A Painting from Start to Finish

The other day, while taking a walk with Mike on a woods road, I came across these lovely leaves. When I first picked them up, they were a vivid yellow with wonderful spots of gold and brown. It occurred to me that these leaves could be interpreted in an abstract painting, using left whites, patterns and movement across the paper.

 

The Inspiration

I took a full sheet of watercolor, 22x30 inches, laid the leaves down on a piece of freezer paper and sketched in pencil a shape, leaves touching leaves, making the large shape go off the paper on all four edges. I included suggestions of branches the leaves might be attached to.

 

The sketch

Next I put a very light wash of color around the large shape, including one area of an opposite temperature. The majority is a pale yellow (warm) with a bit of blue (cool).

 

First wash of watercolor

After the initial wash dried, I added a darker color in 5 spots. Yikes! That's enough for one day!

 

Adding the first darks

The next day I started building colors. I chose to use colors we find in Nature, yellows, reds, greens.

 

Building colors and patterns

Next I decided what parts of the painting I wanted to keep pure white, and masked that off with masking tape. Then I carefully cut around the shape to be left, peeled off the outer tape, and took my mouth atomizer to the painting, spraying away some of the left white, and enhancing color and texture.

 

Masking off parts to leave white before spraying

After the spray was applied, I started looking at how to add detail and interest to the painting.

 

After the spray of watercolor paint was applied
While the paint dried, I made a stamp of spots to apply to the leaves. I then "blemished" the leaves, added some veins using both positive and negative painting.

 

Adding details

Next I started sorting through my old painting scraps and rice paper I'd painted to find pieces to collage with. I love this part because the collage adds so much life to the painting.

 

With added collage pieces

In the final step, I use construction paper to plan where I will add the black acrylic paint. This black paint really makes parts of the painting pop. I feel it pulls the whole painting together. After planning the black areas, I use tape and cut shapes to leave the areas on the painting to get the black paint.

 

Blemished 22x30 inches

Revisiting a Painting

Earlier this fall, my husband and I traveled over to the far Northeast corner of Oregon. We stayed a couple of nights, one in Enterprise and the other in Joseph. The Wallowa Mountains are really grand and offer wonderful artistic inspiration.

 

 

Unfortunately, my plein air attempt at capturing this beautiful country fell short of wonderful. Earlier this week, I pulled the painting out of my travel folder and took it to the sink. I washed off all the pigment I could, but as always, a ghost of the old painting remained. I worked on it, trying to convey from my memories, the feeling of the mountains, valleys, and trees. This is what I had midweek.

 

I decided that the mountains were lost, never to be revived into a shape or formation I could like. Also there was too much water. So I took this full sheet-22x30 and cropped off both the top and bottom. I then saturated the back with water and stapled the remaining painting onto a stretcher board.

I felt that the dark evergreen trees had become muddy and dark, so I decided to use some gouache to give the trees new life. Here is the beginning of the revival, so you can see the dark and muddy to the left, the added gouache to the right.

 

After having the fun of using gouache to cover some of the original mistakes I'd made with the transparent watercolor, I had a pretty nice traditional landscape. The next question is how best to crop and frame it, to show off it's strongest points. Mike likes the square/slightly verticle, showing some of the mountains.

 

Wallowas, 22x18(verticle)

And here is the more traditional horizontal landscape.

 

Wallowas 18 x 22(horizontal)

Which grabs you as the stronger painting? Please let me know!

And not to be wasteful, I took the sky and water strips and washed off most of the paint. I then took my new stamp, painted watercolor onto it with a brush, and created some new textured paper for upcoming collages.

 

Stamp with paint on it.

 

Strips of newly patterned paper for future collage work.