old trick, new to me: drawing with clear water
We were in the Toronto area on a business trip the other week, had a half day free, and thus: The Soldier’s Tower at the University of Toronto Queens Park campus.
There is a tremendous amount of drawing a person could do here in Queen’s Park. I’m hoping I’ll be able to make it back summer. If there’s anyone planning a sketching event in Toronto, let me know!
The watercolor continues to reveal new properties to me. I had a small breakthrough on this one, finally seeing some of the advantages of masking edges with clear water. My first step this time was to cut around the silhouette of the tower and attached buildings with plain water. The damp areas of paper allow the first wash to bloom and spread organically, but it stops like magic at the dry edge. Glad I finally experimented with that. It’s a useful addition to the arsenal.
Want to see some progress steps? Here you go:
Select/Deselect
Another of my little self-memos is a note just saying “Select/Deselect”. That’s just a compact way of saying “You have to do a bit more than focus on what’s interesting – you should also intentionally de-emphasize what is not”.
In this case there is a big complex tower behind this arch. It’s three stories of bay windows, decorative carvings, and a peaked roof. It’s not like it wouldn’t have been fun to draw. But, if what catches your eye is the arched gate dappled with leaf shadows, then you have to consider every other element as a potential distraction.
I’ve selected my subject and ruthlessly deselected everything else. I didn’t even include the tree making the shadows. If you feel like you’re losing energy before finishing a sketch, (I certainly did with the last one at the Islamic library) or if you just feel your pieces are cluttered or overworked, this is something that might help.
This last one – I got nothing clever to say. I was on they way home, there was a bit more light, and I thought hey, that just looks fun to paint. Sometimes that’s all there is to it!
Don’t Document; Design
Some part of my brain has always been into rules and systems.
I’ve always jotted little notes while painting. Things like last weeks bon mots “Don’t Document; Design!” or “Change Plane = Change Temperature.” I like it when I come away with a new theory to field test for a while. I’ll push a rule a little further each time until I’ve found the limit of it’s usefulness.
Sometimes a thing is in my head for long enough and gets internalized – sometimes I decide it’s an edge case that’s not going in the book.
So here we have the old Presbyterian college at McGill (now the department of Islamic studies). It’s quite a complex structure. Lots of unusual angles. Many bits and bobs. Possibly, a fun, expressive drawing wasn’t the perfect match for this place? Or who knows, maybe they need to lighten up in there.
Anyway, here I’m seeing how far I’m willing to go with expressively inaccurate drawing and pushing temperature shifts all the way to complementary colors. The jury is still out. Maybe I went too far. Maybe not far enough. More experiments are required.
Next post — the take away is: “Select/Deselect”.
Ultralight Watercolor
Here’s something you might consider if you need the lightest possible watercolor kit. These are paper thin sheets of film coated with intense watercolor pigment. You’d only need this little booklet and a waterbrush. Great solution if you’re climbing Everest or something 
The last couple days I’ve been out painting Lady Meredith House, at the corner of Pins and Peel, in the heart of the Golden Mile. I pass this house frequently, and have always wanted to paint it. It’s well situated on a steep corner and has a fantastic roof line, studded with witches hats, tall slender chimneys and decorative brick work. This is actually my third sketch at this location.
By that I mean, I just did three days in a row in the same spot. Why? A little bit crazy I guess.
I’m having some sort of perfectionist fit this week. Normally I’m quite free about sketching – whatever I get is fine. Some turn out, some don’t. It’s all part of the process.
But these days I’m feeling I have to up my game, as I’ll be painting live at the Urban Sketchers workshop in Santo Domingo this July, and at my own 3 day sketching event in Portland this August, (in partnership with fellow Montrealer Shari Blaukopf).
Normally I might have been happy with my first sketch. But this time, I couldn’t live with it. There are numerous flaws. First among them is dead, monochromatic color.
I used a single color (burnt sienna for the brick, and paynes grey for the roof – and pretty much just layered them darker and darker each pass. Yes, this is a dark building, so it doesn’t take reflected color the way a light colored structure will. But, still no excuse for drab earthy tints. So my take aways are: try to use clean, pure colors and let them mix on the page. It’s watercolor! Let the water flow. Never just add grey to make shadows – use a complimentary color to make a complex dark mix. And whatever you do – don’t be boring! Unified shadow shapes does not have to mean monochromatic passages.
Second major problem – the house is just plonked there, like it’s in the middle of a farmer’s field. I like a strong focus of interest, but simply leaving out the environment doesn’t work. The house just sits there like a lump. It’s too big on the page, there’s no sense of space. It’s such a static, dull, leaden composition. It’s almost not a composition at all. I’m not too happy with all the fiddly (also monochromatic) bits of foliage either. It looks like a bed of lettuce under that turkey.
This is my second attempt. I addressed the boring composition – climbing up behind the wall of the Irving Ludmer Research facility (which I painted last year). This gives me an interesting design element in the foreground. I also better planned the shapes of the surrounding trees, and included a bit of environment (the lamp post, the house behind). Unfortunately however, I was so excited about this foreground I ended up jamming the house up against the top of the page. As well, the bricks are still too monochromatic. It’s better, but still just variations of burnt sienna. I realize now this is the first time I’ve painted bricks – so this might be a natural learning curve
I could have said, okay,okay, I’m getting somewhere, onto the next thing. But – what can I say. The good weather lasted, so there I was on day three, doing it again. In my third version I have the more dynamic composition, the more lively color – and I addressed two other things that were bugging me. I paid more attention to the rule “Contrast of Shape” inside my brushstrokes – so there are some big sweeping marks in the trees and sky to contrast with the small details in the house – avoiding a tendency to make a lot of similar shaped strokes, and helping to focus the eye toward the detail at the center of interest.
I also realized I want to have a strong design in the drawing. Big shapes. What I call the rule of 5 and 3 – a few big blocks, fit together nicely (but it has to be three or five, not four or six – those are static numbers – just look at dice:) So I have Sky, Roof, House, Trees, Street. But I don’t want the color to be as simplistic as version two. There I have Blue Sky, Orange House, Green Trees. Each block is its own color. This is basically correct, but the execution isn’t exactly nuanced. I really want each color block relating to the others within a harmony.
One more color thing – I wanted to think about each plane of the house as having a slightly different color temperature. To break up those damnable bricks, and better describe the complex structure. Every time a surface changes direction, it should change temperature.
You’ve probably also guessed – the version I like the best is the least accurate drawing. What can I say? I find this an elegant fanciful building, so when I finally let go and drew it expressively (in this case, elongated and with pushed perspective) it really started to speak to me.
Sorry for the long post, I hope it’s helpful to some. I’ll leave you with a classic USK Fisherman’s Trophy Shot – (the “yes I really painted this on location” shot).
Short piece of coverage on Spacing Montreal
Just an interesting tidbit: Spacing Magazine, (a group organized around urban planning related topics) is doing a series of spotlights on Urban Sketching – starting with a few of my sketches of Montreal. Nice to get a little coverage from them. I hope to do a bit more with the Montreal group. I always enjoy their feature where they show two shots of street; present day next to a turn of the century photo.
Now why would I try that? Sketch: Sunrise at Niagara
We’re in Niagara, it’s been rainy and overcast all day. But there was a small window of blue sky at sunrise. Normally this wouldn’t be something I’d attempt painting – but Laurel announced she was getting shots of sunrise – so I could come along, or – well actually I was coming along if I liked it or not
Besides it being six bloody o’clock, it was 2 degrees C and 143% humidity down by the falls. This is pretty challenging atmospheric conditions for watercolor. So – here’s what I got. Was a bit like painting on a stay-wet palette. I can’t paint moving water at the best of times. So I’m really posting this one for the curiosity value more than anything.
[9x12" canson block, shot on iPad, some digital contrast enhancement]
