Monotone: Sepia

Today was a quick sketch with a brush to see if I could capture this old sepia-toned photograph of a cute little housewife standing in her kitchen without drawing it first. It got a lot too outline-y for my taste, but I did get a pretty good likeness of her and her surroundings. My favorite parts were her hairdo, her apron, and that she was wearing bobby socks with little white beaded moccasins.

I'm always curious about the way things are done, so I looked up sepia toning and discovered a few things. My online source said: "In sepia toning, chemicals are used to convert the metallic silver in the print to a sulfide compound called silver sulfide, which is 50% more stable than silver, making it more resistant to environmental pollutants. Therefore, people in the olden days originally processed/developed their images in sepia to make them last longer."

So that old photo will probably outlive my ephemeral watercolor on sketchbook paper!

Paul Jackson Cowbell (that's the color), in Bee sketchbook.

The Do-over (sort of)

I judged my beet greens harshly yesterday and swore to do them again, but when I posted the picture on Facebook I got a lot of feedback that said I was being too hard on my picture. (I still dislike the splatter of perfect little round dots, and will practice that with various brushes until I figure it out before doing it on a painting again.) So for today, instead of re-painting the same picture, I decided my "do-over" would be a similar but not identical subject: Turnips! The shapes are similar, the foliage is similar, but the color spectrum is enough different that it kept me entertained.

I think I achieved a little more what I had in mind yesterday when I (more carefully) painted the turnip tops and tried not to mess with them too much. The darks were still difficult to achieve realistically. But what I really had fun with was the turnips themselves—painting lavender and "white" turnips without using any actual white, and yet conveying the idea of white. I think I did okay. And I purposely left a couple of small unfinished edges, including one that spontaneously "bled out" for a nice effect.

Paul Jackson, Daniel Smith, and M. Graham watercolors in my Bee Sketchbook.

Knowing when to stop

I decided today that I would do a painting in which the watercolor spoke for itself — I would lay down colors, let them mingle spontaneously, and not overwork.

I did pretty well with the beets, but when it came to the foliage things got out of control, which is to say, I quit letting the watercolor act and started trying to manipulate it, and it lost the quality of freshness. In other words, I have a lack of control about becoming controlling, if that makes sense.

I also misguidedly tried to save the spontaneity by laying down some "confetti," but ended up with a combination of too-large and too-regular dots and a couple of "arterial spray" moments. I just cannot get the hang of this effect. I see people online who just load up their brush and FLICK it, and there it is, a perfectly random-looking spatter of paint; but I look at this and despair.

Tomorrow, a do-over: spontaneous beets without confetti.

Paul Jackson watercolors in Bee sketchbook.

Fond memories

I "thumbed through" my folder of reference photos on my computer today looking for inspiration for my next 30x30 Direct, and came across a photo of the poppies in bloom at Bandouille, the magnificent location of the French painting retreat I attended in 2013. The main house was made of a warm yellowish stone and had these wonderful green shutters flanking each window on the backside, and below each window was a flower bed, a flower box, or a bench, all smothered that June in delicate poppies.

The painting is a bit of a mess—I'm absolutely hopeless at perspective, so the slant of the shutters doesn't match the slant of the windows or that of the walls, and I got impatient with the poppy leaves and smushed them all up. But it gives an impression of the lovely façade and a memory (for me) of its welcoming and talented hostess, Bixxy. Wish I were there right now, painting the poppies in person.

Jackson and M. Graham watercolors in Bee sketchbook.

Unstructured

I attempted to be a little less tight with this painting, although I still painted it wet on dry. Parts of it work, parts of it don't. Thanks to Sarah Yeoman, the master of wet-in-wet flowers, for the reference photo, which I simplified greatly. The layout turned out to be a little awkward, because I really needed a square piece of paper for this and mine was horizontal, while the image was neither horizontal nor vertical, due to the width of the bouquet. But, enough self-critique: "Peonies" is my entry for today's #30x30DirectWatercolor2020.

Paul Jackson and Daniel Smith and M. Graham watercolors on Fluid 140lb. watercolor paper. Escoda Prado brushes.

Direct in every sense

Today's direct-to-watercolor painting comes from a photo I saw on Facebook that struck me powerfully. I wanted to paint it as a combination of the feelings it evoked and also to explore the technique of representing smoke or gas in the air. It was a difficult experience to paint it, so I'm just going to post it here without further comment.

Various watercolor brands, Escoda Prado paintbrushes, Bee sketchbook.

June is "Direct" month

Each June brings with it the 30x30 Direct Watercolor challenge, in which artists paint in watercolor without making an underlying drawing. It achieves two things, at almost opposite ends of the spectrum:

1. It makes you look really carefully at every stroke you make so that you can portray your subject accurately even though you have no lines to guide you;

OR...

2. It allows you to use watercolor in a more spontaneous, unstructured way.

Since I tend to be kind of uptight about my painting, the former works better for me than does the latter. I hope to try both during this month of experimentation, because one of my goals is always to be looser; but I also appreciate that painting without lines really refines your eye for structure, perspective, and detail.

Today's drawing was made from a photograph online that caught my eye; I didn't realize until after I had painted it that my first day of watercolor without lines was of a bottle of ink, which I would normally be using to do my drawing before accenting it with watercolor! So here, for my first day, is "the forbidden" for the rest of the month.

I was pretty happy with the reflections of light that I captured. I didn't get the reflection on the cap quite right—it was an extraordinarily clear echo of some brown wooden cabinets with some bottles sitting atop them, but here it just turned into colorful fuzz. But I do like the contrast that these other colors make with the rest of the drawing.

Paul Jackson watercolors, Escoda Prado brush #10, Bee sketchbook.