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Fog exercise 1: #1
This is the next exercise in Ron Hazell’s Painting Water with Watercolor. This exercise is supposed to tech me about painting fog. Unfortunately, I don’t think I quite captured the effect. I want the wharf and the houses and boat to be more obscured by the fog – which I think could be achieved by […]
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Waterfall Exercise 2: #1
This is the next exercise in Ron Hazell’s Painting Water with Watercolor. The composition here kind of didn’t make much sense to me, I don’t understand the waterfall – it almost looks like a stream running down the side of a termite hill. But, I’m not about to question Ron Hazell, so I tried to […]
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Waterfall Exercise 1: #1
This is the next exercise from Ron Hazell’s Painting Water with Watercolor. This was supposed to be a quick sketch to get the fundamentals of his technique for painting waterfalls, and I tried to paint it that way. I didn’t do a value study first, or sketch the composition on the paper first, because I […]
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Open Ocean Exercise 1: #1
This is the next exercise in Ron Hazell’s Painting Water with Watercolor. I really — really — struggled with this one. Before I go too deep, here’s what it looks like in the book, this is what I’m trying to paint. In order to paint that, Ron Hazell first provides an exercise on painting waves […]
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Rough Water Exercise 4: #1
Mark the calendar. Today is the first time since I started painting (seven months ago) that I am happy with the end result. There are still things I would change, but I am proud of this one. This is another exercise from Ron Hazell’s Painting Water with Watercolor, so I can’t take credit for the […]
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Water Glitter Exercise 2: #1
This is another exercise from Ron Hazell’s Painting Water with Watercolors. I must say, I find myself less interested in painting water now than when I started, but I am learning so much – about everything – by working through this book that I’m definitely going to keep plugging away at it. This exercise is […]
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Knifed Rocks Exercise: #1
After the exercise on painting rough water, Ron Hazell’s book provides instruction on painting rocks. He proposes two methods, one in which you glaze successively richer tones over the rocks, and a second where you knife out the highlights on the rocks. I have never found success with knifing, so I tried it here. This […]
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Rough Water Exercise 3: #1
I got a really bad cold for a bit there, and worked on a painting a friend asked me to make which I’ll post later. This one is a continuation through Ron Hazell’s How to Paint Water with Watercolor. This exercise is just a quick wave. I’m sure I didn’t quite capture the technique, so […]
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Rough Water Exercise 2: #1
Dang it I just typed up a whole comment on this and fell asleep before I hit send, and it got erased. Lessons learned here: 1) I don’t like paintings of sunsets. 2) I think my pigments retain their color more as they dry than the pigments Ron uses – I should ease off a […]
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Rough Water Exercise 1: #2
Apparently, I never typed up lessons learned on this one. I’ll have to come back to this later.
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Rough Water Exercise 1: #1
I didn’t quite understand how to paint the waves according to the instructions in Ron Hazell’s book for this one. After painting the waves I found a video of him demonstrating his technique and I think I understand it better now. There were two mistakes I made at the outset that I can fix on […]
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Rippled Water Exercise 2: #3
This one is a little better. The water is a bit over worked, and the cracks are darker than I like. The trees… mmmm not sure. I do like the clump of grass in the lower right though. I think I unlocked a bit of understanding on the rippled water. I was afraid of painting […]
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Rippled Water Exercise 2: #2
Welp, strike 2. This one is far better than the previous attempt, but it isn’t what I intended. I started getting really REALLY muddy on the left, and called it. For a few reasons I am struggling with this exercise. 1) I am not planning enough. I’m trying to capture the spontaneity I see in […]
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Rippled Water Exercise 2: #1
I hear often, I learn the most from my failures. I wonder if that’s true. I did learn a lot on this painting, maybe I learned more than I have learned on successful paintings if we just count “number of things learned.” But, the quality of the lessons I learn on a failed painting are outweighed […]
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Rippled Water Exercise: #1
I am not a fan of this painting at all, mostly because I don’t like the subject. It’s a beautiful scene, it’s just not my taste. Still, I am learning a lot as I go through this book. The main goal of this exercise is to get the ripples water right. I actually think I did […]
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Calm Water Exercise: #2
Tonight I tried to paint the same thing and incorporate some of the lessons I learned last time. This is my second attempt at the exercise in the third chapter of Ron Hazell’s book The Artist’s Guide to Painting Water in Watercolor. As usual there are a lot of things I would do differently on […]
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Calm Water Exercise: #1
This one is a couple days in the making. I got Ron Hazell’s book on how to paint water with Watercolor, and this is the exercise from the first chapter. Here’s Ron’s Book, as well as a photo of his version of this composition. The Artist’s Guide To Painting Water In Watercolor: 30+ Techniques First, […]
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Study – Water: #4
Tonight I tried to get a bit closer to the water to try to define the shapes of the ripples a little more. I see a lot here that I like. Primarily the dip in the third wave up on the left. Compositionally, that wave should be more to the right and I should have […]
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Study – Water: #3
Still doing too much on the water. There is something about the composition that I like on this one. I really wanted to try to paint perspective in the clouds, but the shadows aren’t flat enough at the horizon. I think on the next go round, I’ll simplify the shapes and paint them almost like […]
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Study – Water: #2
This is only half of the exercise for this painting. I started adding objects into the water just to test how to paint the reflections. (I should also note, this is painted on the reverse of Study-Water: 1. I like to use both sides of the paper when I’m experimenting/learning in order to save paper.) […]
