Tag Archives: watercolor

Interviews with watercolor artists

October 27th, 2011

Now would be a great time to catch up on the artist interview series I’ve been doing for over a year on The Watercolor Gallery.

Here is a full list of the interviews I’ve conducted to date. I’m nearing the end of the first batch of interviews. The next batch will be much different.

Watercolor portrait, in progress

March 8th, 2011

I have a lot to learn but I’m never going to learn if I don’t practice, practice, practice. So, here’s me practicing. I hope to finish this one this week and start a new one next week. I’m going to attempt one watercolor per week for a little while to get my legs back.

The process of Cormorant Fisherman

November 12th, 2010

I’m less happy with the result of this painting process than I have been for any of my other paintings to date. The result is pretty horrible and it is no where near what I had intended.

I thought that I should take some images of the process for this piece so that I can look back at it and learn where I went wrong. I believe I know where I went wrong so I am now sharing this information with the world. You know, for the betterment of mankind and all of that.

Step 1: Pencil drawing

This is where I believe I went wrong. Right here on step 1. I went off the rails immediately. I approached this painting by first drawing the entire thing in pencil. I don’t think I should have drawn as much detail as I did. Perhaps I should have drawn the fisherman – due to the complexity of his face, outfit and the lamp – but the rest I should have left up to the painting.

The reason I believe this is – as you will see from the following images – this painting became an exercise of coloring in the lines. The exact oposite of what I wanted to do.

Step 2: First wash.

I made a few small mistakes at this stage too. The beaches are a horrible color. In the finished piece they end up standing out much more than I would have liked. I also immediately began to lose the tone values for the painting.

(This is my term and may not be correct.) Tone values, for me, are how light or dark certain things are in a painting. So if one area is black, and one area is white, then everything else should make sense in between. Nothing should be too dark in tone or too light in tone when comparing it to the reference photo.

The birds in this step, for example, are nearly black already. In the reference photo there were a few areas that appeared very, very dark and nearly black. The birds were not one of those areas. So the tone values for this painting began to be lost very early on in the process. This is something that I could have rescued had I noticed it. But I didn’t.

Step 3: Second wash.

Now you can begin to see what I meant by the “color in the lines” approach I ended up taking. First off, the entire reference image is in a shade of blue. For whatever reason I lost track of this pretty early on and so I ended up choosing colors that I felt might end up looking OK instead of relying on the reference photo as my color guide. Stupid rookie mistake.

The other mistake you can begin to see is that I didn’t mix colors well enough for how complex the fisherman is. He’s got a lot going on and – again because I drew so much detail in the beginning – I tried to represent every single thing he had going on. In reality I could have gotten away with a much more constrained color palette.

When I showed my mother-in-law this painting at this stage I remember her saying “Is that a scarecrow?”. Well, obviously the lines are too blurred between the fisherman’s regalia and everything else. She had no idea how he was dressed and that he was wearing some sort of whicker jacket.

By this point this painting was so far off of the rails that I probably had little or no chance to bring it back. And, as a beginner, I didn’t even recognize my mistakes and so I continued to make the same ones with each step.

Step 4: Third wash

Do you hear that? That is the sound of a train wreck. I couldn’t bring myself to work much longer on this painting so I simply went onto step 5.

Step 5: Pencil outline. Done.

I quickly outlined a few key things with a pencil to make them stand out a bit and I’m washing my hands of this painting. It is going on my wall to remind me of my mistakes but eventually it will end up in the garbage.

Here is a list of the main lessons I’ve learned:

  • Never draw too much detail in the beginning.
  • Follow the reference photo as your color guide.
  • Don’t try such complex paintings before you’re able to do them. You’ll only be discouraged.
  • Be very aware of tone values.
  • Never stop trying to get better.
  • It is OK to throw a painting out and start over.

I hope by me sharing this process someone out there will see not only what I’ve noticed that I did wrong but also pick up other things too.

The Watercolor Gallery finds an audience.

October 27th, 2010

I was going to wait until The Watercolor Gallery hit 150 or even 200 pieces in its archive before I gave another update but several key things are going on and I want them documented. For context see the announcement post, the 30 pieces update, the tools of The Watercolor Gallery, and the post celebrating 100 pieces in the gallery.

Today I’m going to focus on audience. I haven’t really talked much about audience since I began. To be honest, I wasn’t really focused on it. I was tracking it but I wasn’t worried about where the audience would come from or actively trying to grow the audience on my own. I didn’t buy any ads, share any links, or do anything special whatsoever. I simply focused on making a gallery that I would like to visit. In fact, the only update I gave regarding audience was back in August when I said:

“I have many, many ideas for The Watercolor Gallery and I’ll be working on them as the site gets more and more of an audience. Right now, after only a week, the audience seems to be near 50 people per day. I’m extremely happy with this.”

Well, the Watercolor Gallery has found an audience. Since that update there have been several surges in both traffic and people ‘following’ the gallery on Tumblr and Twitter. The two most notable surges amounted to thousands of new people being ‘members’ of the gallery. And if I was happy with 50 people per day I’m very happy for thousands. The two main surges resulted from a painting going ‘Tumblr-viral’ and, yesterday, The Watercolor Gallery being featured on Tumblr Tuesday.

By the way, having a single post go Tumblr-rival seemingly has more legs than being featured on Tumblr Tuesday. However, being featured is only 24 hours old so I’ll withhold firm judgement until the dust settles.

I have reason to be happy with The Watercolor Gallery gaining so much momentum in such a short period of time. As I said in August, I have plans for the gallery that would be utterly fruitless without a fairly large audience. So far I’ve added two new series to the gallery in addition to the paintings.

The artist interview series has been a smashing success. It isn’t easy, and took a bit of work from me to get rolling but so far the interviews that have been published are just great and the upcoming interviews (of which I have 12 in the can right now) are just outstanding. Watercolor artists are part of a global community and this fact shines through these interviews. So far I’ve published interviews with artists in Bangkok, Thailand, Waxahachie, Texas, Scarborough, England, Los Angeles, California and Jerome, Arizona. These interviews have not been the most popular (in terms of “likes” or “reblogs” on Tumblr) posts on the gallery but – I think – they add a certain professional nature to the gallery as a whole. The Watercolor Gallery isn’t just a Tumblog that reblogs every watercolor painting that passes by my desk. It is a serious look at how artists can be inspired by looking at and learning from other artists, their paintings and their workspaces.

Which leads us to the Artspaces series. In a word, this series has been a flop. I’ve gotten absolutely zero submissions since I began this series on the gallery. Zero. The artspaces that you see on the site have been gathered by me personally. I’ve searched for them, asked for permission from their respective owners to publish them, written the posts and published them. But I’m not giving up. I believe we have a lot to learn from the workspaces of every artist. I believe every artist should want to have their artspace published on The Watercolor Gallery – for two main reasons. First, I think it is an easy way to be seen on the gallery (whether or not the artist specializes in watercolor). With the audience growing every day it now means something to be featured on the gallery. Second, I think it is a fun series and who doesn’t like to have fun? I might be wrong about the Artspaces series but I’m going to give it a little while to catch on before I make that decision.

I believe the Tumblr community is one of less interaction then online communities of the past. They’d rather simply click a “like” button on a photo then read an entire post, submit a photo to your site or compete in a contest. At least, that is the way that it appears. I plan on overcoming this challenge by, hopefully, providing something valuable to everyone that joins the gallery. I hope The Watercolor Gallery becomes a notable moment in an artist’s journey when they are featured there and for it to be another tool for artists all over the world to be inspired by others.

The future of The Watercolor Gallery looks very bright. Some of the things I thought I would have to wait months to be able to try I believe I can do sooner thanks to these boosts in audience. I’m looking forward to working even harder on making The Watercolor Gallery a truly special place for watercolor artists and those they inspire to gather together and enjoy each other’s work and company. I’m extremely happy that so many people have thought it worthy of their “follow”.

Celebrating 100 pieces of art with an artist interview series on The Watercolor Gallery

October 8th, 2010

Back in late August I was celebrating over 30 works of art in The Watercolor Gallery’s archive. Today I’m celebrating over 100. It is an amazing milestone for me personally as it hasn’t been easy to try to create a valuable gallery in such a short period of time.

To celebrate hitting this milestone I’ve begun posting interviews with artists from all over the world. I’ve been collecting these interviews for about a month in preparation for hitting the big One Oh Oh. The first interview is with Kannika Soonthornyankit from Bangkok, Thailand. I figured where better to start than half-way around the globe?

Future interviews will be with artists in New York, Texas, England, Switzerland and even some with artists that seem to have no permanent address.

The entire purpose of The Watercolor Gallery, as stated on its about page, is to help inspire me and others to do great work in watercolor. The artist interview series is just one more way that I’m trying to accomplish that goal.

I’ve got plans for how to celebrate reaching 250 and 500 works of art in the archive but you’ll just have to wait and see what those are.

To anyone that has subscribed to The Watercolor Gallery’s RSS feed, followed it on Tumblr, or followed @h2ocolor on Twitter – thank you. Thank you for being interested and hopefully inspired. Stay tuned, there is much more to come.

The tools of The Watercolor Gallery, so far

September 16th, 2010

We live in an increasingly interesting world where creating something from nothing is getting easier and easier. Several years ago I would say that it was easier than ever to set up a new website and get going. The same is true today, of course, but I am just as astounded by this fact today as I was then.

The Watercolor Gallery is not even two months old yet and it has 70+ pieces of art in its archive, a Twitter account, a brand-new domain name thanks to Jesse Davis, a fledgling yet unused mailing list (you can subscribe on the gallery’s homepage), and much more.

How, in such a short period of time, could one person who is running this website as a few-hours-a-week hobby possibly have set all of this up? It is all about the tools.

The website, as you’re undoubtedly aware, is using Tumblr for both hosting and the content management. I use the “Share on Tumblr” bookmarklet to quickly create drafts during the week as I rummage around the Internet – which I’ll then go back in later (typically on Sunday mornings) and pretty them up, write some sort of description and queue them up for the entire week. Tumblr has made creating posts for the site quicker than any other software I’ve ever tried – and I’ve used a lot over the last 16 years.

The mailing list, which I haven’t yet used but am collecting email addresses for to the tune of a few a day, is powered by Mail Chimp. For my use, so far, Mail Chimp is free and simple to use. Win, win.

Having an account on Twitter has several advantages. Many people do not use feed readers. Having a Twitter account, even though there are a very few people following it currently, makes it possible for those that do not use feed readers but do use Twitter to keep up-to-date with the gallery. The other main advantage is being able to engage the community and artists that I find on Twitter under The Watercolor Gallery’s brand other than my own Twitter account.

To track the statistics for The Watercolor Gallery I’m using Google Analytics. It does a pretty decent job of quickly showing me what people are most interested in on the site as well as whether or not people simply come and go or if they stick around and look through the gallery or not. It is pretty interesting to see.

For an upcoming artist interview series, wherein I will interview some of the artists who have been featured on the gallery already, I am using a quickly thrown together and free Wufoo form. This form asks the artists the same few questions, collates all of the information together for me, and emails me an easily digestable block of text that I can then use for the interview itself. It is quite wonderful really.

Aside from that I may need to edit an image here or there to fit the gallery – which I use the incredible Acorn for.

Although I’m sure the number of tools I use to make life easy over at The Watercolor Gallery will increase or change – I’m really happy about how easy it is to put out what I think is a fantastic website.

The Watercolor Gallery hits 30 works of art

August 27th, 2010

After a little over a week of posting over on The Watercolor Gallery I thought I’d write down a short and sweet update. You know, for posterity.

Lets just say I’m enjoying myself. I’ve wanted to put together a site like this for longer than I can remember. Tumblr has made this incredibly easy. So far The Watercolor Gallery’s archive is sporting over 30 works of art dating from 1868 to 2010. I’m learning how to keep on a schedule, to build up a queue for times when I’m not near the computer, and also finding my slightly critical but more or less positive voice for the blog.

I have many, many ideas for The Watercolor Gallery and I’ll be working on them as the site gets more and more of an audience. Right now, after only a week, the audience seems to be near 50 people per day. I’m extremely happy with this.

The first idea is to have weekly feature threads which I’m starting this week. This week’s feature thread is Scrolls from China. Each day The Watercolor Gallery will feature a work from their archive in hopes to bring some attention to orphans in need in China. (The posts for the entire week are already in the queue and scheduled thanks to Tumblr.)

Other ideas that I have will require a slightly larger audience. Also, a slightly more global audience. As it stands, as far as I can tell from the few statistics I’ve been able to gather, most of the visitors to the gallery have been from the United States.

If you enjoy watercolor in anyway please consider following on Tumblr or subscribing to the gallery’s feed.

The Watercolor Gallery

August 19th, 2010

I’ve decided to start a new site dedicated to inspirational watercolor art. This is from the about page on The Watercolor Gallery.

“I love watercolor art. For years I’ve found inspiration by looking at the works of others and trying to determine their techniques, methods and tools – all while enjoying each piece of art for what it is.

The Watercolor Gallery is my collection of the best of what I find in my quest to be inspired and taught by others.”

I’ve just barely got my feet wet over the last few days so I’ll have much more to say about this project in the future. For now, however, consider following it on Tumblr or subscribing to the feed if you are a fan of watercolor like me.

A bookmark for Eliza

April 15th, 2009

Geisha bookmark
In the same vein as the Thank You card I made for my brother and his family comes this – a bookmark that I made back in January for Eliza.

Since I’m just now getting the chance to post about this bookmark I thought I’d take some time to share the process I went through to create this bookmark – albeit simple. Sometimes, and maybe this is only true for me, we look at things at being too difficult or involved to have the time to do instead of just giving it a try. This is usually the case for me and any art project I plan on doing. By sharing the process I’m hoping to debunk that myth a little. Making these little art projects can be both fun and not take up too much of your time.

I started out searching Flickr for bookmarks, geishas, and anything I thought that would inspire me to create this bookmark. You can rummage through my favorites on Flickr to see anything that I’ve found on Flickr that I find inspiring. Somewhere in there are a few elements that I pieced together in my mind in order to create this project. A geisha drawing here, a Japanese sign there, and I ended up with an idea.

Geisha bookmark sketch

Next, I began to make rough sketches (pictured above, click the photo for a larger view) of how I wanted to draw the geisha for the bookmark. I tried four different styles. One that had an umbrella, which didn’t turn out well. One that was a more anime/kid-like take on a geisha that I believe is from a current cartoon that I didn’t think fit with this project. And one that I ultimately settled on. Once I found the style I thought I liked the best, I sketched it a second time for practice.

Geisha bookmark watercolor

I then outlined the geisha on a corner of small 140lb. watercolor paper. This gave me two straight edges off-the-bat and made it easy for me to make two simple cuts to finish the project. Using my simple set of watercolors I painted the geisha and was done. In retrospect my “keep it simple” approach worked well for this bookmark though I would have liked to experiment with making a “crazy” or “detailed” edition of this bookmark. Maybe next time.

Told you it was simple, but it was a lot of fun, and Eliza liked it!

My fifth watercolor: The Owl

December 5th, 2008

Note: This pieces is now for sale in my Etsy shop.

I’m going to try to keep doing watercolor paintings, maybe even one each week. This week I really wanted to do an owl, so here I present my fifth watercolor in this new effort; The Owl.

I tried a few techniques this time that I hadn’t before. Some of them worked out quite well, like under-shading on the Owl (probably hard to see in any of the photos).  Some of them didn’t work out so well, because I did them wrong, like the snow by using salt.  I didn’t use enough water to make the salt effective.

The salt, if done right, will cause the watercolor to separate and move away from the salt. It would end up causing a neat effect that would work well for snow, stars, or other textures. But, again, I didn’t use enough water for this to work.

There is a lot that I would do differently, if given the chance, so I’m really looking forward to my next crack at another painting next week.  Overall I’m thrilled with the way this painting came out – but there are a few subtle things (like the snow) that I wanted to add to this and I simply didn’t do it the right way.

Live, learn, move on, try again. Here are some more photos of my watercolor paintings. Next I think I’m going to tackle a Japanese sign.

My third and fourth watercolor paintings; Orchids and Birch

November 29th, 2008

Well, if you count watercolor paintings that I’ve done when I was younger then maybe the title of this post is a bit off, but I’d rather just start counting now. Oh, and I’m not counting the LOST invitations either.

The two paintings.

There isn’t much of an inspiring story behind either of these pieces. The orchids painting was a lesson from a Japanese watercolor painting book that Eliza picked up for me. The birch tree I wanted to do because, for whatever reasons, birch trees are some of my favorite trees.

Orchids.

I plan on doing this same orchid painting at least a few more times.  The techniques in the book are beyond both my abilities and, I think, the abilities of my brushes. My watercolor brush set isn’t of the highest quality. In order to have the reeds, or leafs, in this painting be much better than they are in this first try – I will need to get the technique down.

Birch.

I’m fairly pleased with how this piece came out. It took me about 3 and 1/2 hours to complete the painting, since I had to allow the paint do dry between “coats”. My impatience near the end is probably what caused the tree, specifically the trunk, not to turn out exactly like I wanted to. Less a problem of technique and more a problem of patience on this one.

I’m looking forward to doing many more this winter. My goal is to get good enough at watercolor to make a piece that I want to hang in our apartment.

Short video tour of my office

February 12th, 2007

I would start a meme out of this, but those are just plain annoying to most people – so if you feel compelled to follow suit, please trackback this post, reply to my 9rules note, my Viddler forum post, or comment on this blog post. Or, do all of them! Choices!

Here is a short video tour of my current office setup. It consists of a Macbook, a Dell 21-inch widescreen monitor, some external hard drives, and a few iPods all on a desk from IKEA. I’ve also got my art desk (which I need to use much more often than I am currently). And don’t forget, my new office used to be filled with blue elephants.

Short tour of my office via Viddler

If you can’t do video – perhaps you can take a few snapshots and post those. Whatever works best!

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[slug]office-tour-video[/slug]