Category Archives: Part I

More artists: Elizabeth Blackadder

Elizabeth Blackadder was pointed out to me by my tutor in the feedback on Assignment 1. I did some research but then lost track of it due to the relocation to New York. Luckily I later found what I had prepared, so the blog entry comes just a little later than originally intended.

Born in 1931, Elizabeth Blackadder is a Scottish painter and printmaker. My search in Bridgeman Education Library returned many results, mostly watercolour works but also some other techniques, for example oil paintings and woodcuts.

Some of her earlier works looked very modern to me, for example the Still Life with Fish (watercolour, 77.5 x 56 cm, 1972), or the Flowers and Red Table (oil on canvas, 86 x 111 cm, 1969)

There are very delicate watercolour paintings of flowers, for example the Hellebores (1987-88). Sometimes they have extremely fine details, which is revealed when looking from very close (or in large magnification), as in Cat and Flowers (1981).

Like the Cat with Flowers, the Early Spring Anemone (1977) is a compositions that is somewhat lost in space, with its small objects before an essentially empty background. I found more paintings in this style and found them a bit disturbing. It’s as if the objects were too shy to occupy their space. The Camellias (1974) are different: Much more massive, and the objects fill the image space better. I’d have guessed this painting was made later than the Spring Anemones, but the dates indicate the opposite.

I also found a lovely woodcut with Lilies. I’m very interested in printmaking and have experimented a bit with linocuts and simple etchings. So I always like to look at artist’s printwork as well. Via a Google search, I found more prints by Elizabeth Blackadder, for example a lithograph, titled Roman Wall II, Walltown (1960) or the Abessynian Cat, an etching made 2003 at the Glasgow Print Studio.

I also found a really lovely watercolour of a Cat, titled Abessynian Cat Asleep (13.5 x 18.5 cm, 1985). The format is very small, but I double checked and it’s correct. The closeup picture shows the dark pencil underdrawing. I find this interesting because it certainly helped to build up the shapes, yet it does not disturb in the slightest the overall impression. It even adds another dimension which I like.

The link to Elizabeth Blackadders works which I was given for reference by my tutor points to a blog entry which presents an impressive variety in Elizabeth Blackadder’s works. One wouldn’t think that these were all made by the same artist.

The pointer to the Dragon Fruit watercolour was supposed to illustrate the intensity that is possible with watercolours. At the time, I tended to use watercolours in very pale washes, and looking at the painting, I realized that I was missing out much of the appeal of watercolour paintings. I remember that I was quite impressed seeing this painting. It had a good effect – I think that my application of colour has improved, and I’m beginning to get really intense tones and strong contrasts in my paintings. Still some way to go to achieve that kind of delicacy that I see in Blackadder’s (and other’s works), but I’m on my way!

Sources

Dragon Fruit watercolour: http://pinkpagodastudio.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/dame-elizabeth-blackadder.html

Roman Wall II, Walltown (1960): http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blackadder-roman-wall-ii-walltown-p06038

Abessynian Cat (etching, 2003): http://www.glasgowprintstudio.co.uk/Shop/DisplayPrint/4?requestType=eArtistPage

Abessynian Cat Asleep: http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/20487/lot/65/

Tutor report: Assignment 1

Overall Comments

Hello Patricia, thank you for submitting your work for Assignment 1. You have made a very good start to the course and have submitted 5 folders, one for each project in part 1 and a sketchbook. You use good quality watercolour paper for all exercises and your work is clearly labelled and well presented.

Feedback on assignment Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of Creativity

Project 1. Mixing and applying watercolour.

It’s essential to develop as wide a repertoire as possible of marks and awareness of the boundaries of what you can achieve with different brushes and materials. You have experimented well with loading your brush, varying the depth of tone and creating a range of marks. Well done. You have created a very competent shoal of fish and the leaves sketch has leaves of varying tone. You have completed the exercise where you are required to wash off the leaves competently. I think the final layer of leaves could have benefited from having a little more pigment in order to create more depth between the layers.

Project 2. Laying washes.

These exercises represent some of the basic building blocks of watercolour painting and take practice to achieve well. Your first flat wash is very even, well done. Your tonally graded washes don’t have enough gradation in them though the second attempt is better. It is perhaps easier to achieve this with a dark colour. Start with a very intense dark blue and practice getting it completely clear by the bottom of the page.

The mixed wash requires two colours of paint, and by combining them in the middle you achieve a third colour. I think you need to practice these a little more Patricia. This is starting to work but what you achieve at the bottom of the painting should be around the centre, and the cross over between the phtalo blue in the the middle section needs to be smoother, no obvious lines. It is definitely improving in your second attempt and you will have the opportunity to keep practicing this the more you paint.

Project 3. Resist techniques.

You have experimented very thoroughly with the wax and oil pastel resist Patricia, well done. The experimentation with the masking fluid has worked well too and has produced interesting images. I still think you can afford to use stronger colours for your washes. Try to get more pigment in your initial wash rather than over layering at this stage. It’s good practice to learn to control the paint in an individual layer before moving onto overlaying several washes. It might be worth you buying 2 or 3 artist quality pans of watercolour, if you are currently using student quality paints, just so that you can see the difference in the quality of the paint. The pigment is much richer in artist quality paints.

Your research with the madras cloth is complex and a worthwhile exercise. It looks like you have learnt a lot from trying out the gum Arabic and the gouache in this way too. You are starting to get some very nice qualities. Your experimenting is starting to pay off. Well done.

Project 4. Making marks in different ways.

Again you have worked thoroughly here Patricia and have closely followed the instructions, well done. You have initially tried a variety of brushes on two different types of paper. I agree with you that the second blue attempt on the textured paper is more interesting and can understand why you find it distracting to think about specific clouds when trying out different brush strokes. You are beginning to capture definite movement and energy in your tree paintings. The third set of paintings might have benefited from more white space between marks or, again, more variation in the depth of colour in order to clearly see the variety of mark making. In fact you note this yourself in your blog and you also identify that you might benefit from some artist’s quality paints. Your notes on layers of paint application with the final tree painting are observant regarding letting the paint dry between applications. Your seascape in blue tones uses lifting off very well and has successfully captured an essence of the cloud formations.

Using a variety of brushes and tools.

You have tried three different brushes, lifting off and have gone onto try different tools. (If you do more than one painting on a day and don’t have a title, remember to date and number it so that I can refer to it).

I think you could have pushed yourself a little more in this section, particularly the surfaces and textures but you will have opportunities to do this throughout the course. Keep your mind open to the use of alternative brushes and tools as you progress with the course and remember to experiment regularly to develop you marks to use in your vocabulary of watercolour techniques.

Research Point.

You have done extensive research for this section, looking at artists including watercolour painters and a variety of styles of painting. You have given your own thoughts on the artists’ work and on one occasion you have recreated the work in pencil crayon. This is a very worthwhile exercise and is also worth doing in watercolour. In this way you can explore the techniques that artists use to create works that you admire and may wish to incorporate in to your own painting style and vocabulary. To push your research further you need to explore further how the works link into your own painting and progress.

Assignment 1.

You have sent several samples of preparation work with your final piece. In this prep work you consider three different compositions, different media and different styles. I think you would have benefited from doing close up work in the pencil sketches before moving on to the watercolour work. This would help you to make sure that you really look at what you are trying to capture and to make a clear attempt at the tonal qualities and the shadow on the cloth. I think you can afford to explore the use of the pencil, and perhaps darker pencils. The range of blacks and greys you can get from a 6B pencil for example are extensive. Try to be a little more expressive in your lines too, try working quite quickly in some of your sketchbook work and see what you capture. We are looking for self-expression and emotion as well as accurate renditions of objects. You will benefit across all areas of creative work from developing your drawing skills and I can see you have a competent drawing style already for recording basic shapes and positioning. You can afford to work bigger too and to be much braver and bolder in your drawing and mark making. ( I have just seen your other drawing prep work on the blog, I think it is a good idea to send all the prep work you have done for an assignment).

Your close up water colour work of the lemons and the pomegranates could also be pushed further too and you already have some very nice brush strokes and accidental qualities in the experimentation work with the close up fruit. In the pomegranates top left you are beginning to show some of the intensity of colour that is possible with watercolour. The yellow wash also works well on the top right piece. I think you could have experimented with more intense colour in the background too and again the shadows and tonal qualities could have been explored further at this stage.

Here is a study of dragon fruits by Elizabeth Blackadder. It is from this link where the image is at a better resolution. http://pinkpagodastudio.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/dame-elizabeth-blackadder.html

You can see how she captures delicacy and intensity of colour through the medium of watercolour. A way of working towards this is to do several versions of the painting. As soon as it starts to become overworked, start again. As you progress you begin to work out what it is essential to include and what is superfluous, but it does take quite a few versions when you are just starting out.

The colour study. I think this is quite successful. The actual fruits lack a little detail, but you have captured tonal qualities, and have tried an interesting wash on the background which I think works well with the pomegranate. You are right to think that the tablecloth would have worked better without the black lines. They at least need to get thinner and paler as they go towards the back. The shadows need more careful observation. I am pleased you are trying to incorporate what you have learnt from looking at Nolde’s work into your own painting here and have experimented with a new approach. This is also similar to Gaugin’s approach.

Your final painting, has some nice qualities but does not have the tonal boldness that your prep works have, It is more contolled than the prep work and loses it’s energy because of this, the loss of water marks particularly in the table cloth and background miss out on using the medium and it’s unique qualities. The composition would also have benefited from stronger directional light to pull out the tonal qualities and the shadows. The positioning of the fruit makes it look a little lost on the page. Look back at Nolde’s work again, for example, and consider how he frames his subject.

Sketchbooks Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Demonstration of Creativity

Thanks for including your sketchbook. Your sketch book work will need to be much more comprehensive in future parts of the course.

I recommend you also

Develop your drawing skills with daily practice
Extend the use of your sketchbook by working in a variety of media and doing original first hand observational drawings and sketches. These often become research work for eventual paintings.
Use your sketchbook for comprehensive working out of visual ideas prior to any painting.
Keep a variety of sizes of sketchbook including a small pocket sketchbook which you keep with you at all times.

Here is an example of how to use a sketchbook to research your ideas through drawing.

http://www.weareoca.com/fine_art/inside-sketchbooks-as-a-form-of-enquiry/

Learning Logs or Blogs/Critical essays Context

Thank you for sending your blog link. It is logically presented. It relates well to your exercises and shows evidence of self-reflection.

In terms of reflection, here is an article that looks briefly at different depths of reflection,

http://www.weareoca.com/education/learning-logs/

I would say your reflection is similar to point no. 3 on the whole. To push this further, to no.4, you need to think about and note how you are going to develop your own work and how the work is influenced by other artists’ work. ( You have just started to do this in assignment one). Where does your work sit in relation to the world of art that has already happened or is happening right now. That is something to think about over the coming months of the course as you begin to work on developing your own unique voice.

Suggested reading/viewing Context

After looking through the artists that you have researched on your blog another artist that comes to mind is Elizabeth Blackadder. You can see some examples of her work here on the OCA Student media resources page. Use the password and user name to login to the site as given on the Bridgeman link page. Here are two examples. The site has several.

http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/ImageView.aspx?result=12&balid=370113

http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/ImageView.aspx?result=5&balid=50704

Still worth a look for the composition of the image though. Another artist to look at is Hutchins-Puechavy. Here is an example of her lily paintings.

http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/ImageView.aspx?result=31&balid=248157

As the research point on page 44 suggests I think it is good at this stage for you to look at a variety of artists, as you are doing, and make notes about what you do and don’t like in their work. If you look at the library images provided online via the oca webpage – there are hundreds of watercolours to look at. You are also visiting galleries to look at work first hand which is essential.

Karen Armitage and Elizabeth Blackadder and Claudia Hutchens-Puechavy, as I have mentioned above, are all worth a look at as 20^th century watercolour painters.

Excellent that you have seen work first hand in the gallery and have benefited from this. Try to keep this up.

Pointers for the next assignment

Do lots of drawing practice as well as painting
Don’t feel you can only do each exercise once, do it until you are happy with it, try lots of versions if you need to.
Try to use a wider range of intensity of colour in your water colour paint. Don’t be frightened of using intense colours. This can work very well wet on wet too. Consider using artist’s quality paints. The tube paints you have bought may be artist;s quality , you don’t specify?
Continue to do the research work as outlined in the course booklet, as you have, plus your own research work as necessary for the development of your ideas and include this research in your log book.
Remember to show how your research feeds in to you rown ideas and experimentation.

I hope you will find this feedback useful Patricia as you move onto part 2 of the course. Any questions regarding the feedback here or your progress in Part 2 email me.

Tutor name:	Lisa O’Brien
Date	12/11/12
Next assignment due	To be agreed – Patricia is taking a short break to complete a Masters.

Miscellaneous: Taking a break

I’ve now prepared the parcel with Assignment 1 for sending to my tutor Lisa, and this will mark a break point in my course work. I will take some time off OCA coursework for personal and professional reasons. I’m planning to resume OCA studies in April 2013.

I’m not glad about the decision but I realized that I need to finish some other projects first before I can fully commit to studying art. I’ve only started the watercolour course 2 months ago, but it has already become part of my life, and I’ll miss it.

Not quite sure whether I’ll be able to do some “secret” work just for myself, like just experimenting when I have some leasure time. I might write update articles to the blog from time to time.

Bye bye for now.

Assignment 1

I started working on Assignment 1 around two weeks ago, with thinking about what I would like to paint. From the options suggested, I chose the still life with fruit option, because I was interested in painting natural objects’ colours. I had already gained some practice with the topic from the drawing course, where I struggled profoundly with detailed naturalistic observation. I was looking forward to trying out a different approach to the theme.

Preparatory studies

On the next food shopping occasion I discovered a very ripe, deep red pomegranate and thought this would be a good object to start with. I did a colour pencil study of the pomegranate. Not thinking about the possible conflict with assessment regulations, I made this in my drawing sketchbook instead on a loose sheet or in the watercolour sketchbook. I’ll include it here and will ask to ignore it if I submit that sketchbook for assessment of the other course.

During the next days, I bought some more fruit and tried out various combinations and arrangements. I put a blue linen table cloth on the living room table and placed the fruit upon it. I tried out different arrangements and paid attention to how objects’ shapes overlap and that the negative spaces look interesting and balanced. I then then found a first composition with 2 pomegranates, 4 lemons, and a banana. I made a sketch of this arrangement in the sketchbook.

Course instructions suggested to make several sketches to try out different compositions, but I did not want to draw a composition I didn’t like and once I had found one which worked for me, I did not want to change it anymore just for the sake of doing more drawings, for fear I couldn’t repeat a successful placement… So I tried out the same arrangement from a different point of view and made another sketch in portrait format, using the right half of an A3 sheet. This composition looked quite interesting too, but I preferred the first one and made another drawing in A3, this time trying to be a bit more detailed and work more on the tonal values.

Then I took a break from coursework because I had urgent other commitments, and there was also the journey to Oslo to visit the Emil Nolde exposition. I took up work on the assignment today. In the meantime, one of the lemons was spoiled, and the banana too, so I continued with a slightly modified arrangement of 2 pomegranates, 2 bananas and three lemons, but in the same setting of blue cloth on a table.

I repeated the process of finding an arrangement I liked, then made a compositional sketch in the sketchbook with my intended view for the final watercolour painting, and also tried out a different viewpoint for another compositional sketch. The second perspective was interesting because I could include the diagonal edges of the table, and because the table cloth structure was diagonal instead of almost exactly vertical. But I decided against this view because I found the first view more convincing with respect to the objects’ positions.

I made another tonal study in pencil of this arrangement, on the remaining left half of the A3 sheet, but this time in landscape orientation. In this arrangement I included the sofa behind the table as a background, because I found that it added a feeling of space and context to the composition.

Preliminary watercolour experiments

I had been very impressed by Emil Nolde’s watercolours and had the idea of trying out the technique of broad colour areas with black lines to identify object contours. I also had some ideas which techniques I might use for particular details of my fruit arrangement. I decided to begin with a watercolour of the whole composition to try out the broad colour approach.

I lightly sketched the object contours first, then colourized the broad areas of the blue table cloth, and yellow and read for the fruits. I added colours for the shades and colour blendings while the paint was still wet in some areas, but waited for them to dry in others. I reworked the colours in several layers and tried not to overdo because I knew that colours get muddy very quickly. I wanted the colours to be broken with my mixing, but not too much!

After everything had dried, I added black lines for the contours and the texture of the table cloth. This completely changed the overall impression and style of the painting. It had been quite light before, with the shaded areas approximately bringing out object shapes. The black lines added something very massive to the painting. I let everything dry and added another layer of yellow, orange and red which intensified the colouring and reduced the contrast resulting from the black lines. I enjoyed the experiment and like the painting, but I think I will do without black lines for the final painting.

Comparing my experiment to Nolde’s watercolours painted in this technique, I think Nolde has used watercolours with higher concentration, because his colours are much more intensive than what I have produced. Also, he has probably used a larger brush. I had a round one size 10 and think it did not load enough paint for obtaining the effect I wanted. I think I should have mixed more colour in advance and worked in a much bolder approach, doing the colours in one single go, letting everything dry and then use a finer brush than size 10 for the lines. But nevertheless I found the experiment quite interesting. It was also helpful because I used watercolour in tubes, rather than pans, for the first time.

Experimenting with techniques

During the last drying pauses of the first experiment, I began an experimental sheet for the other ideas. Here I tried using masking fluid for the table cloth texture (bottom right) and compared this to a painting approach (bottom left). I think the masking fluid works quite well, but I’m not sure whether the overall impression is not too pronounced. After all it is only a minor detail and shouldn’t dominate the painting. I also tried out sandpaper to create highlights on yellow surfaces (top left) – this might be nice for the highlights on the lemons.

The other two are blending experiments. I have a deep colour contrast in my composition between the (cold) blue table cloth and the (warm) colours of the fruit – yellow, orange, red and a tone of green in the banana. I thought a yellow wash might bind the objects together, and this might have worked because the blue of the table cloth has a slight greenish touch. But the wash experiment (top right) showed me that I would need much blue to get the tone I want for the cloth, or I would have to use a much lighter yellow for the wash.

I compared this to a version where I used pure prussian blue for the background against the orange and red of the pomegranates, and I think I like this better (top middle).

Another wash experiment is in the left bottom area. Here I applied a blue wash (spared out the lemons) and added a layer of red to obtain the purple colour of the sofa background behind the table. I think this colour mix works quite well. I also tried to create a stripy texture using a household brush for the red blend, but this did not work at the first go. I dried the brush and tried again on white background. This is more similar to the actual texture, although the colours are much darker. I think I would have to use a very dry brush with black (or very dark) colour on completely dried colour to make this work. But again, I’m not sure whether this type of detail really adds to the beauty and interest of the final painting.

I’m planning to approach the final painting tomorrow. I’d prefer to paint with daylight, so will see if I can start not too late.

Final watercolour painting

The final painting was quite experimental… I began Sunday morning and finished late in the afternoon, taking quite a few pauses between stages where I let the painting dry. Looking at it two days later, I think that it is sort of unfinished, but I will leave it as it is, just to document how far I got.

For the technical aspects, I chose to make a very light yellow wash at first to create some commonality between subsequent colours and reduce the contrast between the blue table cloth and the warm fruit colours. I used graded red-brown washes for the brown sofa background, and a fan brush to create a bit of corduroy cloth structure. I employed the masking liquid for the squared texture of the table cloth and then reworked the blue area because the pattern was too dominant, by wetting and then dissolving the pigment with a sponge and lifting it off with paper tissue.

I thought about reworking the sofa background and the fruits themselves, but in the meantime, the cats had played wildly in the living room and the fruit had fallen off the table, destroying my arrangement. So I did not touch the painting anymore and the overall impression and style of sofa and fruit is different from that of the table cloth. I think the sofa background would benefit from more intense colouring, and the lemons might have needed some more yellow layers and reworking the shaded areas. But on the other hand, I like the unfinished character of the painting and therefore I will not touch it any further.

During one of the pauses when the painting dried, I made an oil pastel drawing of the arrangement from a different angle. This was actually the perspective I had taken earlier in an alternative compositional sketch. For this drawing, I used Sennelier Oil Pastels for the first time. These are much softer than the inexpensive study oil pastels I had used before. I also used special oil pastel paper with a sort of woven surface texture which takes up more pastel material before it is saturated than standard drawing or pastel paper.

I’m not sure whether this drawing belongs to the watercolour blog (due to its character as a colour study for the assignment) or to the drawing blog (because it’s a drawing with which I explore a new tool). I’ll include it here because I find the thematic link more important than the technical aspect, and maybe also because these soft oil pastels permitted working with colours in a more painterly way. I do not really see it as a drawing anymore, it’s almost a painting, only that it’s done with paint in stick form.

So overall, I’m quite glad with my first watercolour painting. I really like how the table cloth looks like. I also liked that it was possible to rework the background area on the relatively robust watercolour paper. It just makes me want to paint more, and curious try out all kinds of things to achieve a variety of effects with watercolours.

More artists: Emil Nolde, Oslo Exposition

In a way, this post is an extension to the section on Emil Nolde of my first research point. Following a mention at the Stiftung Seebüll Website, I decided to visit the Nolde Exposition “In search of the authentic” in the National Gallery in Oslo, Norway. The Exposition runs from 12 October to 20 January 2013, and it was said to present around 100 major works by Nolde, including paintings, watercolours, and prints.

I had so much liked the Nolde Exposition in Berlin and was excited to see more original works. It was great. The exposition in Oslo presented a broad variety in a biographical context, and I had several light bulb moments of insights about the artists work.

Entering the exhibition was a bit complicated at first. The good thing was that taking photos was allowed, but taking my rucksack with sketchbook and drawing equipment inside was not allowed and visitors who intended to draw needed a special permission. I don’t speak Norwegian but luckily we could sort it all out in English. In the end I had put the rucksack into a museum locker, obtained the special permission and a badge which made me feel like a journalist on an important mission, and got a plastic bag from the museum shop to take my equipment, including camera and notebook, with me.

Expedition to New Guinea

The first part of the exhibition was devoted to the expedition to New Guinea which Nolde undertook 1913/14. A huge world map showed the itinerary, which was quite impressive. I imagined the time it must have taken to travel that far. Nolde had depicted what he saw, and some of these were presented, like the series of rural scenes watercolours.

I like them for their simplicity and was surprised by their difference in style from other works by Nolde I had seen. They look like being made with the intention of documenting what he saw, rather than working on elaborate composition or colouring. Nevertheless they are nicely composed.

Seascapes

Then there was a room devoted to landscape paintings, one of Nolde’s favourite subjects. The very famous ‘Tall Breaker’ (1948) was presented. This painting is breathtaking… I know the northern sea and its wildness when there’s stormy weather, and this is what I recognize in the painting. And it’s lovely how Nolde captured the deep turqoise of the water breaking up, which is in a beautiful colourplay with the white foam and dark blue wave surfaces. What I also like about this painting is that it captures a brief moment in a way which remains lively and with inner movement.

The other seascape painting presented (of which I unfortunately haven’t noted title and year) has this same quality. For me this is great art. It is in contrast to some other realistic paintings of the sea which I didn’t like because the wavy water was depicted massive, explicit and dead. The photos I took don’t really capture the beauty of the paintings, they rather serve as a reminder.

Unpainted Pictures (watercolours)

Then there was a series of small watercolours which are part of what Nolde called his ‘unpainted pictures’ because they were made during the time when he was prohibited to work in Nazi Germany before World War II. During that time, Nolde was reported to have used all kinds of used paper as support for his secret paintings. I was fascinated by the colourfulness of these watercolours and took a closer look to find out about the technique.

That morning I had re-read the Wikipedia article on watercolours, which contains a section about techniques. Besides those techniques I had become acquainted with from sthe study materials, the article explains a technique of pouring paint onto wet paper, to broadly outline the colour shapes of the subject, then overworking the painting to bring out more details. When I had read this, it was too abstract and I couldn’t imagine what the result of such a technique would be. But looking at Nolde’s watercolours, I recognized the method and think this was what he did in this series.

I choose one of the watercolours for detailed study, the one with two women before a yellow sky (the middle painting). One of the women is looking towards the viewer. She is painted in orange and red tones. The other is turning her face away. She has dark brown hair and a purple dress. Looking at the original work I was imagining how Nolde first laid down the broad areas of colour – the yellow sky to the left, red and orange to the top right, and blue and violet to the bottom right. The upper woman has shades of blue around her eyes. On top of this are dark black lines for the contours of face, hair and dress of the two women, as well as some clouds and a mountaneous structure at the bottom of the painting.

To study the composition, I made a sketchbook drawing after this watercolour, using watersoluble wax crayon but without water.

My photographs of Nolde’s watercolours suffer from reflections in the glass screens of the frames. Again, they just serve as a reminder. I searched the web but did not find a quality reproduction of this particular watercolour. But I found a good reproduction of one of the other exhibits in this series, titled ‘Zwei Menschen’ (Two people), in which Nolde seemed to have used a similar technique of laying out the broad colour areas first, then using line to bring out forms.

More unpainted pictures: Landscapes

Another watercolour which impressed me was the landscape with burning red clouds over a field. As I had already seen recently in the Berlin exposition, I think Nolde mostly used a wet-in-wet, or at least wet-in-damp technique, to obtain beautiful colour blendings that perfectly fit with the irregular characteristics in the landscapes.

Then my interest was captured by a watercolour titled ‘Autumn sea’ (1920). It is also in a dark, burning read, with yellow structures emerging from amidst, and it really looks like a huge fire. Looking closer, I imagined Nolde had used a variation in technique here which I remember from childhood experiments with watercolour: painting on one half of the sheet, then folding the sheet to obtain a mirror immage on the other half. And this watercolour looks a bit as if the horizon line had been the folding edge, with the colour mass of the burning sky creating mirror reflections on the area representing the sea.

It is a really beautiful effect, and a perfect fit with the irregular reflections of a colourful sundown on a water surface. It may not be an accurate representation of what has objectively been there, but it conveys the impressiveness of such scenery in nature.

Flowers (watercolour and oil paintings)

Then there was the room with Nolde’s flower paintings and watercolours, which I found simply breath-taking. It was also nice to see both types of works next to each other. Sometimes I see more density and massiveness in Nolde’s watercolours than what I found typical for watercolour until now, and more lightheartendess and movements in the oil paintings than in paintings from other painters. I see this also in the seascapes exposed here. But it’s certainly difficult to draw this kind of comparison with my very limited knowledge of art history.

Concluding reflections

I thoroughly enjoyed visiting this exposition and can’t value enough to have followed the suggestion in the course materials to see original works, and not only book or internet reproductions. In an exhibition, details like the paper structure, how colours are blending, or the character of lines can be evaluated from very close and compared to their effect when looked at from a distance, which is very instructive. And then there’s an emotional effect looking at original works, which I hadn’t experienced from looking at reproductions only. Maybe it’s because original works are a real thing which has been created by a person alive. This has a different effect than looking at electronic pixels on a computer screen.

I found the fact that the watercolours were presented behind glass disturbing for taking photographs. So what I present here are my reminders about the pictures I saw. I wish artists’ works were more completely catalogued on the internet, then I could have used better reproductions in the article. Maybe some day in the future all human art will be available in an electronic version too? But hopefully people will not take the electronic representation as replacement for the real thing, because it isn’t!

With respect to the techniques used by Nolde, I’d certainly like to experiment with the wet-in-wet technique in my own practice, and also found the colour-pouring and the folded-image technique interesting.

To complete my dose of Nolde for this year, there’s just opened another exhibition in the Berlin house of the Seebüll Foundation, about the artist’s relationship to Switzerland and the mountains. I’m planning to go there next week or so.

Actually there were more aspects of the Nolde exhibition in Oslo which touched me, and also in what I saw afterwards when I visited the permanent exhibition of the National Gallery. But I judged these to be more closely related to my current learning in the drawing course, so I will refer to them in the other blog. The separation is a bit artificial, but necessary because students are supposed to not submit the same material twice. So I decided to split up the report about my Oslo study day. This part was directly related to my learning about watercolour, and the other part is more closely connected my drawing attempts. But in reality, there’s mutual benefit, and I hope there’s no separation in the actual learning process I’m going through.

References

Emil Nolde Stiftung Seebüll
http://www.nolde-stiftung.de/en/24/startseite-portal.html

Emil Nolde exposition, National Gallery, Oslo, Norway
http://www.nasjonalmuseet.no/en/?module=EventCalendar;action=Event.publicOpen;ID=778&template=exhibitionView_en

Wikipedia: Watercolour painting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watercolor_painting

Emil Nolde, Zwei Menschen (ungemaltes Bild)
http://www.listen.no/sted_event.php?sted_id=&nummer=10449

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

Resist techniques

I have read this chapter while I was still working on project 2 (Laying washes), because I was curious what exactly was meant by the term. I found it very interesting and was looking forward to experimenting and trying out the exercises!

The principle of using a resist to protect areas of the paper from being coloured made me remember another technique which I had been introduced to as a child: Wax batik.

I really enjoyed this project and would have liked to continue with experimentation.

Wax

The task was to first use the resist directly on the paper, then use it on coloured background for three motives: An object with a simple shape, a pattern or texture, and lines. I used quite rough paper in a 30×30 format, and transparent candle wax from a household candle which was quite difficult to see on the paper. It was helpful to sketch the shapes with a pencil and to look at the paper at an angle to the light, then one could detect the wax traces. I especially liked the effects of applying wax in different intensities, which resulted in different degrees of protection for the underground colour. The exercise also gave some practice with controlling colour intensities, i.e. how much pigment is needed to achieve a certain intensity with the colour.

I repeated the exercise with oil pastels. These also works as a resist against watercolour, but the effect is quite different because oil pastels are opaque, not transparent like the wax. So rather than letting the background colour shine through, the resist areas will appear in the chosen oil pastel colour.

Masking fluid

I chose white rubber liquid for this task and decided to incorporate both effects of resist on white and resist on coloured background in each experiment. The first about plain areas is a small still life with mug and pitcher. The second is a pattern inspired by the idea of a meadow, and the third about lines was inspired by cobwebs.

I like working with masking fluid. It is a bit difficult to see on a white background, but a pencil sketch and looking at an angle to the light does help. It is transparent and protects the background colour. Interesting effects can be created when the brush becomes a bit dry and the resist contours become broken, as in the pattern experiment. For the fine lines of the cobwebs I used a dispensing bottle with a fine tip, which works well but needs some practice because the amount of liquid pouring out is not always easy to control. I’m not sure whether the line experiment would have worked with a fine brush.

Gouache and Gum Arabic

Finally I experimented with gouache and gum arabic as resists. For the gouache, I used white colour and applied it with a brush. I created linear patterns inspired by Madras cloth with its light colours and woven transparency effects. The first gouache experiment was done with a single washing off which revealed the final pattern. The difference between the final painting and the painting before washing off was quite striking!

Then I tried out gum arabic. While I found the process quite interesting and liked the painting before washing off, I found the final work disappointing, because there was almost no colour left on the sheet. I don’t know what went wrong. Maybe it’s a problem that gum arabic is the medium with which watercolour is kept on the paper and so the resist is washed off to the same degree as any watercolour pigment. If I were to use gum arabic as a resist in the future, I would certainly do some research how it can be applied more successfully. Or maybe my pattern was just too complicated and the gum arabic resist would have worked better with simpler shapes.

I did another gouache resist experiment, because in the first I had lost the blue colour due to transparency effects with yellow. I wanted to try out an intermediate wash off and preserve both yellow and blue tones, in adddition to mixed colours from transparency effects. I like the result and think the gouache technique works quite well. But maybe if I want to obtain clean transparency effect without washing out, it might be more effective to use rubber liquid for these Madras patterns.

The images show the stages of this painting: (1) before the first washing off; (2) after the first washing off; (3) before the second washing off; and (4) final as after the second washing off.

Laying washes

This project is about laying washes, i.e. applying layers of paint rather than painting pictorial details.

What to learn
–   how to work with wet and dry paper
–   how the colour dries
–   how much paint to load the brush with

Exercise: Plain washes

The task was to create a uniform wash on an A3 sheet of watercolour paper, using a large soft brush loaded with plenty of paint. I chose a dark brown colour, burnt umber, and tried to mix a medium intense tone. The wash worked quite well although it was lighter than I expected. It also takes some time to get a feeling for the amount of paint needed to cover a larger area.

The second part of this exercise was to paint a simple shape after the sheet has dried, and during the waiting time I proceeded to the next exercise.

I painted a clay pitcher as a simple shape. It’s original colour is a deep blue, but somehow I felt more like trying out a different colour and mixed a violet tone from Alizarin Crimson and one of the blue tones, unfortunately I did not make a note and I’m not sure whether it was Ultramarine or Phtalo blue.

Assessing the pictorial possibilities of a shape on a coloured ground

Painting this shape was more or less my first experience with using watercolour to paint an object, and I like it. It felt very natural to create deeper tones by layering the colour, for example with the pitcher handle. Other parts of the shape were less successful, this was where the additional layer bleeded into the existing colour, as on the left area of the shape. Probably with practice one gets more feeling for how long to wait until a new layer can be applied.

Painting the shape over the coloured ground seems to create an inner connection between background and form through the subtle mixing of tones. Had I spared out the shape, the two elements of the painting would look much less connected and the colour contrast would be stronger. So I think this technique is a way of creating cohesion between the elements of a painting.

On the other hand, the technique is not always applicable, for example when the colours of the background are too dark for overpainting, or when the background is in mixed colours and this mix would disturb the colour impression of the object if it was drawn over the background.

Exercise: Tonally graded washes

The task was to create a wash on an A3 sheet of paper which gradually fades from top to bottom, by adding more water each time the brush needs loading. I stayed with the burnt umber from the previous exercise to use up the paint I had already mixed, but added some more pigment to have a more intense tone to begin with.

Creating the fading tone was quite difficult and I wasn’t satisfied with the first one because the colour stayed too dark rather than fade away. I made a second sheet on different paper but this time the fading set in too early and too abrupt so that the result was no gradual wash but more of a two-colour wash separated in the upper third of the sheet.

So I understand that this tasks is quite complicated and will need some more practice.

Exercise: Mixed-colour washes

The task was to create washes from two colours and a third by mixing these together. Each colour should occupy about 1/3 of the sheet. Then the exercise should be repeated, using a sponge instead of a brush.

I chose Phtalo Blue and Burnt Umber for this exercise, because I wasn’t very interested in mixing primary colours like red, blue or yellow. I thought mixing the blue and the brown might look a bit landscape-like, if I used blue (representing sky) on the top and brown (representing earth) on the bottom of the sheet. The mix of these colours became a muddy green which I found very natural, too.

For the first wash, I chose a portrait orientation because I thought this would give me a larger area to blend colours. For the second wash with the sponge I chose the landscape format.

Considering the results

I found the plain wash sheet very successful because it is really even and very subtle in its tone. By contrast, the tonally graded washes were much more difficult to do and I think my first attempts weren’t very successful. If I was to paint them as the background, I think I would build them up with more than one layer to achieve a satisfying gradation in tone.

The two mixed-colour washes are technically not very fine or subtle, but I find them nevertheless quite successful because I like the colours and the unexpected variety of tones resulting from my attempts to blend them subtly. I could imagine both of the sheets as interesting backgrounds for a watercolour painting.

I very much enjoyed working with a sponge. I used a natural sponge with a very pronounced texture. I used it with horizontal movements and this created a subtle stripe effect of changing tones which looks very interesting.

For the future, I think I would need some more technical practice with creating tonally graded washes in a single colour to learn how to achieve a satisfying gradation from dark to light tone. For the mixed-colour washes technical practice would certainly be beneficial too, but here chance effect have a lot of charm despite technical imperfections.

One thing to be careful about is the paper. It looks as though I worked to much on the first mixed-colour wash and caused some paper fibres to dissolve. This is less beautiful and I think especially as a beginner I will often feel that I need to work over areas to improve them. Choosing paper which resists some work would be more comfortable then.

More artists: Paul Cézanne

Inspired by an article on the We Are OCA website which presented a beautiful still life by Paul Cézanne, I took some more time to read about the artist. I new his name since a long time and had a superficial liking for the paintings I had seen, but never looked in any more detail or depth until now.

Paul Cézanne 1902 Apple, Bottle and Chair Back

The article is about the exhibition ‘Mantegna to Matisse’ at Courtauld Gallery, and author Jim points to its relevance for both students of drawing and watercolour. Indeed I was unsure to which of these two courses, which I’m now studying in parallel, I would associate my own Blog article. I chose the Watercolour Blog because I was attracted by a painting rather than a drawing. But probably this choice is arbitrary because I don’t know yet in what ways knowing more about Cézanne might influence my own development. I might review this aspect at a later time!

As usual, I began with a Google search about Paul Cézanne and found the German Wikipedia article about him very interesting and insightful. While I typically start with the English Wikipedia, this time I preferred to read the German article because it appeared to cover the artist’s life and work in greater depth. It is even marked with a Wikipedia star for article quality and might thus be still more informative than the French article.

Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906), French painter, was born in Aix-en-Provence and lived in the south of France for most of his life, but he also lived in Paris for some time. He had been married to his long-standing painting model Marie-Hortense Fiquet and they had a son, but their marriage wasn’t happy – presumably because of Paul Cézannes difficult personality, illustrated by quotes from his closer friends several times in the Wikipedia article. But his influence on contemporary painters must have been enormous. The article mentions Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque and André Derain and reports relationship with many other artists. Cézanne’s work is now seen as the foundation of ‘Classical Modernism’. As the English Wikipedia article puts it:

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th century Impressionism and the early 20th century’s new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. The line attributed to both Matisse and Picasso that Cézanne “is the father of us all” cannot be easily dismissed.

From the many paintings presented in the article I especially liked ‘The Card Players’ because of its beautiful colouring. The tones are beautifully shaded and very lively. For example, the brown table contains all brown tones from dark umber to yellow ochre, or the green jacket of one of the player has a multitude of different shades of green.

Paul Cézanne 1892-95 The Card Players

I also very much like one of his earlier works, ‘Snow Melting’, painted around 1870 in very dark colours (except for the snow), which seemed to have been typical for the painter’s early years. It was only from around the mid-1870s that he changed his colour choice to more brighter tones, reportedly influenced by his friend, painter Camille Pissaro.

Paul Cézanne ca. 1870 Snow melting

A search for Cézanne’s watercolour paintings brought up beautiful watercolour still life of fruit on a dish, mentioned in a Guardian article from January 2002. The original painting had long been confounded with a fake painting of excellent quality. The article reports that the original is now owned by the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archeology, but unfortunately I could not locate it on their website, so found no further information about its title or date of painting for now. It was not included in their online collection of paintings, but I found information about a ‘Print Room’ at the museum presenting not only prints but also drawings, and it might be included there. I was just a little bit surprised that watercolour paintings are called ‘drawings’ which reminded me of the difficulty to distinguish between painting and drawing.

Paul Cézanne (undated) Still Life with Peaches and Figs

And indeed, the painting is included in the drawings collection… It is not dated. It was made with graphite and watercolour on white paper, its size is around 20 x 30 cm. It very much looks like a study for the very Cézanne-like still life oil paintings of fruit decorated on a table, but with watercolour it is much lighter, less massive in character than what I see in Cézannes oil paintings.

References

OCA article: Mantegna to Matisse, by Jim on 30 August 2012
http://www.weareoca.com/fine_art/mantegna-to-matisse/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mantegna-to-matisse

Paul Cezanne, German Wikipedia article
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_C%C3%A9zanne

English Wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_C%C3%A9zanne

The Guardian (16 January 2002) ‘The real thing. Cézanne that eluded Nazis goes on show’, retrieved 1 September 2012 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/jan/16/maevkennedy

Ashmolean Museum of Art & Architecture, Paintings Collection
http://www.ashmolean.org/ash/objects/?mu=130

Ashmolean Museum of Art & Architecture, Cézanne in the Drawings Collection
http://www.ashmolean.org/php/makegall.php?db=wadrawings&view=llisti&all=&arti=cezanne&titl=&mat=&prov=&sour=&coll=&acno=&strt=1&s1=&s2=&s3=&dno=&what=Search