Some stables near De Rust

My most recent work is presented below.  Following my previous painting I dug into Pinterest and remembered that masking fluid is often used to preserve the white areas in the painting. It is essentially a rubbery substance that you can paint over and then rub off when you want to get the white areas beneath it.   So I dug up some masking fluid and applied it quite liberally – actually too liberally since it tore up some of the paper beneath when I took it off.  I actually have to redo the painting since the whole lower left corner was ruined when I removed the masking fluid.  I also fixed the masking fluid too tightly to the paper and that also tore the paper when I removed it.  All quite frustrating.

Having said all of that, I am really pleased with the result.  There is a sharpness in the painting that is quite definitive of the actual scene.  The Image does not show it, but the real painting had quite high levels of hue (brightness of colour) which was probably due to the use of the masking fluid.  I am also reasonably satisfied with the bushes in the lower right of the painting.

The stables

A canal at De Rust

To work some more on my recently acquired focus on watercolour paintings, I dug into my archives for some photos taken during our holiday last year on De Rust.  The photo was taken at Die Gat guesthouse near De Rust.  The image below is the result.  It is not the results I wanted, but at least I managed to make the water look like water.  I also like the tree on the right and its shadow.  What I did accomplish was to to work with larger, smoother washes.

Canal at Die Gat Guesthouse, De Rust

Watercolour painting

In this week I tried my hand at doing a watercolour painting rather that doing a sketch.  As far as I am concerned, in a sketch the focus is on the pen and the paint is just adding “emotion” to the sketch.  In a painting the paint needs to do all the “talking”.  The pen is not there to accentuate the detail in the image.

So one evening I tried my hand at a watercolour painting of our sofa.  This was a very difficult topic since I needed to keep the glow from the light in the picture.  The image below does not really do justice to the painting as is looks harsher than the actual one.  That said, it is not the best painting I ever did, but I posted it as an indication of my progression.  A couple of comments:

• The layering was blotchy and I needed to word with smoother washes.
• The spread of the glow was OK, but I felt that I did not properly address the shadows, especially on the side of the sofa closest to the viewer.

But, a good experience and something to build on.

Sofa

Another corner at home

Sometimes I just feel like sketching from life, but I don’t want to go somewhere to find a place.  When this happens, I start to look around my own house for “a something”  to sketch.  On one Saturday morning I had this feeling and I discovered the following scene within my wife’s “secret place”.  I quite enjoyed painting it, but it had an interesting end.   When my wife came, I showed it to her, but her reaction was not what I expected.  Her first question was “What happened there on the right?”  I told her that it was a pile of dirt lying against the wall.  With a “Yes, but why?!” she stormed out to go and investigate and I felt good about my painting, because I captured the reality in such a way that my wife could build some emotions on it….

The Secret Place

Urban Sketching – 1 Fox Street

1 Fox Street is a food and craft market that is hosted in an old rundown factory in Marshalltown Johannesburg.  The place has a very warm and rustic feeling.  We were just 4 in our group on the specific Saturday morning (my daughter joined us again), but is was exceptional to draw with people looking over my shoulder every now and then and to have a quick chat about my sketch.

The first sketch did not end up to be what I wanted it to be.  I started to work in a Moleskine book and I was careful to no go too wet or too dark in the sketch, so I could have gone darker.  The Moleskine is a specialized (and expensive!) book with extermely high quality watercolour paper.

The second sketch feels good.  It has  a rustic  feel and I felt like I could smell and taste the cheese.  I could once again have gone darker, but I am satisfied with the outcome.

1 Fox Street

1 Fos Street – Cheese table

 

Sketching in Delta Park

I live in Linden, Johannesburg and it is really an incredible place to stay.  The north of Johannnesburg (where we stay) is officially declared to be the world’s largest urban forest, so that should tell you that there are huge numbers of trees around.  We also have 3 parks around us – Jhb Botanical Gardens (somewhat cultivated), Delta Park (kind of wild) and Albert’s Farm (really wild) and to accentuate the type of environment, I can add that I have 40 km of mountainbike singletrack directly from my fron door.

The Johannesburg Urband Sketchers had an outing to Delta Park a while back.  I took my eldest daughter with on hier first urban sketching experience.  It was really exceptional to capture the following images in such a pretty environment while sharing it with my daughter.

The dam at Delta Park

Delta Park

The plains of the Highveld

A while back we attended  a family reunion in the rural area of Nigel (see this post)  and I took some photographs of the area.  At home the grassy plains of the area struck me and I felt that I had to use to acrylics to capture the essence of the area.  The painting below was donw with Windsor & Newton Galleria acrylics on watercolour paper.  Sommething in the colour harmony touched my and it felt like the whole painting blends to a unity.  I would like to do a larger painting on this one to work on more detail, but not too much detail since the objective was to follow an impressionisnic style where there is just enough detial to guide the viewer, but not too much to be overwhelming.

Nigel’s grassy plains

A corner of my garden

One day I cam e across a corner of my garden that really struck me as being so lush and beautiful that I simply had to sketch it.  In the sketch below I tried to capture the escence of this corner in my garden.   The shadows was really difficult to do in watercolour.  Looking at it now, I could have gone darker with the shadows, but it was really enjoyable to do a plein air sketch om my own garden.

The corner in my garden

A farm with character

We recently attended a family reunion and, since I did not know most of the people, decided to take my painting equipment along to get some art time in.  I suspected that there would be trees around since the reunion was on a farm, so I took an image from Gerard Michel’s Flickr page to look at his style for drawing trees.  The first picture below is my version of the trees that he did here.  Another excellent version of his trees can be found here.  My idea with copying his sketch was to learn from him without him being here.  The concept of copying the masters’ painting was common in the Renaissance.  It is only inn recent time where we are scared off by copyright issues from learning by copying.

Tree study

The following three sketches were then inspired by the farm.  The first one was done en plein air, but I made a couple of mistakes.  The shadows was too dark and muddy and the yellows and greens were not bright enough.  Overall the sketch lacked in hue.  It was way too neutral.  So I decided to redo the sketch from a photo and using the plein air sketch as reference.  The result is the third image.  The overall hue is much better and the composition of the tree in the foreground forming a “tunnel” improves the overall composition of the sketch.

Improved farmhouse

The final sketch was based on a photo taken of the barn on the farm.  I really liked what I did, except for the ox wagon and the barn on the right.  In this case the pen played an essential role in the overall capturing of the detail around the barn.

The Barn