"Dordogne River"
Watercolor 15 x 22 inches
Recently, I have been on a painting binge going out almost
daily to locations near my home to find landscape scenes to paint en plein air. My goal for nearly every one of these
paintings has been to find a way to paint strong atmospheric effects, such as
fog or haze. Here, where I live, fog is
very common because we are located quite near the ocean coast. So, finding such subjects isn’t at all difficult. But painting
the atmospheric effects aren’t quite as easy as just copying what I
see. In addition to design
considerations of where to place things within the rectangle on which I am
painting, technique plays a much heavier role.
To be perfectly honest, I never learned how to begin with
very wet paper and washes to lay in those blurry, faded shapes in the
distance. So, I figured that it was
high time that I learned. I girded up
the courage to allow failure to greet me at the ends of my painting sessions,
because I knew that in order to learn, I must take risks. I also know that these failures are great
teachers. Knowing the characteristics
of the paints and the paper as I do, I can quickly figure out why certain
effects show up and why certain accidents occur. Even with that knowledge I have referred to
a few very accomplished painters, such as Joseph Zbukvic and Alvaro Castagnet
to see how they accomplished their brilliantly executed atmospheric
paintings. It is finally coming together
for me.
This painting is quite close to my goal. It has taken some 25 paintings to reach this
point, some different brushes and some newly tried pigments to accomplish
it. In other words, I have ‘blown’ a
lot of paintings trying to get here. Obviously,
I have more to go, but I think I am starting to get the hang of it. It
really is a three wash ‘system,’ in which the sheet is covered first with a
light value, grayed wash, then almost immediately painting over the wet wash
with a deeper valued wash to begin to delineate some shapes in the
distance. This is a touchy step as
value (or tone) accuracy plays a BIG role . . . too light and it disappears . .
. .too dark and the distance effect is squandered. It must be spot on. Then on to nearer parts of the subject, moving toward the foreground. It is here that the painter must be patient
to wait for the correct level of drying of the paper before applying paint, all
the while carefully paying attention to the amount of water in the paint itself
and in the brush. That is a critical
element! Too much water and the paint
is weak. Too wet of a brush, and
blossoms might form (disaster!). It is
all in the knowing of how much and when.
It just takes a few failures to get there.
My studio has a flat screen computer monitor near my easel
on which I can see nice big photos of some of the painting subjects I have
encountered in my travels. This painting
happened to be in France, along the banks of the Dordogne River. It is sooooo beautiful there! (We are taking reservations now to go back
there July 8-18, 2013)
