Category: Exercises
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Ray Hendershot Exercise: Lighthouse #1
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I have been absolutely stuck for the past few weeks. Every time I sit down to paint, nothing comes to mind. Nothing inspires me, I have no intention. But, just as an act of discipline, I paint anyway. The results are nothing to write about. It’s all very ugly, muddy, cliche… just nothing that I’m…
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One Pigment Challenge: #1
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I decided to challenge myself to paint something with just one pigment. If you want to join me, here’s the challenge: use one pigment, and one pigment only. That means the paint you choose must be a single pigment paint. You can use water, ox gall, masking fluid, whatever, but when you are finished there…
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Master Study: Michal Jasiewicz, Part 2
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I went into excruciating detail about my proposed process for recreating this painting by Michal Jasiewicz in the previous post. Today, I’ll explain how I took the lessons I learned from that exercise to try the painting a few more times, and experiment with different options. This was my first attempt. A few things I learned…
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Master Study: Michal Jasiewicz – Part 1
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A user on Reddit posted this image, asking how the artist (Michal Jasiewicz) achieved the effect on the distant cliffs. I am not sure how he accomplished it exactly, but I posted this as my best guess. I don’t know how they did it, but here’s what I would try. Forgive the over explanation, I…
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Ray Hendershot Exercise, Clapboard Siding: #1
This weekend I decided I would take my own advice, and paint from the book. I decided to paint from one of the books that I have because trying to learn from my own failures has been pretty discouraging. I’m only about a quarter of the way through Ray Hendershot’s “Texture Techniques for Winning Watercolors”…
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Ray Hendershot Exercise: Birch Trees
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Tonight, I painted the next exercise in Ray Hendershot’s book. I don’t know why Birch trees feel like a very trite subject to me – but they do. I think every painting of birch trees is essentially the same thing – masked off trunks with something colorful or dark behind them. I think Ray Hendershot…
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Ray Hendershot Exercise: Fully Foliated Trees
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The next exercise in Ray Hendershot’s “Texture Techniques for Winning Watercolors” is to paint fully foliated trees. This exercise demonstrates what appears to be a great strength of the pedagogy in this book. The distant trees exercise is useful for this exercise, but it isn’t necessary. Because Mr. Hendershot encourages us to paint loose representations…
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Ray Hendershot Exercise: Distant Trees
I purchased a book by Ray Hendershot entitled “Texture Techniques for Winning Watercolors.” I appreciate how Mr. Hendershot manages to achieve the impression of a photorealistic image, but includes just enough Impressionism to give the composition a level of emotion that I feel photorealistic paintings often lack. (Steven Kozar does an excellent job of proving…
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Just Keep Swimming
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I’m feeling fairly pessimistic about my ability to paint these days. I know, it’s a journey… if it were easy everyone would do it… you have come so far so fast… you are so much better than my friend’s cousin’s dog’s roommate’s nephew… other platitudes. Save it. My mind keeps saying you’re not good enough.…
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Backrun Exercises
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I wanted to explore some exercises to learn more about how I might be able to control and use backruns. What is a Backrun? Call them what you want: blooms, blossoms, backruns, cauliflowers, it doesn’t matter, we are all talking about the same thing. (You could argue that a back run is different. Fine. Be…
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Barn in Walhonding: Studies
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I think I’ve learned my lesson by now… before I paint, I need to study my subject. And, what’s the point of doing all these studies if I don’t take the time to reflect on them to better evaluate what I’ve learned by doing them? That’s the purpose of this post – I want to…
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City Rach: Deepart.io & Exercises
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I messed with the photo of Rachel in the window in Photoshop a little bit until I came up with this modification of the composition that I think I like best. I won’t print this and paint it, I just wanted to get a quick look at how reordering, stretching, etc might improve the photo’s…
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City Rach: Value Studies
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I took this photo of my wife a few months ago when we were in Pittsburgh to watch a live show of My Favorite Murder. It was a rare weekend away for us without kids, and it was very needed. I met Rachel when she lived in Pittsburgh, and as much as I give her…
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Saturation Notation, Tree Technique, Atmosphere, and Perspective
There are two big things I’m consistently disappointed in when I look at my landscapes: trees and atmosphere. Today, I set out to practice these. I grabbed some scrap paper (A.K.A. the back of a failed painting). I painted a very simple horizon and sky. The goal here was two-fold: practice painting atmosphere, and give…