Gordon MacKenzie - The Watercolorist’s Essential Notebook — Keep Painting!: A Treasury of Tips to Inspire Your Watercolor Painting Adventure

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For my sister, Vera, a kindred soul who gave me my first paints, and my brother, Don, a fellow artist who carves miracles from wood.

Deciding what to do when starting is the hardest part.

Constructing art that is both intellectually and emotionally satisfying.

Adding variety and realism to your paintings by using these two often ignored aspects of the natural world.

Letting the magic of watercolors and the imagination of the viewer create a more engaging experience for you and them.

Using climatic conditions to set the stage for your visual drama.

Giving life to your pictures by adding a few little figures of interest.

Exploring the creative potential of reference photos when the imagination and daring are fully engaged.

Nurturing artistic growth in yourself and in others by sharing what you have learned.

GOOD MORNING

11" 14" (28cm 36cm)

DISTANT SHORES

11" 22" (28cm 56cm)

FAMILY REUNION

14" 22" (36cm 56cm)

It is permissible to have fun with your pictures, and sometimes that means saying more than whats obvious with your paints. This one is called Family Reunion , and I have used stylized trees as the characters in my little drama. Can you find the black sheep, the grandparents, the eccentric aunts and uncles, cousins, the parents, childrenand, oh, their pet rock?

This book may be dangerous to open. It will at times ask you to use your own judgment, imagination and ingenuity to generate your own picture ideas. There are some step-by-step demos throughout wherever I felt the need for clarity, but often I rely on your intelligence and experience to carry on without training wheels.

This book is really intended for those who have painted for a while but feel they are up against a wall and need a creative kick in the pants, or for those who have set their paints aside for a while because the process has lost its excitement and appeal.

I understand completely.

I have five ideas I want you to keep in mind while you read this book:

1. You dont have to paint the way you paint now.
2. You dont have to paint what you paint now.
3. You have no one to please but yourself.
4. Growth can only come from a positive attitude amid persistent stumbles.
5. Your creative spirit that is still with you is waiting for you to try out your new wings.

This book is not written to showcase what I can do, but to make you aware of options, opportunities and variations that you can do.

I want to offer ideas that you can take and run with, that you can explore and develop and use in your own way. I want to encourage you to try some new approaches as starting points for a whole new painting adventure.

Later on in this book is a section on how to use photographic reference material creatively, but the ideas presented will work with any original idea or sketch you have. Before we get to that section, we will explore a wide range of compositional options and painting approaches that you have at your disposal.

It is my sincere wish that with a resharpened focus on your painting, you will come to realize that the process itself is merely a bridge or vehicle you use to reach a broader and richer experience of life, and that by satisfying your very nature to be creative, you are connecting to all others of like spirit and purpose.

When you sense that something at your very core is changing, you will realize that painting is as much about discovering and using your true nature as it is about making pretty pictures.

Painting then becomes the outward activity for tapping into the personal landscapes our memory and imagination have created on our soul and making our self visible.

Much of this book provides how-to information on the physical aspects of creating a painting. I would be remiss, however, if I didnt say something about an equally important creative process that goes on in our head.

SURF RIDER

19" 22" (48cm 56cm)

Lets look at the big picture first. As we make progress in our painting journey, we tend to work through two general stages.

This is the most common approach to painting. At this level you carefully observe the lines, colors, shapes, lighting, values and so on in the subject before you, or in a photo, and then try to get it onto the paper as it appears. You may eliminate, emphasize or rearrange certain aspects to improve the final image, but essentially what is in front of you goes on the paper. This attempt to capture the moment and place is the way most of us paint most of the time, and if you are a beginner, it is the recommended approach because it forces you to develop observational skills, experience with composition and expertise in a wide range of basic techniques. You may wish to paint this way for the rest of your life and be quite happy and successful, and thats fine.

However, many artists start feeling stifled once they have painted this way for some time. They need a new idea or a new approach, a new way to get excitement into their work. Maybe if they learned one more tricky technique, or bought new brushes or colors, it would solve the problem. But these solutions dont last. They cant escape the annoying little voice that keeps telling them there is another way to do it, a better way to do it, and they get discouraged. They even have vague, fleeting images of what their work could look like flashing across their minds, or they see a freshness in other peoples work and wish they had thought of that.

Those images and feelings that keep calling you are an invitation. Its your creative spirit that knows you are ready to come out and play. It wants you to go further, to go beyond the literal interpretation of a subject to something that speaks of things not seen by the eye, but by the soul and the imagination. It wants you to be quiet and let the spirit of the subject and your ingenuity create something bigger, more powerful, more profound than just a painted photograph. This is the second level where painting what is seen morphs into painting what you want to see. Its about painting what you would like to feel or have the viewer experience, and it comes from within you. Now the subject is only a catalyst that, with your imagination, opens the doors to endless exciting ideas and images.