LOC Design Studio: Trees

LOC Design Studio: Trees

Serendipity

Serendipity is a word that I, as an English major, have always loved. It connotes the happy "accident" that develops into something beneficial for you. Of course, I have since learned that there are no coincidences, but all is as it is meant to be.

Once upon a time a long time ago while creating a watercolor "pour" in a workshop, a hair fell into the wet paint creating a frosty looking line in the color. Knowing better than to try to fish it out, I let it dry and was fascinated by the textural effect. I learned to enhance the texture with sea salt and to uncover images by painting into the dried surface. I first incorporated it into a "frost on the window pane" image and gave it to my hairdresser.

The curves of the hair then suggested to me underwater vegetation and shells and thus began a series I named "Fantasea". "Broken Angel" is a detail from a larger painting that is "Fantasea #51". The pour is created with no image in mind..just an intuitive dropping in of colors onto wet paper followed by the hair and then the salt. I love watching what happens next. The salt dissolves a little in the water and slows the drying time so that the wetter areas push into the drying areas and make lines that would be considered blooms in traditional watercolor but make exciting patterns in a pour. The saltier paint is guided along the hair and bleeds in a non traditional way into the whites and other colors. What happens is always a surprise. Sometimes the painting is complete when it dries. There are only a few brushstrokes in "Garden Trio." It spoke to me of chairs with very little work.

Fantasea #51 was a beautiful pour, but there was a large very dark area that stymied me until I was looking through photos from a trip to Edisto Island when the shore was being eaten away and sea oats had fallen across the darkened soil of the edge of the sound. There is not much of that area visible in "Broken Angel" but my painting involved a lot of serious scrubbing with a toothbrush to get back to the light shades of the oat stalks. The shells themselves started with negative painting to bring them out of the pour and then a few painted details, mainly in the angel wing.

I tend toward realism in much of my work, but was serendipitously pushed beyond my limitations by a single hair dropping into wet paint..such a little thing to expand my horizons and create a watercolor technique that I have never seen suggested in a book. I am grateful for the medium that pushes me to react and accept change and "go with the flow."

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Taking Flight

This painting grew from remembering a technique I had seen demonstrated in 1977 by Zoltan Szabo. I wanted a dark but interesting marsh background for the egret rising from the ground.

First I sketched the bird on Arches 300 lb coldpress watercolor paper and applied masking fluid to the the head, body, front wing and the center of the back wing which I wanted to try to depict in motion by lifting the feathers along the edge.



Next I wet the entire piece of paper and applied a couple of staining colors, sap green and winsor violet. I primarily use non-staining colors so that I can lift them, but in this case, I needed stains. I tried not to fill the area I planned to lift with these colors and I also dropped in a bit of non-staining cobalt blue for a hint of sky that might or might not be visible through the grasses. I let the painting dry completely.




Next I used various combinations of French Ultramarine blue and burnt sienna, ranging from brown to deep blue and stroked them vertically and at an angle across the entire masked underpainting. Only small areas of the violet and green remained and the stains gave many hues to the overpainted areas.



Next I lifted carefully marsh grasses from areas where the staining colors were strongest and scrubbed a bit harder on the feathers of the far wing of the egret. When this dried, I carefully removed the masking fluid with a rubber cement lifter, which has now become a tool for lifting masking fluid.

I wet the neck and head and added cobalt blue mixed with rose madder genuine for the shadow. Then used the same color to define the feathers on the front wing..dropped into wet paper..tricky but make the color a bit dryer than the wetness of the paper and it will work. Continued to lift more grass shapes from time to time.



Went to the lower left corner and lifted flat ovals to suggest water..then lifted drops which might have shaken off as the bird takes flight.




Painted the legs a black mixed from French Ultramarine blue and burnt sienna..this color will lift completely, so is great for very dark areas that might need lifting.




Painted the eye yellow and the bill a combination of indian yellow and cad orange with a highlight lifted on top and a shadow underneath with a bit of cobalt/rose madder mixed.




Looked very carefully at my photo with a magnifying glass and painted a dot in the eye and the med darks around it with a tiny brush and a mixture of cobalt blue and burnt sienna.




This is a scan of the finished painting. I have added a bit of yellow and burnt sienna to a few of the grasses and you can see the detailing of the feathers. I had made the farthest feathers fuzzy to suggest movement and lifted a highlight on the black legs. The colors are truer than in the photos preceding and the painting has turned out more striking that I had imagined it. In painting watercolor, there are always nice surprises and you must be ready to wait for them to happen and incorporate them into your original idea...with grace and ease.