Day 24 - Nectarine in Watercolor

Nectarine

Watercolor in Moleskine Pocket WC journal

Painted this from my own photo in several layers. Started at my clinic visit yesterday, waiting for my shot, with a flat bright yellow wash over the entire fruit. Then whle it was wet brought in first a warm red and then a cool red, letting the watercolor pool and run. Blotted out that yellow patch on the side wile it was damp and glazed over part of it again today in warm red.

I did the shadow today. Same thing, started with wet Ultramarine and then brought dioxazine violet and quinacridone red into it. Love those clean saturated colors. I've got everything but green in this one.

I seem to start a painting the day before I post it, finish and start the one for tomorrow. But it works. I've been keeping up. Only six more to go and I will finish out this September with all 30 paintings in 30 days in my collage! That's a last cool litle thing Leslie Saeta does, connects to a service where I can make a creative collage of all the paintings I did and see how they looked together.

That'll show me things in aggregate that I don't notice one painting at a time - favorite colors or composition types, favorite mediums, whether I progressed. I've learned a lot this time. I feel as if both watercolor and the brush pen are coming easier now. It's a great feeling.

Day 20: Chrysanthemum ATC

Chrysanthemum ATC

Caran d'Ache Neocolor II on Light Green Mi-Tientes

I also started a larger piece with red peonies yesterday, sketched it but didn't want to post just the penciled outlines. So this morning I was inspired to do something small and colorful with my favorite watersoluble crayons.

Here's yesterday's done this morning. I'll post again later when I've done Red Peonies. Might use the same crayons but wash them, it's on watercolor paper.

Day 16: Pears, Plums and Clementine on Milk Glass

Pears, Plums and Clementine on Milk Glass

8 1/2" x 6 1/2"

Today I felt a good deal more ambitious and did this painting in several sessions with Caran d'Ache Neocolor II watersoluble crayons in my Stillman & Birn 8 1/2" x 11" hardbound journal. I love that heavy rough white paper, it has deep tooth and is very absorbent, works well with anything I throw at it.

Sketched this still life from life. A friend gave me five milk glass plates that are curved at the sides almost like a shallow bowl, I put one of them out for use. Then my home care guy went out and bought me fruit. He had an eye for the pretty ones, since he's also an artist! The big bright green pear, the two strange gold and reddish plums and a giant peach and beautiful nectarine now eaten were all a delight. I got photos of the nectarine. The peach was too irresistible.

Now that this is painted, I can find out what those plums taste like! The clementine and tiny brown pear came with my lunches from the food program I get, they were just right to add to the setup. 

I might even do another something today since it's not that late. I have the bottom of this page to do something else in water media. Might continue with those crayons or go back to the W&N markers or mess with watercolor pencils.

NC-II crayons are a lot like layering with colored penclls but softer and bolder. The light colors are translucent and somewhat opaque, though it helps to reserve pure whites. Texture is softer than the Cretacolor watersoluble oil pastels, still on the firm side compared to oil pastels. They wash out in a unique pigment rich lush color, not quite gouache as they have a little waxy shine and lack the matte effect of gouache. They can be used like it certainly! They rewet easily, going back into washed areas can create unintended lifting.

Colourful Cherries in pastel

Colourful Cherries 

5" x 7"

Terry Ludwig pastels on Uart 400 sanded pastel paper

Photo reference by sirbonetta on WetCanvas 

This month's Pastel Spotlight Challenge on WetCanvas.com is themed on the color Red. I liked most of the references but the one that really sang to me was a bowl of cherries with these three off to the side on a white table. I left out the bowl and painted them larger than life in a very tight crop.

I used the four stage Colourist method as I've done before with Colourful Lemons and Colourful Bananas months ago. Once again the painting sings in person, the cherries shine with color and the whole piece has a lot of richness. Gradating the background eliminated the boredom of a plain white flat surface and also flattened it out, though the shapes of the shadows did that too. 

Shadows are nuanced with reflected color. The white surface reflects up on the shiny surfaces of the cherries along with some out of sight object to the far left that broke the reflection. The corner of the table is visible in those reflections. I loved the way they shaded and the nuances of the leaf. Some texturing strokes created lovely details and veining by accident so I kept all that and didn't do anything more to it after Stage 3. Even the stems came out well and the last bright highlights went on over what was probably 8 or 9 layers of very soft pastels.

I did use an alcohol underpainting for the bright first layer just as I did in yesterday's landscape and love that effect too. These super soft Ludwig pastels wear down faster than my medium-soft pastels but give a lovely glow and they do go on so opaque that I can get away with bright near-whites over dark near-black colors! 

I spent all day at this one, it was four different sessions each about two hours. So this would have been a full day's work in itself despite the small size. So worth it though when I look at the results!

To learn the Colourist method I recommend Capturing Radiant Light & Color in Pastels and Oils by Susan Sarback, who was my teacher's teacher. Charlotte Herczfeld aka Colorix taught me this method in "Exploring Soft Pastels: Still Life the Colourful Way" on WetCanvas starting November 2009 and it's changed how I look at color, how I organize my pastels, how many I need to paint anything I want to and everything about how I paint in any medium. That's how intense it was for changing my view of color. I finally understood things in color theory that never made sense before and didn't connect with my painting experience thanks to her course. It's free if you join WetCanvas, anyone who reads through and does the exercises will get help from those of us who took it when she was posting it every day.

Susan Sarback studied with Henry Hensche, and the Cape Cod School did a lot of this sort of work in oil painting. The method's a bit different in oils but the color principles are the same. The main thing in oils is to leave a white area around the color masses and not do edges till late in the process so they don't get muddied if they're supposed to be hard.