Joseph Stoddard - Expressive Painting: Tips and Techniques for Practical Applications in Watercolor, Including Color Theory, Color Mixing, and Understanding Color Relationships

Tips and techniques for practical applications in watercolor, including color theory, color mixing, and understanding color relationships

Picture a beautiful hill covered with trees behind a barn with a rickety fence. Overhead, two hawks wheel and dive against the stormy sky. It is an awesome scene and perfect for capturing in watercolor.

Now imagine this: an exciting urban landscape with buildings, cars, people, streetlights, phone poles, and billboards. Or a dramatic scene of the city lit up at night. How about a train crossing a concrete arch bridge as a jetliner makes its final approach in the sky overhead? These are scenes of everyday city lifea life common and familiar to many of us, and a life that is all around us. A life worthy of documenting in the unpredictable medium of watercolor. In fact, many years ago, the California Scene Painters did just that: paintings of trains, tenement buildings, trucks unloading cargo, and ships entering port. These artists captured something of the fabric of our lives that had rarely been done before: everyday life in the city.

Watercolor is the perfect medium to capture both the peaceful reverie of the country and the gritty chaos of urban lifeplus everything in between. This book will help you get started in this challenging and rewarding medium. In it you will find:

A discussion of materials and supplies for both studio and on-location painting

Tips and guidelines for painting on location

Selecting a subject and developing thumbnail sketches and color studies

The use of photography and how you can work from photos to say what you want to say

The use of a sketchbook both as a planning tool and for final work

Color properties and relationships and watercolor pigments

Creating mood with color, changing the lighting and time of day, and painting night scenes

Keeping your work loose and full of energy

Adding people and vehicles

Painting urban scenes, including billboards, phone poles, and signage

Creating atmosphere with rain and reflections

Using pen and ink and white paint

At the end of the book, youll find six step-by-step demonstrations that will help you apply these ideas in a practical way.

My philosophy is based on enthusiastic encouragement and a you-can-do-it approach. I want to liberate you from the fear of failure and help you develop the courage to explore and find out for yourself what works and what doesnt. I want you to be able to paint like you were born to paint.

Materials

Generally, purchase the best materials you can afford. You dont need to purchase a tube of every color or have an arsenal of 30 or 40 brushes. Its better to have a limited number of professional-quality paints and a few good brushes than a cache of lesser-quality tools.

PAINT

TRANSPARENT & OPAQUE

Watercolors come in two types: transparent and opaque. Opaque watercolor is also known as gouache, which is similar to the tempera paint you used in school. Gouache contains white pigment mixed in with the color to allow the paint to cover with clean opacity. You can thin gouache and paint with it transparently, if you desire.

Transparent watercolor is what watercolor artists traditionally use. The transparency of these paints allows both the white of the paper and a previously applied color to show through. It is what gives watercolor paintings their luminous glow.

ARTIST VS. STUDENT GRADES

I always buy artist-grade paint over student-grade. Most manufacturers make both. Artist-quality paint flows easier, goes on smoother, and lasts longer than student-grade paint. Student-grade paint contains synthetic substitutes for many of the pigments, and the colors arent as lightfast as the higher grade. If you can afford artist-quality paint, you will find much more satisfaction and quicker success.

LIGHTFAST REFERS TO THE PERMANENCE OF THE COLORS WHEN EXPOSED TO LIGHT OVER A LONG PERIOD OF TIME.

TUBES VS. PANS

Transparent watercolor is available in tubes and pans. Tube paint is similar to travel-size toothpaste tubes and contains paint in soft, squeezable form. Pans are dried cakes of pigment in small plastic cups (or pans). Pans are generally considered best for travel painting, because they are dry and can be transported easilyless mess! Although I have some paint sets that contain pans and occasionally use them, I much prefer tube paint, even for on-location/travel painting. When traveling, I squirt tube paint in my travel palette and let it dry for a day or so, just enough to slightly harden.

It has been my experience that tube paint is fresher and the colors are brighter than pans. Its also easier (and more fun) to paint with. Much of my painting involves scooping big brush loads of paint onto the paper. This is much easier to do with creamy, right-out-of-the-tube paint.

MANUFACTURERS

There are many excellent brands to choose from. I have used Winsor & Newton, Daniel Smith, Holbein, Grumbacher, Da Vinci, and Daler-Rowney with good results. Most recently, I have been using Holbein and Winsor & Newton exclusively. I find their color ranges, consistent quality, luminosity, and brilliance to be in keeping with my goals and direction as an expressive, color-oriented artist. You should experiment with a few brands to find the one that works best for you.

COLORS

This is my current color palette, and these are the colors I used for all the demonstrations in this book. My palette does change occasionally, and yours should too as you experiment and grow as an artist.

BRUSHES

ROUND & FLAT

Brushes come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Watercolor artists primarily use two types: round and flat. Rounds are best for general painting. Flats are typically used for wide, generous washes across the paper, although some artists use flats exclusively. I prefer large, round brushes for all my painting.

SIZES

Brushes come in many sizes and are identified by a number, 000 being the smallest and 24 being the largest. Brushes from different manufacturers vary in sizea number 10 from one company may be the same size as a number 12 from another. I suggest you use the largest brush you are comfortable with. This will help you stay loose and avoid painting too much detail.