NYPL Watercolor Class

PDF

Homework paintings from the last week: Abstracting from what you see.

Drawing excercise from "Drawing Thought": Overlapping shapes.

This is the Fabriano watercolor paper we used in class. Note that it's acid free (good, only use acid free) and 25% rag (good for student work)

This is the paper for the final project. It's 100% cotton rag which is the best! Stonehenge also is the maker of the mini-pads you're using in class.

Technique "fireworks": Brush paper with clear water. With a round brush, load with color, and make a dot on the wet surface. Wait for the pigment to disperse.

Technique "water-fade": Brush paper with clear water. With a flat brush, load with color, and make a brush stroke in the wer=t surface. Wait for the pigment to disperse.

Homework paintings from the last week: cinematic space (series of 3, close-up, medium and wide).

Text and color mixing sample.

Painting text on a storefront, or food cart. Knock-out text 2-ways and Positive Text

Watch this painting unfold via the demo Nick recording on YouTube, note: it is in real time, feel free to fast forward!

Paint text in the context of signage on a Food Truck. We'll explore painting the text three ways:

1. Knock-out text leaving paper-white lettering.
2. Knock-text after an initial color wash.
3. positive text -- paint the letters themselves on top of the background.

We're making a painting of Tacos Morelos' truck in downtown New York City in the Financial District.

On the left is mixing two colors on the pallet, then applied to the paper. Not how each pigment dries in a different way. On the right, mixing with transparency -> First color dries, then paint the second over it.

Battle of the blues. Same color, three paint brands. Holbein (the kind we're using), Daniel Smith and Winsor & Newton Cottman.

Richer blacks, mix the ivory black with another color, ultramarine blue for example.

Jefferson Market Garden.

Jefferson Market Garden.

Hot vs. cold

Complimentary colors to mix rich browns, or maximize color vibrations (sports teams and holidays love complimentary color pairs)

NICK's COLOR COMBOS

• ultramarine blue + burnt umber = nice dark, alternative to black
• hooker's green + mineral violet = nice dark, use in shaded tree foliage
• yellow + terre verte (aka earth green) + primary green + a little ultramarine blue = vary for leaf green

Color Wheel sketch.

Sharing last week's at-home paintings on the storefront theme.

Three film ideas on how to portray a subject. Think of it as Close-up = iPhone portait mode. Medium = 1x camera lens. Wide = .5 super wide angle lens where you see the entire setting.

Metal ruler that is good for tearing down watercolor paper. This one is an Alvin brand.

Ruth Asawa watercolor painting where she uses negative space, the area around the plant leaves are painted in, and she is playing with different amounts of water/wet and dry paper.

Georgia O'Keefe watercolor figure paintings. It looks like she is using just 2 colors, but pay attention to the way she builds up transparent layers of paint here.

Example using the finer #2 brush for line work with Ultramarine blue, and painting a few wash layers on top. See how the colors build up, each wash was mostly dry before adding the next color. Hooker's Green, Mineral Violet, and Cobalt blue in this example.

James and Karla Murray's "Storefront II" -- their art mission is to record the disappearing face of New York.

Bauhaus professor Josef Albers' incredible work on color. Each color modifies how you perceive other colors, and the very cool triangle. Check out this book to dive deep into practical color theory.

Josef Albers' Goethe Triangle

Josef Albers Goethe Triangle

Student swatch chart.

Last week's "homework" paintings. Note the awesome variety.

Drawing Excercise: Blind Counter Drawing.
Note the organic lines, the free gestures, this excercise loosens up your sketching and trains your eye and hand coordination. It breaks you out of "this is how a ____ looks" and you practice observing.

• Only look at your subject (and don't look at your paper at all!)
• Make a coninuous line, don't take your drawing tool off the paper.

Drawing Excercise: Negative Space.
Draw what's around your subject, rather than the subject.

Example: Paint in all the space around an umbrella, rather than the umbrella itself.
Another Example: Look up at a flowering tree. Paint the blue sky around the white flowers.

Watercolor techniques:

• splatter
• brush on dry paper
• dry brush

wet-in-wet

Joel Holland

Joel Holland

Nick Golebiewski

James and Karla Murray

Holbein artist grade watercolor paints that we've used in our pallete