This project was about learning to use colour with watercolours. I began this project in January and made a long break from February until the end of August 2013.

Exercise: Still life with colourful objects

January 2013

The task:
collect some colourful objects around the house for a still life
try to include colour contrast as well as different intensities within a single colour
arrange the objects into an interesting composition

I had quite a few difficulties finding appropriate objects because I seem to own only white, black or dull coloured objects. Even a look into the refridgerator didn’t solve the problem. I decided to go into a supermarket and buy some fruit or vegetables. The security guard might have found my behaviour before the fruit stand quite interesting… but finally I was able to decide on a selection of fruit: a yellow melon, two pale yellow Nashi pears, some dark red plums and some lichis. Back home I tried several different arrangements with fruit and differently coloured pottery and napkins, and finally chose a combination with a yellow-orange pomegranate, a blue pitcher and blue and yellow napkins.

First step: compositional sketch and quick colour study

The compositional sketch in the sketchbook worked fine for me, only that I found the objects occupied not enough space and thus made a smaller frame around them to remind me of increasing their size for the later drawing. I made a quick colour study on the same page in the sketchbook, but used watersoluble wax crayons which I reworked with a wash. Again I was satisfied with my composition and colour effects.

The colours worked out as I had expected: There are the colour contrasts of blue pitcher and napkin versus orange pomegranate and the red-violet tones of the table and the plums. The second contrast is between the yellow tones and the violet component of the table and plum colours. The colour shadings are different tones of yellow from very pale (the background wall) to quite intense (the melon), plus the different tones of red-violet of the table and the plums.

I wasn’t very happy with the instructions to make this colour study into the sketchbook because my sketchbook is fine for drawing but the paper is not heavy enough for working with water. I’d have preferred to do the study on watercolour paper and I think I will begin a second sketchbook which will be reserved for watercolour quick studies. Alternatively, I might use loose sheets of appropriate paper and later bind them together into a sketchbook. I realized that this is an aspect of my work processes with which I am not very satisfied. I wouldn’t want to do pencil sketches in a watercolour paper sketchbook and this has the consequence that I will have to maintain separate sketchbooks for each type of task. This will make it difficult to follow the development process of a painting from initial sketches over various studies to the final drawing. So probably for me it would be the best to abandon the sketchbook approach entirely and use loose sheets instead, label them properly including the date, and later bind them in the right ordering. But I’m not very sure about this. I’d prefer to follow instructions because I trust they do make sense, but they don’t seem to fit with my preferences.

The other problem was that watersoluble wax crayons are fine in the sketchbook when used dry, but the paper almost dissolved when I washed over them. The study does give a general impression of the colours, but if I want to solve colour-related problems like developing the right mix and intensity of base colours, or working out the colour of shadows, they permit only a rough indication and I think I prefer to use watercolours right from the beginning.

But otherwise, I like my arrangement and the colours and think I will stick to it for the larger drawing.

Another colour study

I intended to proceed to the final drawing and made an outline sketch on A3 paper, but then decided to do another colour study – this time with the watercolour selection I intended to use. The idea was to try out the colour mixes. I wanted to use the artist quality watercolours in tubes, of which I only have 5 different colours. I remembered that mixing my red and blue did not give me a nice violet, but some sort of muddy brown. But when I used Payne’s grey instead of blue, the tone was much closer to the darkish red-violet that I wanted to have for my table.

I began with a very simple outline sketch and very pale colours, then gradually increased colour intensity. Towards the end, I painted some shadows with pale Payne’s grey, and some dark spot with the same colour in greater intensity. I encountered quite a few problems.

One of them is how to mix colours without spoiling the base colours. Currently I begin with one pure colour, then take a brush full into a different area of the palette, then take a second brush for the second colour and add a brush full into the first colour. If the mix is not ok, I’m in trouble because I can’t go back into the original colour if the brush is with the mix or the other colour. This is a real practical problem for me and I’m quite surprised that the course materials only instruct „keep your palette as clean as possible“ but don’t explain how that could possibly be done. Hopefully with some practice I’ll develop a way. I might also ask my tutor once I officially resume coursework.

Another problem was with my choice of brush in relationship to the size of the area I wanted to fill. I used the intense purple for the plums and a paler wash for the table. The brush size was fine for the (small) plums, but it resulted in an uneven colour layer for the larger area of the table. Not sure whether this would have worked better if I had taken more colour on the brush. But I think I will have to work on this to obtain a smoother colour distribution on larger areas.

I’m not sure whether I will manage the colour mixing for the final painting. I decided to make a pause and will tackle the larger sheet later. Maybe I should use the Schmincke colour set which includes more colours. This would help to get the colours right because I only need to fine-tune the tone, rather than mixing the base tones. It may be that I wasn’t lucky with my base tone selection for the colours in tubes, they don’t seem to give me nice mix tones.

February 2013

I had to take a break from coursework because my cat Paula, who was very ill, has passed away. I was so sad, I am still sad but gradually life is getting back to normal. She has been my first cat and my companion for almost 8 years. It is very strange that she no longer sleeps by my side, and I miss her.

During the week, I had left the arrangement where it was, on the kitchen table, and just organized my cooking differently by using another table. The other cats had jumped on the table and the original arrangement was no longer available. So I left unused the pencil sketch which I had already made of the first arrangement, and started with a new sketch.

The experiences from the second colour study were helpful because I knew approximately how to mix the colours. I proceeded as described in the instructions, beginning with pale colours, then painting the intermediate tones, and adding dark colours only towards the end. I’m not very satisfied with the results because the colours are less bright than I intended. My selection has only primary colours, so I had to mix the violet tones. The tone is about right but the overall effect is that of a broken tone.

I stopped painting when the colours had about the intensity I wanted to have, and because I did not know how to improve the painting without really overworking it, despite not being satisfied with the result. I thought about repeating the study with a different selection of watercolours – the Schmincke set – because it contains more different colours and I could choose from brighter pigments. Maybe then the tones would be less muddy and broken.

Guided reflections

Which colours work best and why?
The pale yellow background works very well, I think this is because it is very evenly painted and thus is very neutral and undisturbing, just what I intended. I also like the dark violet tone of the plums, because it is very intense and the irregularity of brush marks appear quite natural to me.
The orange tone in the pomegranate works well because it is bright and warm. The darker spots to its side work less well. The intense yellow tone of the melon and the napkin are also quite successful. That of the melon works well against the very pale background yellow, that of the napkin intensifies the contrast to the purple plums.

Which areas work well, why are they successful?
Well I think there are no particularly successful areas. What works quite well is how I captured the direction of the light, with the brightest and clearest tones on the tops of the fruit.

How could you have improved the colours that don’t seem to work very well?
The darker areas of the melon don’t work very well, I think the colour I chose is too far away from the bright yellow areas. I should have used a more subtle tonal value, more of an ochre tone. The same problem appears for the pomegranate.

The cast shadows of the fruit on the napkin don’t work very well neither. I should have taken less dark tones with a higher colour saturation, I think. For example, the cast shadow of the right Nashi pear is greenish, but I think the actual shadow of the arrangement was much brighter and more of a yellow tone.

The blue tones were also very difficult. The real blue had more of a violet tone in it, but I wasn’t able to mix it from the colours I had: Mixing a tad of red into the blue tone immediately caused the colour to become muddy. Maybe I should have used a different colour selection right from the start, with a blue tone closer to the one I needed for the arrangement.

What were the reasons for the colours looking ‚wrong‘? (muddy or poorly painted, wrong relationship to other colours?)
The blue of the vase and the napkin look wrong because they are not the tone of the actual objects. The darker areas of the melon looks wrong because it was poorly painted, too dark compared to the actual object colour. The cast shadows look wrong for the same reason.

Second attempt

I decided it would be worthwile to paint another version of the still life. I used the first pencil sketch, which I had retained, and slightly rearranged the fruit to fit with the drawing. I used the Schmincke watercolour set and applied the same technique as before, working from pale tones over mid tones to dark colours. Strangely enough, the colours are almost identical to the first painting – although one of the reasons for repeating the study was that I suspected the colours to be too difficult to mix. So I must conclude that I did what I wanted in the first painting, in the same way as in the second… seems to be my sense of colour which is responsible for the result, and not some technical properties of the pigments…

The colours are somewhat more evenly applied in the second painting, I think the dark areas of the fruit are less disturbing and work better because the colours I used were less dark. I’m still rather unsatisfied with the result. I think the colours I painted are relatively close to what I saw, but I just don’t like the overall impression. But I will take a break from the task at this point and proceed to the next exercise. I think painting in colour needs much more practice, and maybe I’ll get along better with a different subject and different colours.

Exercise: Working with greys and browns

February 2013

I selected a seastar, a piece of driftwood and two oysters as pale-coloured objects for this exercise, and added a bright pink small seastar for the contrasting object. I arranged the items on a white cotton cloth, using a grey sketching paper sheet attached to the wall for the background. I found a nice arrangement and made a first compositional sketch in my sketchbook. Before beginning to draw, I realized that a portrait format might work best, but started on the upper half of the A4 sketchbook page as if I would be drawing a small A5 landscape format. Then the drawing developed differently and extended into the lower half of the page, resulting in an almost square format.

I thought it might be a good idea to re-arrange the objects slightly to emphasize the portrait format, but then I was interrupted by my cat Gina who placed herself amidst the arrangement. So I made a pause. I’ll see what I can do later on. Maybe the square format is not bad, for a change from the two standard orientations. But I was impressed that I had correctly observed right from the start that the drawing would tend to extend towards the observer, rather than to the left and right sides.

The sketch and colour study of the previous study are on the back side of this sketchbook page, which spoils the drawing. Another reminder to change approach in future times and not use watercolour in this book.

Resuming work: August 2013

I can’t believe half a year has passed since I last worked on the watercolour course. In March I finished the psychology master’s and switched to working full-time again. In April I was mostly on business travel. In May I went to New York to find an apartment. In June was the move – with all my stuff being packed in a large container, to travel across the ocean. In July it all arrived and I was drowned in cartons. It took me another 4 weeks to unpack everything, which I did mostly in the evenings, after work. And now finally I’ve got a little room set up for my study, and am glad that I can resume coursework now.

I took up lots of inspiration from the new environment and maybe the pause was beneficial in a way, because I took some distance to my study habits and approach. Main points that I’d like to work on are:

• write less, but in-depth – keep it to the essential
• try to work regularly, develop the habit of devoting time to artwork
• make more drawings and experiment
• make notes of inspirations from outside

I looked through what I’ve done so far in this part of the course and I think I’ll just dive in to continue the project, without repetition of earlier exercises. With the exemption of the first compositional drawing for this exercise – I will make a different arrangement of items, and begin with a small compositional sketch.

Small compositional sketch

A first approach to my arrangement. I returned to the large pale brown starfish and the little pink one, but combined it differently with a rectangle wooden basket, a wooden box and a clay pot. No greys, but a combination of pale browns, on a white table surface with a light yellow wall background. I chose A4 landscape format and got a little lost in the details of the basket, then reminding me that this sketch was about composition, and speeding up a little. Actually I liked the arrangement, therefore did not change anything and did a second larger drawing.

Second larger drawing

I was asked myself why it would make sense to draw the same thing again, just larger, as stated in the instructions. Maybe there is a scale effect to master with different sheet sizes. I found the larger size more comfortable. I avoided getting into details but tried to get shapes and proportions right, and also lightly worked out the tones.

Main difficulty was to estimate the proportions correctly. I’m also anticipating some difficulties with the wooden basket for the later painting because the woven structure is difficult to depict.

Colour study

This task reminded me of a problem I constantly had so far in the course. It has to do with using the sketchbook for drawings and colour studies. My sketchbook has medium weight paper, maybe 140 gms. It is not appropriate for watercolour because the paper buckles when wet, and the drawing on the backside gets spoiled.

Following task instructions by the word is not really satisfying. I might better use two separate books for drawings and watercolour studies, plus using extra sheets for some paintings. Or as outlined earlier, use loose sheets only. But I’m still undecided. Maybe a sketchbook with heavier paper would suit both tasks, and I could still use extra sheets for some paintings. I finally decided to use a loose sheet of paper for this colour study and not spoil the sketchbook drawings.

Background: Wanted to lay a wash for the background, from pale grey to clear white – to resemble the actual light situation on the table. Wasn’t successful. Reworked the sheet a few times, then the paper began to drizzle. Solution might be to take a larger brush for the wash and try to get it right in a single go.

Colours of the arrangement: The grey background wash was too strong and dulled the soft colours, this should be more subtle in the later painting. I began with an ocre tone and found this was a nice base tone to develop the other brown tones from. The details of the wooden basket indeed pose problems. It might work better to paint it more generously. The pink colour of the small starfish tends to fall out of the picture, but I seem to have prevented this from happening. It might be thanks to the background wash.

Painting with greys and browns: Starfish composition

I finished the final painting in a state of great frustration… A tendency to only see what doesn’t work, trying to improve and stopping when I think I completely spoiled it. Now an hour later, I see things less negative.

Overall, I think the painting is too pale. I did not succeed in getting intense tones. On the other hand, it improved over the colour study because the colours are less muddy. As anticipated, I did not master the wooden basket. It is a complicated object, maybe I should have done a separate detailed study of it to be more at ease with it. The intersection with the wooden box is not well defined, another element that might have benefitted from a detailed study.

What works rather nicely are the different colour tints in the pale tones. Only the shades are too bold and look like not belonging to the objects. The overall colouring has improved over the study. I think this was because this time I used a pale yellow, even wash as a background. This did not dull down the tones of later layers as the grey wash in the study had done.

There was a problem with lightning though. My studies were made yesterday evening with lamp light, while the painting was done under daylight shining into the room from the outside. This completely changed the shadows in the arrangement. There was a pattern of shadows on the table, but it disappeared during the two hours where I was working as the sun was rising. I ended up with almost no shadow pattern on the table, but the shadows in my arrangement were darker. I wasn’t able to depict that correctly.

I think I’m quite confused about two aspects of a painting: Firstly there is the colour of an object with a certain the intensity. And secondly, there’s the degree of light or darkness of tones. While I painted, I had problems deciding whether I needed more intensity in colour or a darker tone. I’m not even sure whether I spotted the root of my difficulties correctly. Maybe it gets better with practice. But somehow I feel that something isn’t working with my approach.

I also noticed that I tended to put in defining details too early, where instructions read to do this only at the final stage. But I was working on the mid-tones and wanted to paint only selected areas in a different colour and this resulted in defining details. Probably another aspect which hopefully gets easier with practice.

Comparative evaluation of approaches: colourful vs greys & browns

I wasn’t very comfortable with either approach. I don’t particularly like my colourful objects painting because the colours went muddy during my attempts to get the tones right. What surprised me even more was that the second attempt with a different set of watercolours produced an almost identical outcome.

Compared to the colourful arrangement, I prefer the greys & browns picture. After all the colours are pale, but less muddy. There’s some friendliness in the starfish painting which I miss in the colourful fruit composition. It might make a difference whether I work with daylight or lamp light. It seems to me as if my daylight paintings are nicer.

I’m not able to say one or the other approach worked better for me. I had severe difficulties with both, beginning with the artificiality of selecting and arranging some objects, rather than just depicting what is there and selecting a good viewpoint for it.

How to continue?

It may have to do with the long pause, but at the moment I feel quite discouraged about my ability to paint with watercolours. It might be a good idea to go through all the coursework I’ve done and read my logbook, to refresh memory about techniques and what I had learned already.

I also realize that I don’t seem able to “write less”… I can do the reflections right after doing a study or painting, when memory is fresh, and then obtaining a quite accurate protocol of my struggles. If I wait until the end of an exercise until I write the log, I’ll probably forget about the hassles and would reflect only on the visual results, more like an outsider. Then the writing would be much shorter. I don’t know what’s better. Maybe the second approach is more feasible in light of making the best use of my time. I might give it a try with the next exercise.

Exercise: Warm and cold colours

The task was to make 6 postcard size watercolours, three of observed and three of imagined/memorized objects. The colour choice for object and background should comprise a contrast between warm and cold colours.

My work for this exercise

I chose simple household objects for the observed items. The first, a wooden cigarette box on a napkin, was supposed to have the contrast between a warm brown (the box) and a cold brown (napkin). The second a green bell pepper on a blue napkin with folds. The third a blue bowl on a yellow tablet.

For the imagined items, I painted images from childhood memories. The first was my mother’s yellow sports car when she once came to pick me up from primary school, the second was the hill behind our house with blackberry bushes to its sides, and the third the small castle in the vicinity, embedded in yellow corn and wheat fields.

     

   

 

Some personal reflections on process and result

I had lots of trouble with this exercise. With the first part, I found it really difficult to decide on “simple” objects to paint, because my household is very functional and I tend to buy things in black, white, grey or metal colours. So the choice of colourful objects is quite limited and it took me a while to find something at least moderately appropriate for the exercise. Then while painting, I struggled with depiction. Each painting took rather half an hour than the suggested five minutes. Initially I was very dissatisfied with the results, but with a little distance timewise, I begin to like them better.

Then with the imaginary objects it took much effort to go through my childhood memories and select something I’d like to paint. It may have to do with mature age – childhood is about 40 years ago, and memories of the first time I went to the seaside (as suggested in the course materials) are not accessible to me anymore. I sat quietly on a sofa for around 2 hours sifting through memory before I was able to select my topics. I was tempted to resort to painting “imagined” rather than “memorized” objects because I have no difficulty just inventing things and forms, relying on memories of similar objects. But after all, I found it worthwhile that I gave it a try.

What I particularly like about the three imagined paintings is their boldness in approach. The observed objects are simple, but while painting I got lost in details like different tones, surface structure and light reflections. With the imagined objects, none of this happened and it was maybe for the first time that I grew a bit more confident with applying intense colours in bold strokes. I think there’s also a progression from the first to the third imagined painting, with the third one being the most simple and at ease.

So overall, I found this a very rewarding exercise for me personally.

Guided reflections on this exercise

As outlined above, I think the paintings from imaginations were the more successful ones, because I stopped worrying about details of which inhibit me while painting. I hope I can learn to transfer this boldness to paintings from observations.

Putting the six paintings side by side now doesn’t particularly change my seeing of them, but I remember that I realized the progression in the three imagined paintings when I put those three together right after the work session.

Reflecting on all the work for project 4

My favourite paintings for this project were the small colour study in the sketchbook for the colourful objects painting, the grey and brown tones final painting (starfish), and the last imagined painting (castle with corn fields).

The colour study was made boldly and fast, with clean and bright, unmudded colours. This worked much better than the actual paintings where my efforts of getting tones and details right resulted in dulling the colours.

The starfish painting is nice because of the subtlety in brown shades. Even if the overall range of tones is a bit limited, I find that the painting is successful because the dark tones don’t stand out linke strange elements, neither does the single small colourful object (the small pink starfish).

In the imagined painting of the castle surrounded by cornfield the contrast between the warm yellow-orange of the fields against the dark grey roadway and the cold brown tone of the castle conveys much energy. I think this is supported through the colour contrast with the bold blue sky.

I’m not sure whether the small preparatory studies really helped with the larger paintings. I rather felt they were getting me nowhere because I did not really tackle the difficulties of the actual composition. After the exercise with the imagined small studies, I think for me it might work better to do small studies from short-term memory rather than from direct observation – it might help me to focus on the essential, rather than getting lost in details with no space to actually explore them.

I also think they don’t help with the composition because of the scale effect from small sketch to larger painting. I felt that a small picture looked well filled, while the same composition at a larger scale revealed empty spaces without much interest. This happened with both the colourful objects and in the grey & brown tones painting. On the other hand, the larger compositional sketch for the grey & brown tones painting shows the same undefined empty space to the lower right as the later painting. Not sure what would be a better way to approach that problem.

Due to lack of experience, I’m not sure what works best for me as preparation for larger pictures. Smaller studies in pencil might help to explore and understand complex areas in the composition, which might help when it comes to simplyfing them in the later painting. Small colour studies don’t seem particularly helpful to me. They are nice on their own, but the colour impression on a small scale is different from that on a larger sheet. So a colour study might be more helpful if done in the actual intended scale.