In the style of...

I've been trying to play around with other people's styles of working lately, with not much success. Today, intrigued by what some friends have been doing after taking a class from Ian Fennelly, I watched a video of his on YouTube, thinking I would try out his way of working.

Unfortunately, I don't own all the tools he uses. His is a three-step process, in which he first blocks out the large areas: Sometimes he draws them lightly in pencil or gray marker, other times he simply blocks in all the color, using watercolors. Then, after that dries, he goes back in and draws over the top of the watercolor with various shades of gray marker, being careful not to obscure too much of the color, but making good use of the grays to delineate edges, shadows, and such. Finally, he goes in with his pen (he uses a fine-point marker) and puts in all the myriad details.

I didn't have any of the Tombow or other markers he uses in the gray tones—I only own them in bright colors. So I had to do the intermediate step using gray watercolor. For this one, I drew everything quickly and sketchily with a pencil, then put in the big blocks of color, and then did the pen.

Ian has a trademark look that is the one thing I especially meant to try and then forgot: He exaggerates the slants of all the buildings in some of his drawings, so that some bow out or curve inward at a much more extreme angle than in reality. With my problems with "real" perspective, I thought that that way of working might just suit me, but then forgot as I was sketching this!

Here is one of his scenes:

Ian has a quick, somewhat wiggly, curly line with his pen that I didn't duplicate. He is also a fanatic for all the small details that make the scene unique, so he would have put in every single brick (or at least 50 percent of them) on that building in the center, as well as the pavers on the cobblestone street, instead of simply delineating the outer edges, as I did.

I have to admit, I don't have the patience for drawing that would cause me to lovingly study and duplicate all those details. So while this picture has maybe a flavor of his style, it's still me. That is to say, a little messy, a little lazy, and with lots of glaring perspective problems that perhaps don't glare quite so badly when using this slightly looser style.

This is a scene from somewhere in Germany, judging by the Koffiehuis sign.

Pencil, watercolor, marker, in Bee sketchbook.

Draw with me

Danny Gregory from Sketchbook Skool does a thing called "Draw with me" every Thursday morning. Because he's in New York, he does it at noon but it airs here on the left coast at 9:00, which is usually too early for me to be up and aware enough to remember to tune in. But fortunately it is archived so you can do it later if you want.

Most times, I have something else I want to paint that day, so I don't get into it. Also, sometimes he's really disorganized and I get tired of waiting for him to get started, and wander off. But today he actually spent part of the time talking about how he's turning over a new leaf, that DWM will now be organized ahead of time and he will actually put out the images from which we are going to draw on the day before via email or post them on Facebook, so it will be more relaxing for everyone, which I liked. And today's subject was dogs, which I also liked!

Danny was drawing with a brush pen, so I decided to try that too. I didn't have the one he was using, which seemed blacker, thicker, and more flexible, but I did have a Pitt pen in warm gray with a somewhat flexible brush-shaped tip, so I went with that. It was fun to draw with a different size and flexibility than my usual Uniball!

Danny added color afterwards using Inktense pencils with a water brush, but I don't have but one color of those, so I used regular watercolor. And although the dog page was a sixpack, for my #6 I decided instead to include Danny making faces as he attempted to "smile" like Terry (the dog above in the middle) was doing. Screen shot is a wonderful feature, isn't it?

So, here are the dogs...and Danny.

Faber Castell Pitt pen, warm gray; various watercolors; Bee multi-media sketchbook.

My style?

I tried another town-with-red-roofs-on-hills painting tonight. And I have to face the fact that I will never paint like the people whose paintings I cited in yesterday's post...but I think I did manage to make this one a better painting than the one of Santorini from the night before.

I'm too literal, and I just don't have the knack of spontaneity; I don't work fast, I have no idea how to make tile roofs actually look like tile, and getting greens to look like shrubbery, well, hmm...but I guess I will keep trying.

Some people say they like "my style." Do I have a style? Most of the time I feel I do not, I just paint what I see.

Paul Jackson, Daniel Smith, and M. Graham paints on Fluid 140-lb. watercolor paper. Pencil underdrawing. From a reference photo whose origin I have forgotten.

A certain style

My friend Bix reminded me that before I admired Marc Taro Holmes's painting (in my last post), I had been exposed to those of Keiko Tanabe and Eugen Chisnicean (both of whom I discovered through Bix). They, too, have the facility of looking at a village on a hill—usually one of those picturesque ones in France, Italy, or maybe Moldova (Eugen)—and squinting their eyes to include all the essentials and none of the pesky details. I don't know how they do it, and just studying their artwork doesn't put me much further ahead; perhaps watching them paint about a dozen of them apiece would do it? Or perhaps painting about 100 of them myself?

Keiko is an interesting case: She worked in intercultural communication, first for a law firm and then for a Japanese government trade organization, for many years, but always wanted to paint. In 2003, she made the commitment to become an artist and, after taking basic drawing and watercolor classes at a community college, embarked on a mostly self-taught regime of painting. She began exhibiting two years later, in 2005. She is one of the most intensely serious painters I have ever encountered; she tells stories about herself such as "I realized I was afraid to paint water, so I painted a picture with water in it every day for a year." She primarily paints en plein air, fast and fresh. She teaches workshops and paints for about 50 weeks a year, and in her "spare" time juries art shows and gives demonstrations. Here is one of hers that is evocative of what I admired about Marc's:

Eugen is, as far as I am concerned, a baby genius. He's 36 years old and, although he has studied art since the age of 11, he didn't really take up watercolor until 2007. He paints, teaches, and exhibits all over the world. He, like Keiko, is primarily a plein air painter.

Perhaps, if I dedicated 10 hours a day, 350 days a year, then I, too, would be painting this way.... When I took a workshop from Keiko and she said the Jeep I had painted looked more like a Yugo, I joked with her that I would have to spend all my lunch hours at the library sitting in the parking lot drawing the staff cars until I could differentiate. She said, very seriously, "Yes, that's a good idea, if you do that for about six months you will have it down."

My cars still look like Yugos.

Not what I was going for

Last month, I participated for part of the month in the "30 x 30 Direct Watercolor Challenge," which is to make a daily painting where you use paint and brush only, with no underdrawing whatsoever. I have had variable success and failure with this challenge in past years, but it's always a good exercise, as it focuses you on looking more carefully at your subject material.

Today I decided to try something based on a painting made by one of our two our mentors in this challenge, Marc Taro Holmes. I loved the way he took this village and just painted in the pertinent details without getting precise about anything, and how it still looked like a village on hills.

Example by Marc Taro Holmes

I had a reference photo lying around of a view of Santorini, in Greece, and thought perhaps I could pull off the same effect, since a majority of the buildings on that island are also white, with only windows and shadows to delineate.

It didn't quite come out as I had hoped. First of all, I did draw in some of the buildings, just to locate them properly in the scene, but once I had done that, I was faced with how I was filling up the interim spaces, and everything got too tight. Then, I quickly realized that there were actually a lot of colors in the buildings in this particular shot, so the absence of color thing didn't really work. There are little sections with which I am happy, and others that turned into a big mess, and I had trouble consistently with the direction of the light. So...a mostly wasted 90 minutes on an experiment I will try again when feeling more flexible!

Speaking of flexibility, the reason there have been no paintings on this blog for almost two weeks is that I threw out my back and have been suffering with it until I could get to the chiropractor for treatment. I have now been a couple of times, and about 75 percent of the pain is alleviated. I have more appointments this week, so I should be back in better shape soon.

Jackson watercolors on Fluid 140lb. paper.