DESIGNING A PAINTING:
Judy makes extensive use of her own photography. (She stresses that one should never use anyone else's photography! Not just because it's someone else's vision, but because of copyright and recognizability.) She says she photographs for "facts." She collects characters, and then puts them in different environments. She takes multiple photographs of elements she likes. So maybe the window of a shop, or the open doorway of a bistro, and then a picture of a waiter, or a bicycle leaning against a wall. Maybe a landing in Venice, and a gondola, and a gondolier. Or multiple pairs of feet in different kinds of shoes on a train platform. Or chinese lanterns and fabrics and kites and bamboo leaves. But--how often does one capture the perfect picture, with all the elements in place, in perfect proportion to one another, with the best possible light? Never. Neither nature nor man is that cooperative. So…
Judy takes all those elements, sizes them up and down on a copy machine until they are in pleasing proportion to one another, and traces them onto tracing paper. Then she cuts out these elements, arranges them together, moves them around until she has found a combination she likes, and tapes or pastes them down. She takes a piece of butcher paper the same size as her watercolor paper and folds it into quarters and then again. She draws a grid over her paste-up in the same proportions, and uses this grid to make a single drawing that incorporates all the elements. Then (to avoid drawing on her watercolor paper, which she doesn't like to do, because it leaves lines), she sometimes will tape this drawing to the back of her paper, and place the layers onto her light box, so she can paint in the shapes without drawing on the surface. Or, she may then photograph the composite drawing and project it onto her paper, drawing the lines lightly with a 2H pencil.
She has no trouble with using all this technology to construct a painting. Purists might; but they will never achieve a painting with the disparate elements as perfectly combined as you will see in Judy's!
Questions to ask yourself before you make a painting: What is it about this scene, or person, or object, that drew you in? What made you want to paint it? That should be your focal point. So maybe it was an interesting face. Maybe it was the person in relation to his environment. Maybe it was the textures you wanted to capture, or the contrast of light to dark, or the marvelous colors. Being able to answer that question satisfactorily lets you know that yes, you should make this painting, and it also tells you how the painting should be structured to highlight or feature that special part.
TEXTURE:
In addition to using salt, Judy is all about texture. She has a background in calligraphy, and loves symbolism. So she uses a variety of materials to provide texture in her paintings. One thing she enjoys is using stencils to introduce lettering, whether the lettering is used literally/functionally (to portray a street sign) or figuratively (Chinese figures on an old tea chest) or as a label or pattern. She also likes pattern stencils--a floral motif on fabric, or a border around her image to call greater attention to it, or bamboo leaves providing interest. And she stencils first and last, depending on the desired effect.
Here is one example of how she uses texture in a painting--take a look at the sky, in which she has painted in an all-over design in a slightly different shade from her wash, and at the repeating border across the top:
One method she uses is so intriguing, and I've never heard of anyone else doing this: She buys white latex paint (flat wall paint like you would use to paint your bedroom) and uses it as a resist. She takes a stencil and stencil brush and stencils white letters or patterns onto her white watercolor paper. You can hardly see them, except that the latex does stand up a bit above the surface; if you don't want it to, you can simply blot the letters with a paper towel after stenciling them on. Then you let them dry, and then you wash over them, and everything you stenciled in white magically appears behind the glaze of watercolor! You can leave as is or, if it's too bright and prominent to serve well as a background, you can paint over it to tone it down.
Here is a test sheet I did, where I stenciled the diamond pattern and my initials onto blank paper with white latex paint and then glazed over them with watercolor:
Then I played around a little with changing the color on top. (This and practicing swatches of continuous wash were the extent of my painting for the entire workshop!)
The other useful trick she shared was creating "color chords." Everyone has picked up a postcard or a greeting card or a piece of fabric because they fell in love with the colors used to create it. Judy then takes paints and mixes until she matches the exact colors used in that combination, making notes of what she combined and in what proportions, and creates a color card that she keeps until she finds a painting she wants to make using that color chord.
She also has some tried and true triads of paint combinations that she shared:
The primary transparent triad is French ultramarine, quinacridone gold, and permanent alizarin crimson
The desert triad (more opaque) is yellow ocher, cerulean blue, and Indian red (which coincidentally make a lovely gray when mixed together)
So--although I didn't return home with paintings to share, I did learn a lot from Judy Morris, and she has given me enough food for thought to fuel creativity for quite a few weekend afternoons of experimentation! If you would like to view some of her other work (and it's well worth seeing), you can go to her website. Hopefully my next post will be something I have created with her inspiration.
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