On a bright sunny day there is nothing really creepy about the Deepwood House, but it does have a swallowed by the woods feel to it. Despite a generous lawn, there are few places where you can see the whole house. Instead what you see is patches of house through the trees.
So in order to bring out the sinister feel of Queen Anne archetecture, I pulled the trees in closer to the house and darkened the edges where the trees and house meet visually. I also distorted the shape of the house stretching it upwards to about fifteen percent more than it’s real height. Finally I chose a very earthy palate for such a pristine white house: burnt sienna, raw sienna, yellow ocher, phthalo blue and cobalt blue.
I poured this painting too because I wanted a lot of variation in tone. But pouring produces hard lines at the edges of the mask. The result had too many hard lines for the shadowy woods. I did so much scrubbing of the edges, washing over, and detail work that painting doesn’t feel poured to me. But the more I painted the darker it got. I finally had to stop for fear the house would no longer read as white.
I showed the finished painting to my husband yesterday. He said he really liked it, but then added tentatively, “Isn’t it a little eerie?” Yes, yes it is. But I don’t think it’s so eerie that it’s a caricature of the house.
Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.
Turret and Copula (11 x 14) $150
Back to the Deepwood Estate but with a very different feel. This is the west or backside of the house looking up at the turret and the tallest roof peak. The afternoon sun brought the architectural details into graphic relief. I decided to play with the posterized nature of the light by pouring this painting.
Pouring watercolors is much like batik dyeing. First I mask all the white areas of the painting. Then I literally pour cups of paint across the paper. After the first pour dries, I mask all the pastels and pour darker paint. Then I mask the medium values and pour again with yet darker paint. Once the painting is dry, I lift the mask and add the darkest values and the details.
In this case I used phthalo blue, deep red rose, and new gamgee for the first pout. I tried to keep the yellow on the cupola. In later pours I used only the deep red rose and two blues Phthalo and French ultramarine. I saved the french ultramarine for the final pour.
I masked the sky after the first pour and overlaid it with cobalt blue when the mask was removed. The details are all heavy purple and magenta mixtures of phthalo blue and deep red rose.
Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.
Its Greener on the Other Side (10 x 13) $125.00
Built in 1894, The Deepwood Estate is a lovely example of Queen Anne architecture. But to my mind, the gardens are even better. There are four acres of these and they get better every year. The indoor and outdoor Deepwood Estate meet on the front porch. Steps from the porch lead to both the front and back gardens as well as the house and separate glassed-in porch.
Looking up at the porch from the front, I was struck by how the trees on the other side glowed in sun.
After cropping my reference photo to emphasize the the view of the backyard, I spent sometime correcting the photo’s perspective. After transferring my sketch to the watercolor paper I built up from light to dark reserving the white paper where the sun hit the porch wall.
The palate was phthalo blue, a little cobalt blue, hansa yellow light, hansa yellow medium, and burnt sienna. I tried to keep the porch shadows as blue as possible to emphasize the green and yellow of the view on the other side of the porch. And I exaggerated the porch shadows to increase the sense of depth and to show off the green and gold trees. I used the sienna very sparingly and only to gray down the blues and greens.
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The Mill Reflects Upon Itself (13 x 16) $200
I love the way old glass distorts reflections. This is the second painting of reflections in old glass I’ve done at the Mission Mill Museum.
The old woolen mill is well worth the visit. Most of the original equipment remains inside the mill house and the mill wheel and machinery remains operable. One of these days I’ll have to paint the whole building. It’s bright red and looks like a stack of buildings piled up like crates rather than a single structure. The effect is charming and oddly reminiscent of a child’s toy.
In the meantime I remain fascinated by the glass. Here, a dye house window reflects the mill itself. I love the abstract designs created in the window panes.
I created the siding with multiple washes of paint. I began by painting the shadows in french ultramarine blue. Then I washed all of the siding with with a mixture of deep red rose grayed down a little with phthalo green. Next came Da Vinci’s burnt sienna, followed by HWC’s burnt sienna. The first is really very orange and the second verges on red. I didn’t wash the highlights with the redder sienna. Then I washed the shadowed siding in burnt umber followed by cobalt blue. I like the resulting glow from all of those translucent layers of paint.
I used much the same process for the reflected mill, except that I didn’t use any burnt umber and the final layer of deep red rose.
Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.
Central City Tourists (10.5 x 12) $100.00
The odd part about visiting Central City, Colorado this summer was the empty streets. The Central City of my childhood was packed with tourists. The parking lots were still packed, so I can only surmise that the tourists are all in the new casinos. But the lack of people on the streets, gave me a field day for unobstructed photography on the steep narrow streets.
I chose this particular photo to work from because of the way the light lit up only the upper half of the street. That the scene showed the slant of the street so clearly was a plus.
Because half the charm of the city is the painted Victorian ladies I moved away from my usual earth tone pallete. The pallete here was phthalo blue, cobalt blue, quinacridone red, and quinacridone gold.
Which Century (11 x 13) $125.00
We recently visited Central City, Colorado. Like many “ghost towns” across the country, tourism has kept the once bustling mining town alive. When I was girl the historic downtown was wall to wall novelty and gift shops broken only by cheap restaurants. Tourist straggled up and down the steep streets buying post cards of jackalopes, shiny cedar boxes and souvenir spoons.
Most of the novelty shops are gone now. Casinos dominate the downtown now. The streets are quiet because the tourists are mostly inside the casinos gambling. But unlike in the 1800s the gamblers are senior citizens bused in rather than rough neck miners. I find it an ironic return to the past. But I liked the bustling streets better.
I still like the old downtown, and I took many pictures for future paintings. This one is of the Coyote Creek Casino and the Century building. My question is which century, the 19th, the 20th or the 21st? All three centuries are mingled in the Victorian building with 20th century signs and air-conditioning, and 21st century computers.
The light cast lovely shadows on the century building, but the bright light flattened the casino. After some thought, I added some shadow to the casino. I think it works a little better particularly on the upper story.
Missionarys Window in Reflection (9 x 12) $75.00
I love the warped reflections made by antique glass window so much that I was sorry to see our 1930′s living room windows replaced with energy efficient modern double paned glass.
But I can still enjoy the warped windows of the Mission Mill Museum. Here, reflected in the mill warehouse, is of the youngest of the three missionary houses moved to the Mill site after it became a museum. The painting is true to the shape and colors of the reflected of parsonage house, but not to the color of the Mill warehouse. In real life the mill and warehouse are brick red.
I painted it because the reflection made such a satisfying abstract design.
The Annex Bar (11 x 14) $125
Between art fairs and getting prints ready for my first painting fair I haven’t had time to actually paint nearly as often as I’d like. Today I decided to paint whether I had the time or not.
And I returned to a subject I had attempted to paint without success about six or seven months again, the Annex Building in downtown Portland. Like many downtown Portland buildings it’s wedge shaped to take advantage of the oddly shaped blocks created where diagonals run through the city grid. I photographed the Annex in the late afternoon when sun lit up all of the brick-a-brack.
My first attempts at painting the building ended in frustration because I included much too much detail. This time I simplified both the brick-a-brack and the colors. I also eliminated an upper story with a flat wall used as a a bill board facing out over the bar. This is one case where KISS (“keep it simple stupid”) worked.
Besides eliminating detail, I also simplified the colors and reduced my palette to phthalo blue, burnt sienna, and yellow ocher. At the very end I dropped cobalt blue into the sky.
It sure felt good to paint again, and better yet to paint something I’d failed to paint before.
Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.
Memorial Day Waterworks (17 x 19) $275
Yes, this is yet another painting of the Town Center Park water feature. This one is rather more ambitious than the previous two. I backed up to take in the feel of the whole stream bed. And I included not one but seven figures.
As you can see from the reference photo, I took some liberties with the geometry of stream bed. I narrowed the center wall of concrete and removed a trash can among other less major changes. I also slide the boys around a little so that they wouldn’t be directly above each other. Finally I eliminated the blond boy half hidden on the left hand side.
Refrence Photo
After the Mask Came Off
Once I was satisfied with the sketch I masked the boys and concentrated on the water feature itself. Masking an object against water or sky makes it easier to get the water to flow evenly to the edge of the foreground object.
Masking the boys also served as a final composition check as it made them stand out as the centers of interest. People always attract the eye and I expected the boys to so doubly because their skin provides the only warm tones in an otherwise cool picture and because their clothing and toys are the brightest colors in the painting. I liked the way the placement of the boys echoes the “S” curve of the concrete wall. Now that the painting is finished, I still like it.
But I’m probably still not done with this water feature. I like this subject and I’m learning the value of working in a series.
Pigment notes: The background is all burn sienna, phthalo blue and cobalt blue. To do the boys I added yellow ocher, cadmium yellow, and quinacridone deep red rose.
Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.
I don’t know why I am obsessed with the old drawbridge counterweight, but I am. I’d like to say my obsession was producing great paintings, but it isn’t. I’d like to say that there was some symbolism in the counterweight, that justifies all this futile painting, but there isn’t. I don’t see it as a symbol of impending doom hanging over the bridge or man’s ability to lift great burdens or anything else. I just like it.
But I can’t paint it. Here are the efforts of yesterday and the day before. Neither is necessarily finished. Neither is without potential. But I think it’s time to do something else for a while.
Suday's Counterweight
This is almost entirely wet into wet. Only the details are wet on dry. I used Hansa yellow, rose madder quinacridone, cobalt blue, and Prussian blue for the bridge. All of the colors layered or dropped in. I didn’t do any mixing on the palette. The sky is cobalt blue and burnt sienna partly mixed on the palette and applied wet on wet.
The movement in the sky seems to distract from the bridge and there isn’t enough contrast between the bridge and the sky.
Monday's Counterweight
This time I masked the bridge first and poured the sky in a single pour cobalt blue and cerulean blue. I used the same pigments as Sunday for the bridge itself and the same application method.
This one seems garish to me. The counterweight to too bright. Again there isn’t enough contrast between the bridge tower and the sky.
Of the two, I think Sunday’s effort has the most potential and I may get back to it later. Darker sky perhaps?
Counter Weight II (10 x 14) $100
This is an extreme view of one of the counterweights in the West Salem Bridge towers. The bridge is no longer a working drawbridge, but the massive counterweights remain in the towers, hanging over the pedestrian way.
I painted the tower entirely in combinations of Prussian blue and burnt sienna mixed on the paper. The sky is indanthrene blue wet into wet.
Highway Cathedral I (9 x 11) $50
I doubt it’s original of me, but I’ve always loved the shapes of bridges from below. From above the bridge connecting connecting Salem and West Salem is a dull and even ugly highway from which you can see only tantalizing glimpses of the Willamette River below. But from underneath it’s all about arches, windows, and water.
To get the feel of the concrete, I used mostly naturally granulating pigments: cerulean blue, French ultra marine blue, burnt sienna, and yellow ochre. The only pigments without natural granulation I used were cobalt blue and phthalo blue which I used to the darken the shadows on the underside of the highway.
For the foreground I mixed burnt sienna and French ultramarine blue with granulation medium to accentuate the textural effect. Next time I may add ox gall to the water pigments to smooth them out for contrast.
This was a fun little painting. I’ll do a few more under the bridge paintings over the next few weeks.
After the last of the viable mask has been removed, I wet the paper generously to remove the last remnants of the of the mask. This is a necessary step because unless the masked area has been washed, it will take paint unevenly or not at all.
Then I laid in the sky. This time I went for blue (cerulean blue, and French Ultramarine).
With Sky
From here on out it’s all detail. I used a mixture of French ultramarine and Windsor red for all of the brush work. I varied the temperature of the mixture to match the surrounding pour image and to cool shadowed areas. I mostly left the poured passages alone.
The Counter-Weight (11 x 14) ($75)
What would I do differently? Well, the current composition is unobjectionable but it lacks excitement. The early painting had movement and especially depth that this one lacks. I may go back to the bridge with sketchbook and camera in hand, but not today.
Here are some other examples of paintings I have made using the multiple mask and pour method:
Pouring is one of my favorite techniques. It literally means to pour paint across the paper. It can either be the atmospheric beginning to a painting or a major part of the painting process. Some people use it to create abstract shapes to suggest the painting subject. But however much pouring is used, it provides transparent color passages that can be gotten in almost no other way.
The method I use most frequently was popularized by Jean Grastorf in her book Pouring Light: Layering Transparent Watercolor. Her technique uses multiple masks in much the same way batik uses multiple wax resists.
When I first began painting I used her pouring and masking method as an aide to help me paint with contrast, because it forced me to divide my picture into five distinct tonal values or less. It also helped me loosen up about color. These days I pour only when I think the subject of the picture will be enhanced by pouring.
Sunday I photographed just such a picture, one of the counter weights to a local railway drawbridge recently converted to a pedestrian bridge. The silhouetted subject is perfect for pouring.
Working Photo
After one false start detailed in the previous two posts I had a drawing of the bridge I liked. I began the painting by transferring it to a block of Arches 140 cold-pressed paper. (Because removing mask is hard on paper I always use the more durable 140 weight cold-pressed paper when pouring.) My photo of the bridge has loads of minute detail. In my cartoon I simplified. I want the silhouette of the bridge tower and counterweight to predominate. Too much detail would take away from the graphic nature of the image.
After making the cartoon I taped off the edges of the painting and began masking the sky plus everything I’d like to remain white. The trick to masking is to use nylon brushes and to soap the brushes frequently. This keeps the mask from gumming up the brushes and saves your quality brushes from rack and ruin.
Once the mask was dry, I mixed three cups of very thin paint: cadmium yellow, phthalo blue, and Windsor red. I deliberately choose staining colors, because mask lifts pigments. Then I wet the paper (an important step as otherwise the paint tends to run off the paper without staining) and poured the yellow straight across the top of the tower. I tilted the paper right to let the paint run off and wiped up the excess. Then I poured the red just below the yellow, tipped the paper, and cleaned the excess again. Some of the red bled into the yellow making orange. Then I poured the blue the same way across the counter-weight adding a dull purple where the paint crossed the red paint I had just poured.
After the First Pour
When the paint had dried completely, I masked all of my lightest values and poured slightly thicker paint over the paper in roughly the same places. After the paint dried I masked the medium values and repeated the process with milk-thick paint. When the final pour had dried, I pulled the mask off, revealing a bold but rough painting in vivid color.
After the Mask Came Off
It’s all brush work from here.
A couple days ago I began pouring demonstration. It was cheeky of me to post the first half of the demonstration before for the painting was finished. I got bit too. I thought about deleting this demonstration entry, but there is too much to learn from mistakes to do that. Instead I will rename it and recast it a hair:
The problem began with the composition itself. Here is the photograph I began with:
Working Photo
I began by making a line drawing of the bridge and transferring it to watercolor paper. What I should have done first was made a preliminary value sketch.
Cartoon For Painting
Then I became beguiled by the lovely colors produced by pouring it.
After the First Pour
After the Second Pour
After the Mask Came Off
There were beautiful colors there after the pouring was done, but the darks were much to heavy. Lightening the darkes only muddied them. And the compositional flaws became more apparent as I worked. In the end I gave up in disgust.
