White-throated Sparrow on Ice

The cold winter months provide opportunity for gathering inspiration, as well as, quiet indoor time to create watercolor paintings! 

The above painting was inspired by a harsh but beautiful ice storm in east Tennessee in February 2015.  Ice coated everything so I not only spent a lot of time making sure the birds in my yard had food and water, I took many photographs.    

The limbs of an ice-coated Burning Bush were breath-taking, looking like lace.  I watched birds move in and out of its branches, some plucking berries, others perching near the feeders. Above and below, fluffy White-throated Sparrows perched among the limbs.  Birds fluff their feathers to trap air giving them an extra layer of warmth trapped under their feathers.

Painting ice in watercolor means "saving the whites".  The white of the paper is the white in your watercolor painting.  Ice presents an interesting challenge, more so than snow, because it reflects light and color from the surrounding area.  .  

Above you can see how I began this painting.  After carefully drawing the limbs and sparrow, I began negative painting with light washes of a mixture of burnt sienna and ultarmarine blue. Together these hues range from blue to blue-gray, to brown, to brown-gray to rust and subtle shades in between.  .

In this case I applied the washes in layers, with each area drying before I applied another layer over it.

While painting you can also drop paint into damp pigment to vary the color.  The key to keeping the paint underneath from moving is to avoid dabbing your brush but rather, add pigment with a stroke or two and leave the area until it dries.  

Watercolor painting takes patience because we often spend a lot of time waiting for the right moment to add the next brush stroke.  Paint will have a shiny appearance when wet and look dull when dry. Waiting for that right moment will reward you with satisfying results.  
Look for inspiration in the neutrals of winter and have a great time painting while its cold and wet outside!

Links and references:
Negative painting:  Fun with Fall Leaves and Hummingbird Inspiration
Helping wintering bluebirds

Whooping Crane Art for the Smithsonian National Zoo

Big projects demand a lot of time and everything else is abandoned, I'm afraid.  This is why it has taken me so long to post another blog post!  I am currently working on a book project that is consuming most of my time. I will tell you more about that soon.  In the meantime, I want to show you a project I completed for the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in 2013.  It was such an honor to be invited to create art for this project and work with their team of experts!

The park has a new Whooping Crane exhibit.  The exhibit enables visitors to see one of the most endangered crane species in the world and one that only lives in North America.  The watercolor above is one of four images that depict the story of the Whooping Crane's return to the eastern United States.

Photo:  Courtesy of the Smithsonian National Zoological Park

Costume-reared juvenile Whooping Cranes, imprinted on ultralight aircraft and costumed pilots, learn their migration route by flying behind ultralight aircraft during their first fall migration.  In the spring, they return on their own without human assistance.  In this way, a separate migrating population of Whooping Cranes has been established in the east to help insure that no natural or human-made disaster can cause the loss of this species to the world.  The hope is that the re-introduced Whooping Cranes will raise young and increase the eastern population.

I have not seen the exhibit in person, but, look forward to making that happen sometime this year. In the meantime, I'll show you how I approached the paintings for this project.  

Above you see the layout of the painting in my sketchbook.  White pages are hard to photograph, so I apologize for the poor quality of some of these images.  The dimensions of the final banners called for a full sheet of watercolor paper with its width reduced to correspond with the banner's proportions.  This made for a tall slender painting 30" x 15" which I taped to a backboard.

I decided to pour the backgrounds for these paintings to take advantange of the translucence and uniformity that can be achieved with this method, as well as, the special qualities of layered colors. Pouring required that I cover any areas I wanted to remain white with a masking fluid or resist, a rubbery solution that resists the water and pigment.  Above and below, I have painted mask on the cranes and the ultralight air craft.

Once the resist dried, I prepared three pigment solutions in laundry detergent cups that I had saved for this purpose.  I placed a small amount of pigment in each cup, added the amount of water desired, and mixed with a brush until the pigment was disolved.

When I pour the paint onto wet paper, I am creating a thin layer of color without the aid of a brush.  The tilt of the board and the water move the pigment.  Mostly, the movement happens without touching the paper, though sometimes the aid of a brush is needed to move pigment that has collected around the edge of the masking fluid. Pigment can also be moved by spraying water in the area desired.  Additional water will dilute the pigment and make the value of the color lighter.  

I first wet the paper and wait until the paper surface looses its shine.  Pigment is then poured on the paper and the flow of pigment controlled with the board's tilt.  Both the amount of water added to the pigment and length of time the pigment remains on the paper influence the color's value or how dark or light it becomes. Excess paint is poured off the paper when the desired value is reached, remembering that the paint will dry lighter than it appears when wet.

The pouring above included yellow and rose on wet paper.  The paper is still wet in the image. You can see that the colors flowed vertically in the direction of the board's tilt. When more than one color is applied in the same pouring, the colors blend when they meet to create a third color in some areas. More of the rose hue is visible in the image below.  

In the image above, I used burnt sienna to define the tree tops.  These billowy shapes are sometimes interpreted as clouds.  The ultralights can not navigate above clouds, but the entire migration and recovery effort is a magical story, so if the viewer sees clouds, that's okay too!

In the next pouring I used blue to create an atmospheric haze over the tree tops. Water is sprayed over the paper first and lightly spread with a brush.  The thin blue mixture is then poured over the paper and encouraged to move with the angle of the board to avoid puddling.  I accomplished this while holding the board over the sink to insure that the pigment continues to move.  Excess pigment was caught in a paper towel in the sink.  And yes, with this size painting, this was a bit awkward.  I did wish for a large utility sink!

A closer look at the colors.  You can see some of the variation of greens, blues and purple that have been created by the layered colors.  I let the paper dry completely and removed the mask with an eraser.  

The easiest part for me is adding the detail to the juvenile cranes.  The contrast of the white and black on their wings never fails to pop and brighten all the colors around them.

Links and resources:
More about layering
The Smithsonian National Zoo
To see more of my Whooping Crane art visit these links:  Whooping Cranes in Watercolor, Whooping Crane Activity Book, and Whooping Cranes on gourd art.

Fun with Fall Leaves--Creating Layers

True to the nature of autumn, rain and winds have blown many leaves off our trees creating a bed of colorful leaves on the ground.  Painting layers of leaves is a fun way to practice negative painting, glazing with thin layers of color, and softening edges--three skills you will use over and over again while painting. 

Visually, lighter objects in a painting move forward.  Darker objects move backward. This is one of the ways we create depth in a painting. In negative painting we are painting the negative space around the subject. In this case, when we paint the areas around the leaves, we are also creating a darker layer. When we add a leaf to this darker area, the leaf appears to move farther away visually.  

   

To create a painting with layers of leaves, select three primary colors to use in your painting--a red, blue and yellow. You can mix additional colors from these three, such as mixing blue and red, to make purple. I selected Phthalo blue, Aureolin for my yellow, and Permanent Alizarin Crimson for my red. I also used New Gamboge, a rich shade of yellow, and Burnt Sienna to begin the first layer.     

Begin by taping your paper to a backboard on all sides. A one-fourth sheet of watercolor paper (11 x 15") will give you plenty of room to build your leaf layers. The demonstration is on a 9 x 12 inch sheet. I'm using Arches 140# cold press paper. 

Wet your paper with a spray bottle or by brushing clear water across the paper. Pour off excess water by holding your paper vertically and wiping away the drips that collect at the edge of the tape.  When the paper has had time to absorb the water, create a juicy multi-colored wash on the paper with the lightest shades of the colors you've selected.  I chose to use shades of yellow and burnt sienna. Let this first layer dry completely.

Draw or trace a leaf on the dry wash, as above. Create a background for that leaf by painting a thin layer of color around its edges and brushing that color out until the edge disappears (known as soft edges or losing edges).  

To soften the edges, rinse your brush with clear water and brush the damp brush across the edges of the glaze. When this glaze is completely dry, draw another leaf and create a glaze around that leaf, letting it dry completely before adding the next. As you add leaves, draw the leaves so they are partially hidden under the leaf before it. As you work, notice how the water and pigment interact and make adjustments to how much water you use if needed.    

Above, you see a bloom (upper right) created by too much water in relation to pigment. The water moved the pigment beyond the softened edge.  You may find that you get the mix of water and pigment just right sometimes and other times, not. Sometimes you may forget to let the glaze dry. Notice what happens.  Explore and play.

The smoothness of my layers improved with practice.  Below, you can see the progression of the layers and how the painting begins to change with each additional glaze.  

As I worked, I noticed that I liked the way the greens began to cool down the yellows. I also liked seeing the pigment under the glaze shining through.   

Could you see the leaves moving backward as you glazed?  What did you notice about color? I enjoyed watching the greens on the right side of my painting (below) turn to that beautiful shade of blue. Purple mixed from the same blue created a lovely accent.

Below is another one of my explorations on an 11 x 15 inch quarter sheet of Arches 140# cold press paper. 

And here's another one below, created some time ago, with iris blossoms and leaves. 

Links and resources:

Fun with Fall Leaves series

My galleries at Vickie Henderson Art

Why leaves change colors

Winsor Newton watercolors

Winsor Newton watercolor color chart

Arches watercolor paper