Category Archives: Making marks in different ways

Research point: Watercolours

This task of this research point was to look at watercolour paintings from different periods and in different styles, to identify different techniques and think about their effect in the picture. It also advises to make a few sketches and notes to record observations, and how I would be able to incorporate the findings into my own practice.

Approaching the task

I felt quite overwhelmed by the task, because I’m new to watercolour and would not really know where to begin. So I first thought about strategies how I might approach the task.

My first idea was to look through the artists included in part 1 of the course materials. I could note their names and research them in the internet, by collecting some biographical information and try to get an overview and impression of their work. Another idea was to look through the book “Watercolour” from the reading list for this course, which I have bought but not yet begun to read. I also thought about trying to find out whether there are exhibitions in Berlin of watercolour artists. Or maybe a museum with important watercolour paintings. I also remembered that there is a small museum in Berlin regularly presenting works of Emil Nolde.

I started by first making a list of artists mentioned in the course material, and also noted a bit of context information. Then I decided that it would be a good idea to first have a look at what could be seen as original work in Berlin. From two German image catalogs I found www.bildindex.de quite helpful because it permitted to search for technique (watercolour) and location (Berlin). I then went through the list searching for interesting watercolours and noted down information about artist and location. I found quite a few located in the National Gallery and the Kupferstichkabinett.

I did not particularly restrict the search and verified that the index is international, but somehow the result list of my search seemed to include only German artists (plus some Swiss and Austrian, I think). Artists which interested me were: Curt Querner, Otto Dix, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, George Grosz, Johannes Itten, and Lovis Corinth.

The tricky part came when I wanted to actually see the original works. For some, no information on location was given. Others were located in private collection, thus inaccessible. Most of them were in a Museum, but spread over many different locations and would be difficult to find. The National Gallery consists of 9 Museums, and the catalog provided no information in which of these the images were. The Kupferstichkabinett is open only Monday to Friday during working hours, so I would need to take a day off work for a visit. So I resigned to the feasible option: Looking at Emil Nolde’s works and visiting the current exhibition at the Nolde Foundation.

Emil Nolde

Emil Nolde (1867 – 1956) was a German painter and printmaker, and has been a member of the expressionist group “Die Brücke”. I was lucky because the Emil Nolde Foundation had organized an exhibition which was on its next to last day, titled “From fisherman’s house to Mies van der Rohe”. The exhibition was centered around the architectural plans for a private home of Emil Nolde, planned by architect Mies van der Rohe between 1929 and 1933. Due to biographical events in Emil Nolde’s life, the building has never been realized. The exposition presented some works of the artists and how they related to the places where he lived. For example, there were watercolours depicting his house in Seebüll at the North Sea, close to the Danish Frontier, or paintings he made in the 1920s and 30s when he lived in Berlin.

Many of Emil Nolde’s watercolours and prints have been destroyed during World War II. The exhibition presented a hand-written note mentioning around 2200 watercolours being burnt when his Berlin flat was bombed. The exhibition also presented architectural models of the planned Mies van der Rohe house. Funnily enough, the house was very spacious, but the room called ‘Arbeitszimmer’ (study) didn’t have a window. The exhibition also mentioned ‘respectful discussions’ between Nolde and architect Mies van der Rohe, and I just wondered whether the painter objected against the plans for his study.

The watercolours shown in the exhibitions were very nice, but apparently not impressive as those for which Nolde became renown. There was a museum shop associated which presented art books on Nolde, some focusing on his watercolours and one large and heavy book, seemingly presenting all the major works including oil paintings, watercolours and prints. I was highly impressed by Nolde’s watercolours of flowers. They are very intense and colourful, and very expressive.

In the watercolours presented at the exhibition, Nolde seemed to be using mostly a wet-in-wet technique, which created beautiful colour blendings. Also, he seemed to be working on damp paper. I concluded this from looking closely at a watercolour reproduction of red moon flowers in one of the books. The contours of these flowers were not clear-cut, but a bit fuzzy, and this gave the leaves a very naturalistic touch.

One of the rooms of the exhibition presented landscape watercolours, depicting a renovated fisherman’s house at the countryside where he lived with his wife Ada for several years. Very characteristic for these paintings was the low horizon line, with the house lying quite flat and small, and an impressive sky with colourful cloud formations above the house, which took around 4/5 of the entire sheet. Here’s one which wasn’t included in the exhibition, but which resembles those that I saw.

Making sketches and taking notes

I went to the exhibition with the intention of maybe making some sketches, and took a light A4 sketchbook, pencils and watersoluble colour crayons with me. But I was a bit under time pressure because I had parked my car outside the museum and since the parking fees are quite high in the area, I paid only for one hour speculating that I might stay for half an hour more without a controller passing by and fining me. Nevertheless this created a feeling of pressure and I wasn’t calm enough to sit in front of a painting for a sketch. Maybe this reluctance was also because this is quite new for me. But I did make two drawings in the sketchbook: One of a wooden chair taken from one of Nolde’s homes, and the other of the architectural model of the planned house.

The wooden chair impressed me by the clarity of its design, and it was characteristic for the style of furniture which could be seen on photographs of Nolde’s homes. I thought it was typical for the upcoming Bauhaus movement and I also like the contrast between Nolde’s colourful and lively paintings and the strength and simplicity of the furniture design. Unfortunately the exhibition was on its last day, but I count on more occasions in the future to see Nolde’s works as originals. The Nolde foundation regularly organizes exhibitions, so there’s a high chance.

I also found a pointer to an important exhibition of Nolde’s works in the Oslo National Gallery from 12 October 2012 to 20 January 2013, which I would definitely like to visit.

Some more research on Nolde.

I took a look at Bridgeman education library to see whether they had a more comprehensive overview of Nolde’s works than what I had found so far. Indeed, they present around 250 works, and I selected some to further illustrate the observations I had made in the Nolde exhibition.

For example, here are two more watercolours to illustrate the low horizon line and the impressive colours of the sky in Nolde’s landscapes: Marshland Farmhouse (left) and Friesland farm with clouded sky (right).

The cyclamen may have been the flower watercolour painting where I detected the irregular shapes of the contours. The branch of blossom is another example of the masterly blending of colours in a wet-in-wet technique.

With respect to this research point, I’d take Nolde as a modern artist, and would like to look at artists from earlier times, too. I think I will select some of those mentioned in the course materials and search for high quality images on the web. This seems to offer access to a broader variety of works than focusing on what I can see as originals in Berlin within the next few days.

Classical/Traditional approaches: John Sell Cotman (1782 – 1842)

I will have a look at the works of John Sell Cotman (1782 – 1842). Cotman lived roughly 100 years earlier than Emil Nolde (1867 – 1956)

Browsing through the Bridgeman library, my attention was captured by the watercolour painting of New Bride, Durham, c. 1805/06. I think I was attracted by the portrait format which I tend to find interesting (and not always the best choice) for landscapes, and also by the colours and good contrasts.

In the course materials, John Sell Cotman’s watercolours were presented in the context of resist techniques, and I wonder whether this painting has been developed using such a technique. I can imagine how the different tones and shapes of the landscape’s elements were developed by applying more and more layers of a resist, then laying washes on top. I think this is due to the very regular colouring, where no brush strokes can be seen. Also, there is not the typical blending of watercolour pigment when applied with a brush to create a form directly, as for example in Emil Nolde’s flower drawings.

The effect of John Sell Cotman’s technique seems to be a more static and calm overall impression – compared to the expressivity of Nolde’s flower watercolours. Interestingly, the tree on top right seems to have been developed without a resist, because the white clouds of the sky shine through that transparent layer.

Another watercolour that I found interesting is titled ‘Brecknock’ (c. 1801), and for the technique ‘watercolour with gum arabic’ is indicated. I experimented with gum arabic in this project but not very successfully, so I’m quite impressed by this painting. During my experiments, I wasn’t able to detect what exactly gum arabic could be used for, and looking at this painting, I still don’t see where and how it was applied. But the overall impression is different from a ‘simple’ watercolour.

Watercolour Painting in Britain, 1750 – 1850

Searching Google for ‘John Sell Cotman gum arabicum’ wasn’t successful with respect to my question, but returned an interesting thematic essay published on the website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art under the title ‘Watercolour Painting in Britain, 1750 – 1850.’

It includes a slideshow which presents some watercolour paintings from important painters, and the examples selected tend to be watercolour over graphite. I chose one by John Robert Cozens (1752 – 1798), ‘View of the Villa Lante on the Janiculum (Gianicolo) in Rome, dated 1782-82. The essay explains that the painting was based on a graphite drawing over which washes of watercolour were laid. Brush strokes were eliminated by blotting.

This seems to correspond well to the aim of depicting the trees further away, where visible brush strokes might have disturbed the intended effect.

I like this very traditional technique of colorizing a graphite drawing and would like to experiment with it. I’m currently doing my first landscape drawings in the context of the drawing 1 course, and find it quite difficult to create enough contrast between adjacent trees using only pencil grey. Adding tones of green to these drawings might well improve the readability of these drawings.

At the same time, I realize that this is an approach quite different from what I saw in Emil Nolde’s works, who worked very spontaneous, rather than planning and meticulously constructing details before applying colour. Similar to the work of John Sell Cotman, the overall impression of this watercolour is quiet and static, where Nolde’s works come across lively and vibrant.

Looking at a contemporary artist: Anna Teasdale

Still in the Bridgeman education library, I looked up Anna Teasdale and selected the ‘Road to Torlisk’ (2008) for a closer view.

For me this is a very disturbing painting. I had made my selection from a thumbnail sized image result list because I liked the colours. But when looking at the large image, I was quite perplexed how Teasdale painted a forest in watercolour. She gave clearly defined contours to individual trees, arranging them side by side, all with basically the same shape, and colourized in different blue-green tones. These trees look very artificial, like an army of soldiers waiting for the marching order. It’s a very strange painting. It is very recent, only four years old, and I wonder whether Anna Teasdale has made an artistic development towards this style, compared to the painting presented in the course materials.

And indeed, looking at her earlier work, the style seems to have been much more natural and fluid, for example ‘Near Dervaig’ (2000) or still earlier, ‘Wiltshire pines’ (1989).

By contrast, her recent work seems to be influenced by her painting in acrylic and oil, which is very realistic, massive and solid. Her later watercolour style seems to eliminate the fluidity and chance effects out of the medium, and there’s intriguing resemblance between her watercolour and acrylic/oil paintings. See for example ‘Calgary Woods. Isle of Mull’ (undated), oil on canvas. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to retrieve the creation date of this painting to verify my idea about her development towards more static depiction of the world.

Conclusion

This was a first attempt to get to know some more of the broad spectrum of watercolour styles and techniques. There’s so much more to discover!

References

Bildindex, German art and architecture image catalog
http://www.bildindex.de

— Emil Nolde

Nolde Foundation Berlin, exhibition “From a fisherman’s house to Mies van der Rohe” (Von der Fischerkate zu Mies van der Rohe)
http://www.nolde-stiftung.de/de/32/ausstellung-winter-201112.html

Brücke Museum, Berlin
http://www.bruecke-museum.de/

National Gallery Oslo (Norway) with upcoming Emil Nolde exhibition ‘In search of the authentic’ from 13 October 2012 to 20 January 2013
http://www.nasjonalmuseet.no/en/

Emil Nolde c. 1930 Sonnenblumen, watercolour
http://www.boisseree.com/fr/exhibitions/2009.html

Emil Nolde c. 1935 Sonnenblumen und Rittersporn, watercolour
http://www.kettererkunst.de/kunst/kd/details.php?obnr=112001890&anummer=400

Emil Nolde c. 1940-45 Blumen-Aquarell mit roten Tulpen
http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/drawings-watercolors/emil-nolde-blumen-aquarell-mit-roten-tulpen-5583082-details.aspx

Emil Nolde 1930 Marschlandschaft, Watercolor and India ink drawing
http://www.kettererkunst.com/details-e.php?obnr=101001748&anummer=368

Marshland farmhouse (undated)
http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/ImageView.aspx?result=8&balid=197984

Friesland farm with clouded sky (undated)
http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/ImageView.aspx?result=168&balid=197994

Cyclamen (undated)
http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/ImageView.aspx?result=23&balid=209720

Branch of blossom (undated)
http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/ImageView.aspx?result=75&balid=209721

— John Sell Cotman

New Bride, Durham, c. 1805/06
http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/ImageView.aspx?result=11&balid=155886

Brecknock (c. 1801)
http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/ImageView.aspx?result=53&balid=159498

— Watercolour Painting in Britain, 1750 – 1850

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Watercolour Painting in Britain, 1750 – 1850
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/bwtr/hd_bwtr.htm

— Anna Teasdale

Road to Torloisk, 2008
http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/ImageView.aspx?result=1&balid=365542

Near Dervaig (2000)
http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/ImageView.aspx?result=4&balid=365544

Wiltshire pines (1989)
http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/ImageView.aspx?result=3&balid=354797

Calgary Woods. Isle of Mull (undated), oil on canvas
http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/ImageView.aspx?result=33&balid=289934

Making marks in different ways

This project was about exploring the medium and a variety of techniques.

Exercise 1: Unusual brush marks

Task: Select a variety of household brushes, then paint tree shapes and clouds
Use smooth and rough paper and compare

First try: Blue tones

I used two sheets, first a smooth paper (left image), then a rough paper (right image). I find the marks on the rough paper more interesting than those on the smooth paper, but this may be also a result of how I handled the brushes.

The houshold brushes I found make much too irregular marks, and I found them not helpful for depicting clouds from memory. For this exercise, I would need some photographs or go outside and look at clouds, then try to depict what I see. I’m not very inventive otherwise. While the marks look quite interesting, there’s no resemblance with clouds. I think the difficulty is that one doesn’t paint clouds, but rather their background to make them come off white against the sky. I can’t do this from memory. Maybe because I haven’t paid attention to clouds for a while.

The experiment on the rough paper might eventually work as clouds if I protected the patterns with a resist and made a dark blue wash for the sky on top of it. And the marks I made resemble much more to water than to a sky. So my conclusion would be that unusual brush marks in blue might be very interesting for water, too. For sky, I don’t know. Maybe I can make a better judgement once I have tried to depict a real sky.

Maybe I should just do some mark making experiments without thinking about clouds, just to learn something more about the effects that are possible. Somehow the task of focusing on clouds was more a hindrance than helping to explore the tools.

I think the marks from unusual instruments will be more interesting for trees. For example, tree bark is very irregular and the overall shape of trees and their foliage is very irregular, too. So maybe the technique will be more successful with trees.

Second try: Green tones – for trees

I made another two sheets, the first on smooth and the second on rough paper.

Somehow this exercise didn’t work for me. Like clouds, I can’t paint trees from memory, but I do like the mark-making aspect of the task. The marks are very nice, and I would like to continue and explore how they look if applied in layers. I’m quite sure that the resulting patterns would be useful when painting a landscape.

I especially like the white which is left out from the marks I made. It creates beautiful and mysterious shapes. And strange again, the results of the experiment looks more interesting on rough paper than on smooth paper.

I might have done a third try in brown tones for the stems of trees, because my greens are rather for creating leaves and overall shapes. Rough, irregular marks in brown tones should be very nice for tree bark.

I was also thinking of doing a “tree project”, taking a walk outside and drawing interesting trees on my way. I might combine this with some watercolour experiments. Or take photos and experiment at home, this might be easier than carrying the watercolour equipment with me.

Reworking the trees

But instead of doing separate sheets for stems, I reworked the two green sheets and added some brown irregular marks to represent tree stems. As I expected, the trees look quite artificial. I think I prefer painting after nature, rather than from memory. If the idea is to try out new marks, I’d rather have my mind free to experiment and watch, instead of mimicking objects. But maybe I’m just silly. I should have worked after photograph or gone outside to make the exercise interesting and rewarding for me, instead of completing the task in such a superficial way and complaining about uninteresting results.

Another try at clouds and trees

I did a Google image search for photos of clouds, trees and tree barks and used these as inspiration for another go at the expercise. I made two more sheeds with blue cloud-type marks. The first one (left image, soft paper) was just using some brush marks. The second one (right image, rough paper) was covered made with some unusual brush marks first and then I protected some areas using a guache resist. After everything had dried, I laid a dark blue wash on top and later washed off the gouache. The result were some white and lighter blue areas where the gouache had protected the ground

There is not enough contrast and colour intensity in these pictures, maybe this comes from using study watercolours rather than artist watercolours. If I were to do it again, I would apply the pigment more concentrated.

I also had another go for the trees, on rough paper. I reworked this painting several times, with many layers in different green tones, beginning in light yellow and getting more and more into darker green tones. I was surprised how many layers of watercolour were necessary to achieve at leas moderate saturation. I also noticed that patience was important: One layer with irregular marks had to dry first, before applying the next, because otherwise the new paint would destroy the structure of marks.

Overall, I like this second attempt where I had photographs as inspiration much better than the first. I also realized that I began looking at trees and clouds in the real world much more attentively, as if I was going to draw them. For example, I discovered that the white areas of clouds are where the sunlight shines on them, whereas the darker areas are those lying in shadow. I also looked at some trees. When I was driving the car but waiting at a red light, I observed some trees in back light from the sun which somehow seems to reverse the order of dark and light greens, like the light green leaves are in the background of the shape, while the dark green leaves are in the foreground, closer to the observer. I don’t think I would want to draw clouds or trees from memory, but I am quite interested in drawing or painting them outside, or after a photograph if not otherwise possible.

Exercise: Using various brushes

The task was to make irregular brush marks with various brushessa and then lift off the colour from half of the sheet of paper using some cloth or paper towel. The first two sheets were made on dry paper, the third on wet (damp) paper. On all sheets, the left half is the area where colour was lifted off.

First: simple thick painting brush (3 cm)
Second: toothbrush
Third: thin broad painting brush (5 cm)

Obervations: The pattern of the paper towel which is used to lift off the colour is printed into the wet paint in the respective area on the left half, this looks a bit strange. The paper towel created a dot pattern in a lighter tone than the dark violet which I used as premixed colour. By contrast, the areas where I didn’t employ the paper towel are quite homogeneous in tone and texture.

By contrast, on damp paper (third experiment), the paper towel lifted off almost all the colour pigment. Surprisingly, this time the unaffected right half of the sheet produces the more irregular and interesting result because of internal structure in the coloured marks.

Overall, I wasn’t overly comfortable with this technique. For me, the darker tones are precious because they need a lot of pigment. So the idea of first applying a lot of pigment and then taking it off again seems like a waste of material to me. Maybe I’d prefer to employ this technique to correct errors, rather than as an artistic technique.

Exercise: Other tools for watercolour

First task: Blotting and wiping

Observation: Removing colour with a dry sponge did not work, so I used a wet sponge and this produced quite impressive structures which indeed resembled clouds.

First sheet: seascape in blue tones, working in multiple layers

Two more sheets: Taking off wet paint with a scrunched up paper towel (dark purple tone)
In the second of these sheets (right image), I experimented with multiple layers to create depth and more intense colours. I employed a cleaning rug to lift off colour. It didn’t produce interesting marks when applied dry, but when wet it created structures that remind me of ice crystals.

Second task: Surfaces and textures

Three techniques are employed: Clingfilm, Salt crystals, and scarifying /scraping /texturing

Clingfilm: A4 sheet, dark purple tone. Put aside with a heavy book on top to let dry for several hours as recommended. Regarding next day: this looks impressive, reminds me of broken winter ice I often saw on the sidearms of the river Spree in Berlin.

Salt crystals: two A4 sheets, dark purple colour. First with French ‘Sel Marin’, consisting mainly of large grains. The second with a mixture of the rough salt and fine kitchen salt to experiment with the effects.
Observation: The salt seems to soak up the pigment, little white areas with a dark center are the result. They look like little daisy flowers on a meadow. The second sheet with the salt mixture looks more organic, maybe like a biological texture under the microscope.

Scarifying, scraping and texturing

First sheet (left side): sandpaper

Applied before paint: I used rough sandpaper and where it was applied, the colour sank deeply in and produced very dark tones.
Applied after paint: Recovers the white background, creates a torn-off effect
Overpainting again intensifies the dark marks. A very irregular effect. I think this would look nice in a landscape painting, for example to depict earth or fields at a distance.

Second sheet (right side): graphic cutter knife, hard pencil

Knife applied before paint: produced a similar effect to sandpaper, in that the colour sank deeply into the scratched marks. But the knife creates deeper and more linear marks, whereas the sandpaper marks are broader and lighter
Knife applied after colour: creates fine linear mark, doesn’t lift off the colour to show white background
Hard pencil: creates deep linear marks