Posted in painting

Learning to Paint Water

I’ve moved on to the next tutorial by Shari Blaukopf. This one is exciting to me because it’s all about techniques for painting water. Still water, moving water, rapids, reflections, waterfalls – these are all subjects that interest me greatly.

First off was brush techniques frequently used to paint water.

Sketchbook – first attempts

Hm, I think the wet into wet needs a little more practice.

A little better.

There’s no substitute for learning by doing, so I moved on to the first subject: Still water. Here you see my sketch and the first washes.

While I might have made the blues darker, I was well enough satisfied to move on to the next steps.

In my enthusiasm to paint, I failed to get photographs of each stage. Let’s just say that there were two more layers of wash (mostly on the trees) and then final details. Once everything had dried, I applied some white gouache lines to the still water.

Completed painting:

While I feel that I succeeded in getting the reflections right, I’m not terribly satisfied with the overall painting. I’ll probably try it again.

To see Shari’s work, you can visit her blog here.

Friday, Oct 2nd. Today I painted the still water scene again. This rendition is much more pleasing to me.

The colors are cleaner and more transparent. The sky and water are vibrant instead of washed out. And the vegetation in the background is clearly defined.

Posted in painting

Final Lesson – Painting Shadows

Yesterday my husband and I returned from a week in Wisconsin. It was the baby’s 2nd birthday and we were there to celebrate. I loved my time there. My granddaughter had just broken the code on language, and words were tumbling out of her mouth in great abundance.

I had intended to post this blog last Sunday, but family life took priority.

The reference image for the lesson was a slightly decayed old service station in South Carolina. I will admit that I wasn’t terribly inspired to paint it. Bu I knew there were lessons to be learned from the effort.

First the sketch. Only a small number of pencil lines were used. I didn’t ink them.

There is a wide curving drive way across the foreground. The sun is coming from the right side of the image. It is high in the sky, but not directly overhead. First wash:

Next came the trees and shrubs in the background.

I was okay with this work, except for the dark tree on the right. The green doesn’t seem to fit with the other shades of green paint. Here is the final painting.