Koi painting in oil.

I finally completed one koi painting in oil.

Although I'm happy that I stuck to it and completed at least one painting of the koi, I definitely plan to go to the koi farm in summer, where I can seat myself for a day and really get to work on some series. Studying the koi here in January/February, felt a bit like eating strawberries in the midst of winter.

..koi, oil on linen, 61x37cm

In step 1, using terpentine, I put down thin washes of burnt sienna for the fish shapes and a thin wash of paynes gray and french ultramarine for the background/water.

....step 1...

In step 2 I added some colour to the fish, cadmium red and yellow to the fish in the foreground and prussian blue to the back fish, to form the shadows. I started using liquin as a medium to have the oi dry quicker, but still have an oil shine.

...step 2...

In step 3 I darkened the water with a mixture of paynes gray and french ultramarine and softened the shadow marks I made on the yellow fish. this was my first mistake, because I made mud. I left it to dry completely, so I could rework it...the oil was still thin enough to redo without removing the paint.

...step 3...

the last stages was all about adding colour and depth to the fish bodies and depth to the water , while using the same colours I've used in the previous steps, with the addition of ochre, raw umber and white.

...koi completed...

When doing the studies for this koi project, I worked mostly from photographs, using about 20 different photos, building my own scenes. I really found it difficult to render the koi in an interesting way. I feel I can do better, which is why I will patiently wait for the koi season to open and I can go and study them in real life.

I also felt that they ask for something a little more abstract or expressive than mere realistic rendering. In the following studies I tried to present them on the page in a little more interesting way. I found it quite exciting and I think I can even push the envelope even further in the expressive domain, which makes me more excited about the series of koi than I was when I started out.

In the meantime, I have a lobster and crab and mussels and oysters and several other shellfish in my freezer, waiting to be sketched and painted and studied. Maybe a new series of sea creatures? So hang around if you're interested in seeing what will surface - it will be a surprise for me too.

...koi study in charcoal on paper, 22x15cm...

...koi study in graphite on paper, 22x15cm...

...koi study in oil pastel on paper, 22x15cm...

..à bientôt...

Ronelle

Africantapestry

Watercolor Koi studies.

I have been taken with all my hundreds of photos I took of these koi fish when we were in Hawaii last year. The idea was to come back home and use them in paintings. But true to my nature, procrastination took over and the Koi were admired only in the photo album. Browsing the album lately rekindled that idea and here are some studies, done from the computer screen. When working from photos I always cramp up in tight spasm and lose all spontaneity. so after doing about two or three, I grabbed for my earphones and the Piano concertos of Beethoven 4 and 5 andPiano a La Roque dAntheron to keep me loose. I think in study 3, one of the earlier of 7 studies you can still see the cramped up tightness.
With some more studying of the Koi and their movements and habits and play, I would like to move on to oil and maybe do a series. I efintely want MOVEMENT in the paintings, because Koi are so playful and almost mischievous and I want to capture that, rather than a perfectly painted Koi fish.

Also posted on Africantapestry

All these studies done in pen and watercolor on Fabriano Artistico watercolor paper, CP, 18x26cm.

..koi study 7..

...koi study 4..

..koi study 2..

Sketching in a slump?

When in Hawaii a few weeks ago, I was inspired and did a lot of sketches, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Here are three of the sketches and the rest can be seen in my Hawaii posts on Africantapestry.

...across the lagoon...

...colourful canoes...

..koi...

Arriving back in Montlouis, I just suddenly had the creative door slammed into my face, fell right into a slump and I'm there ever since. It is as though nothing works - not a pen, not a pencil or a brush or even motivation. And it can't be said that I haven't tried, but everything ends up begin scratched out/over with frustration. And tears of course.

...La Loire...

This morning I grabbed my sketchbook and a pen and took off to the Loire. It was cold and windy, but I was determined to get soem sketches. Which I did. At home I couldn't resit the urge and added watercolour. I had the discipline to not start scratching it out again. So. Here they are. Overwashed. But still. sketches. Maybe now the spell will be broken. After all. Halloween is over.
the rest can be seen on Africantapestry.

...puddles at La Loire...

Expressionism versus impressionism

I'm always fascinated by these two terms and the use of it and it seems I always get it wrong even though I can give their definitions.

I have done a few paintings on which many people give many different opinions and the scale weighs in equally at expressionism andt impressionism. I think there is a grey area today, boundaries overlap with marriages between all the different styles of painting. Is it a good thing or a bad thing, or nothing at all? Does it perhaps make it bad art? Or doesn't bad art exist? Is all art good? Is good painting all about a solid knowledge of technique, or can a strong ambiance and emotion save a poorly executed painting?

...la Loire scintillante...
oil on canvas, 22x33cm

For quick explanation I used wikipedia to define:

Expressionism "...It sought to express the meaning of "being alive"^[2] and emotional experience rather than physical reality.^[2][3] It is the tendency of an artist to distort reality for an emotional effect; it is a subjective art form.......generally the term refers to art that expresses intense emotion. It is arguable that all artists are expressive but there is a long line of art production in which heavy emphasis is placed on communication through emotion...."

Impressionism "....Characteristics of Impressionist paintings include visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles...... Painting realistic scenes of modern life, they emphasized vivid overall effects rather than details. They used short, "broken" brush strokes of pure and unmixed colour, not smoothly blended, as was customary, in order to achieve the effect of intense colour vibration...."

Looking on different art sites, there are categories of styles: expressionism, abstract, impressionis,, contemporary, modern.... does it give more worth to a painting if it can clearly be classified as Impressionism, or Modern contemporary, or Classical... I have also been asked before..: what style of painting do you do?" to which I start blabbering, because I have no clue. I sometimes paint something SO distorted that it can be nothing else BUT maybe surrealism and other times I'm thinking Impressionism when in fact it is plain and simple realism. It sounds confusing just writing it all down here, reading it must be even worse and as all artists will know, doing it, is the challenge.

Not that it bothers me in any way not to have a particular style. I don't search for a certain style. I dont think anyone can, really. You are what you are. And your art reflects who you are. but I certainly feel flattered when a style is recognized in my work!
I recently saw paintings from someone who attended a Charles Reid workshop and his paintings speak of CR influence. This artist's paintings project his effort and hard work at trying to incorporate this free style of CR. I somewhat feel uncomfortable looking at this work. It makes me feel fatigued, as if he had worked very hard at getting this effortless look. I feel as if there is a wordless desire behind his work, asking for the real him to be released and I wish this artist would give in to that desire. I would love to see the work of the real him.

Any opinions?

Plein air

Coin Perdu
Corréze
France

Dear Watermarkers,

I am still in Corréze and wanted to say a quick hi to you all!

I miss you and think of you when I'm putting down a stroke on my canvas. The weather is beautiful and sunny, the rivers are flowing undisturbed and I am already golden skinned from all my plain air painting!

I'm sending you some images of how it looks here where I am and what I'm painting at our hide away Coin Perdu in Puy d'Arnac, Corréze. You can see some more images here.

...in search of corners to paint...

Some proof that I am indeed "working":

...by the brook...

...see, something on the canvas...

...even on a rainy day...

...even putting my life in danger...

... and attacked by Billy the kid...

...safer ground...

In two weeks I hope to show some finished plein air work, which I am thoroughly enjoying doing, even though I mess up most of the time.
Browsing through all your latest work, has me once again in admiration of your talents and stunned at what you've all done these last few weeks; needless to say the inspiration has me itching to clean up my palette immediately and get out there again.

Well, that's it for now. I wish you all well and keep the pastels and paints flying wild wherever you are!
See you in two weeks, Watermarks...!

All my best and bises!
Ronell

Shadow and light.

An oil painting of a shady corner of the Loire on a sunny day.

I love oil work, but have always found it such an effort to do plein air with; the carrying around of the oils and the wet painting afterwards, the cloths(of which I use a lot), the containers, and the cleaning stuff for the brushes, the easel...it isn't a medium I can just hop onto my bicycle with. But in the end it is actually worth it. With only one stroke you can catch the fleeting light and it stays, whereas with watercolour I'm always panicking that I don't have enough pigment to really catch the contrast in colour quick enough. And the oils give me an immense satisfaction - seeing a stroke that just works with the first lay down...or maybe I just feel more confident with oil. I'm inspired again by painters like Michel Jouenne and Stéphane Ruais (peintres officiels de la Marine en 1991)

We are going to Coin Perdu in Correze for the next three weeks. It is a sort of solitude break I'm taking. I am packing ALL my oil stuff and my goal is to do as much plein air as the days allow. There are nooks and corners and pathways by the streams, in the forest, the fields and hills. There are fountains and springs, wild flowers and animals galore, so no reason not to come back with a gallery full of paintings. I'm also going to try my hand at gouache, a medium I still feel very stupid with. Pens and inks and of course the old trusted graphite to oil the drawing skills.

If the electricity and internet are kind to us, I may be able to post some work from there, but if not: see you in three weeks with hopefully a lot to show and tell.

...ombre et lumiére...

oil on linen, 36x36cm

Basics

These past 2 months passed without me touching a brush or drawing tool, except for a weak attempt at a sketch on a hike here and there.
The first three sketches were done on different days on different hikes;

...a walk in the coutryside of Esvres where we crossed the roman bridge which was apparently crossed by Jean d'Arc in 1429 to get across the Echandon valley...
...sketching the photographer while he was executing his professional tricks...

...and lastly a lake at the Beaufoux estate with its calm waters and willows, the boats waiting patiently for summer to erupt...

I wanted to show up here with a beautiful watery painting of something watery, but helas, I am showing up instead with my process of relearning. My well intentioned painting resembles something of the French revolution on gray and busy guillotine days, so I hid it safely from the public eye.

While staring at my attempt, my professor of first year graphics, entered my somewhat desperate thoughts. He told me years ago that I couldn't draw. Our work was all put up on the board at the end of a day for critic and when he came to my "driftwood and key" still life, he was very silent. Then he turned to me and said abruptly that I can't draw and need to do 100 more drawings, on top of the already 100 drawings we all had to do. The tools were simply to be cheap white paper and any tool except the normal pencil or graphite or charcoal or brush, like ear buds, cottonwool, sticks, pins, needles, toothbrushes, etc, along with cheap black ink. We had to really dig in with the ink and get our hands dirty and draw, draw and draw. Not be fancy or pretty or dainty or finicky, but convey our subject/object on our paper by various marks, shapes, values. It was invaluable teaching, al those hours of drawing, which admittedly, I sometimes(more than sometimes!) did with heavy sighing and stubborn shoulders.

This morning I took my professor in my head along to the river. Cheap drawing paper. Cheap ink. My chair. I sought out a spot down stream with several interesting views. Gathered some sticks, stones, leaves, bundles of grass which served as my painting tools. The first attempt was still stiff and careful but by the third drawing I started loosening up and just focused on marks on the paper. The rocks in the water started losing their name and became dark shapes, the water ripples became squigly lines, the trees became thick lines and featherings, the grass became patches...

Hopefully the ice is now broken so I can provide a real painting next time!
But for now;

...the corner of the river where I painted..

...a shot on the tools and materials...

...and three of the many efforts from this morning...

Water On My Mind

There has been a bit of reflection going on here, I have been away for far too long and decided that this morning I must catch up with some bloggery.

First of all time to tidy up my Flicker photos and, getting side tracked as usual, I made a slide show from the set I labeled "water" It is quite a big set of images of paintings that I have done since June 2006, featuring the subject of water. In streams, rivers, seas and puddles, in watercolour and oils. I think I have developed a bit of an understanding of water, I know that I have watched and noted, tasted and recorded to the best of my ability. I have found out ways of using different mediums and what I like to use and what I do not feel comfortable with. In short, I think I know how I work now.

I am finding that this group of artists is a constant source of interest and information. I am fascinated to see the different ways of working. Some are methodical, mapping their routs and understanding their mediums. Some delve into the history and geography of a place. Some carry the art history seemingly effortlessly into their work and beyond. Some dive in with an intelligent grin.

We are all so different and this seems to be emphasised by the umbrella of water as a theme while at the same time uniting us. Strange but true and , well, I for one like it very much. So thank you to my fellow watery artists, I am now going to get me a coffee and spend some time catching up with what you have all been up to.

(I dont know what has happened to the slide show, it dosnt look very posh but if you click it you can see it, I think!)

Studying lines and squiggles

Kew Watermarks #1 - a study
coloured pencils on Arches HP
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I've always liked the sort of squiggly lines you get with reflections of straight lines in water which has air movement across its surface.

I started the above drawing about two years ago after a visit to the Kew Gardens. I found some water which was obviously designed to pick up reflections from the glass house - which it did beautifully - and I was transfixed. It became almost meditative to watch how they changed with very slight changes in the airflow across the otherwise still water.

I tried to do a picture afterwards but couldn't get anywhere with it.

After nine days of watching eight other people talk about water and show me water I picked up my pencils yesterday and finished it. I'm calling it a study as I want do more and to try and improve it!

Maybe in pastels?

Introducing Gesa Helms

The sea is yellow, 70x50m Pastel on board

Since Lindsay sent me that email inviting me to join Watermarks, my mind had been providing more and more water-based facts, stories, incidences and connections. Like Laura, I've begun to write in water-related puns, and some of mine are definitely far worse than others.

Some of those facts, stories and connections by way of introduction.

I love the sea. Which more appropriately far too often in reality is: I would love to see the sea. It's love at a distance. Definitely when I grew up amidst fields, woods and more fields and woods. It's a bit less so since I've been living on an -admittedly rather large - island for the past 10 years.

Seascape, Monotype 25x20cm

Just yesterday, we talked about the river Clyde and its importance for the city of Glasgow. And what a small, narrow and shallow river the Clyde is. But Clydeside and Clyde Built are inextricably linked with this city, and so is the existence of the river.

There's for instance, Black is the Colour, sung here by Christy Moore



Or, the monument of La Pasionaria just down from St Enoch Square on the River banks.

I like how Katherine talks about water - the river Thames or other waterscapes - providing a sense of place. I studied geography too. But in many ways, my geography is a distinctly urban one... see above in relation to Glasgow.

And as I discovered in my recent experiments with seascapes - the sea, and my fascination with it, and in particular shorelines is much more mediated, at a distance, somewhat abstract. So, while I do have many photos of holidays spent at the sea, and sketches of the sea and shorelines, most of my sea art is from a distance.

Seabirds Swim, Ink and neo ii in Moleskine, 24x21cm

I hadn't really thought about that before but that distance is quite important. It's about 'here and elsewhere', the elsewhere being quite simply 'across the sea'. It's about being here and elsewhere and the sea, the water providing that link. It's quite a powerful link: to people, places, pasts and futures all the time while being at the seashore. Or on a ferry crossing: inbetween, neither here nor there and yet present.

Some of my seascapes in photo and fine art are in these flickr sets:

• For Photos, this set here; and
• For Fine art the set here

As for my art, much of it is mixed media with a lot of pastel, as in The sea is yellow; I've been doing more and more sketches in ink; and also been playing with printmaking processes. Yet, pastels seem to be the medium of choice to come back too.

• My blog Paint & Pastel: http://gesah.blogspot.com
• My website: http://ghelms.com

• And definitely one of my favourite artist of seascapes is Joan Eardley, see an image search here

Sanna Shores, Pastel on paper, 30x40cm

Welcome to Watermarks!

Welcome to Watermarks!

Watermarks is a small community of artists who create art from water. We like to sketch, draw and/or paint all forms of water - the sea, the coastline, beaches, rivers, streams, waterfalls, fountains - in all styles, genres and media.

Left to right: Tina, Lindsay and Laura

With this brand new group blog we aim to:

• display works in progress as well as completed art
• highlight other artists (past and present) whose art involves water
• highlight exhibitions of relevant artwork and
  
• discuss media matters and tips and techniques for creating art out of water

Left to right: Ronell, Sarah and Vivien

You can find the names of the members of the group and all our blogs in the sidebar. We are (in alphabetical order):

• Vivien Blackburn - in Leicester, England
  
• Laura Frankstone - in North Carolina, USA
  
• Gesa Helms - in Glasgow, Scotland
  
• Jeanette Jobson - in Newfoundland
  
• Tina Mammoser - on the south side of the Thames, in London, England
  
• Lindsay Olson - in the Chicago area USA
  
• Katherine Tyrrell - on the north side of the Thames, in London, England
  
• Sarah Wimperis - in Cornwall, England
  
• Ronell van Wyck - in Montlouis sur Loire, France
  

Each of us will be introducing ourselves and our interest in water and, in some cases, projects we've done or are doing or have planned in posts over the next few days. Vivien is going to start as she had the original idea!

Left to Right: Gesa, Jeanette and Katherine

If you're interested and want to see what we're up to why not subscribe to this blog? You can find the subscription links near the top of the right hand column. Alternatively maybe you'd like to follow us on your Blogger blog?

We'd love to know what you think about the idea underpinning this new group and blog - and you are welcome to leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading about our new blog and we hope to see you again soon.