A variety of water

“No pleasure endures unseasoned by variety”
--Publilius Syrus quotes (Roman author, 1st century B.C.)

When trying to paint water I find the key for me is variety - using a lot of different mediums and ways to look at it. It's easy to get stuck in the same technique and not progress, wondering why you can't push yourself, or why this painting or this water seems different from the rest? It's a rut! Using a lot of different tools all contributes to the end result of my soft color field water paintings.

At the moment I'm working on a series of water surface paintings for a Venice exhibition, a bit of a change from my sea horizons. This means really focusing on the patterns and light on the water itself.

My studies are currently laid out on the floor, different sketches and practices that go back to last September in preparation for this new work. Only now that I have them laid out do I realise how many different approaches I've tried!


The large largest sketch (one of dozens) is a more literal charcoal line drawing of ripples. This kind of study had me looking really closely at the detail! The lines and how they met, where they travelled, the strange shapes they made that were completely unintuitive.

After that I used my pastels on smaller paper - the bottom right green study - to do some colour studies, just exploring the areas of soft light. This reminded me that to get the light I wanted I needed to focus again on my glazes and layers of pure colour.

Finally, I've been working on 100 small acrylic paintings on paper. A friend actually gave me some offcuts of wonderful watercolour paper that was great for working with acrylic with a watercolour approach. These brought home how the combination of what I learned doing the charcoal and the pastel could come together. I used the drawings of ripples first to put down a structure and underpaintings, then glazes over it with larger areas and washes of colour to bring out the light. This end lesson I could apply to the large canvases.

Mezzogiorno, acrylic on canvas, 80cmx80cm

(for the Venice Exhibition, Blackheath Gallery March 2011)

None of these alone would have given me the tools for getting my new large paintings right. Each medium showed me something different about the water, because water is such a myriad of things: light and dark, surface and depth, flat and textured.

Water's edge studies

My views of the Atlantic Ocean continue to hold a fascination for me.  I love the different shades of blues and turquoises that appear depending on the light quality.

These views are at the water's edge in Flatrock and Pouch Cove and I'm working out my pastel kinks with them.  The subtleties of values is what makes water visually appealing and believable to me.  Trying to capture that on paper isn't always successful.  These are more of works in progress than finished pieces, as I feel my way through waves, foam and rocks in this medium.

Koi studies, part two!

I am so glad I decided to make a series of 30 small studies (emphasis on STUDIES) of koi in water ---you cannot imagine how much fun I'm having!! I have painted in acrylics on a large-ish scale so intermittently over the last few years, that I had really forgotten a LOT about technique. The same thing happens when I don't cook ambitiously for a while. I forget nuances of flavoring and method. Which is odd since I've been a pretty avid cook all my adult life, but there we are.
I have already moved on a bit, technically, from this batch of four, so I thought I'd better share with you THESE in a batch, so whatever progress and direction my process reveals will be clearer to you and to me.
At this point, I promise you that I have NO idea where all this is leading! That it will lead somewhere interesting, I have no doubt---fish by fish, swirl by swirl.
I have to stop myself from fiddling endlessly with these, stop myself from wanting to get everything "right"----they are teaching me so much as they are. Now, on to the next group of four!

Koi in progress

You don't know how hard it is for me to show unfinished work! As I've said before, it goes against my very private artist's nature and my training, too, BUT this blog is about all the aspects of the making of art about water and the processes involved, so here we are.

What I love about koi as subject matter is that, in painting them, I can give free play to my love for calligraphic shapes, my attempts to render movement and energy, and my passion for the physical qualities of paint and painting surface.

Painting koi in water is a revelatory experience. It is a meditative experience. It is challenging, and it is, above all, and shockingly, fun! Since I am not a natural painter in the way I am a natural draftsman, I don't often feel that painting IS fun. But when it is going well, there's nothing so gratifying to me.

In the first two paintings above, you'll see my struggles with opacity and transparency in rendering water using acrylic paints. This struggle will be ongoing over the next months as I continue this series. But I welcome the struggle. I'm learning from it. This is what I mean about the revelatory nature of this project.
I've begun a series of small studies (about 5" x 7") to give me quick ways to explore various palettes, various acrylic mediums to add for texture and flow and transparency, various compositions, and to help me define the shape, form, movement inherent in MY approach to this subject. I'll make 30 of these, one daily when I can, in addition to continuing to work on my large pieces. I have 6 or 7 larger pieces going right now!. Here are the first three studies. They are VERY loose, very coarse. They're exactly what I need!


These issues of transparency, opacity, texture, and wateriness have been with me for a long while. Here is (a very bad photo of) one of a series of paintings I made around a lotus theme in 2005. It may be that I'll move back to a more abstracted style such as this. It may not. I trust the koi to show me the way.

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...

Dipping in water again

Here's the thing. I'm posting these water studies, not because I think they're wonderful finished paintings---no! They are simply steps along the way, as I try to figure out what the heck I'm doing here on my watery painting journey. Though I'm rusty after mostly drawing for the past four years, I've been painting assiduously the past two weeks and am committed to doing so all this year--something's going to happen, painting-wise, eventually!
My goal was/is to reach a level of stylization and abstraction of the subject matter, but in what guise, the process itself will reveal, through time. I, personally, have no clue. And if I don't, how could you?
So I just start painting each painting and then I'm as surprised as anyone when something very 19th century, as in the first study, stares back at me. I don't hold with people who try to paint like, say, Monet (I'm not talking about learning by copying from the greats, but consciously making finished paintings to sell, in a period style.) But I digress.
Anyway, I was dismayed, briefly, to see myself channeling some 19th century hack painter, but my way is to just do it and get over it. Get on to the next thing,
The second painting is rough but I'm not going to take it any farther. It's served its purpose. I like the movement in it. That is one of water's chief attractions as subject matter to me.
Both studies are acrylic on board, 11" x 14", and both are based on sketches and photos from a trip to Iceland last August.

My husband and I are driving to the coast this weekend. Our coast is placid, very unrocky and unIcelandic. Sometimes you float where you're planted.

Onward.

Painting and Playing God

Here is the second in my meditation triptych series.  This one uses a detail view of the rocks that I was sitting on, made of serpentine.  Beautiful rich red coloured rock shot through with creamy white veins and patches of green.  It is lovely to look at and I have convinced myself that it colours the sand, I can see pinkish hues in the sand, I know I can!
The time of day for this painting is late afternoon, it is winter, the light is low and rain is coming.  There is a slightly ominous colour to the sky, the rain did come later in quite a big storm too so perhaps that accounts for the strange light.


This is the watercolour sketch for the larger painting.  The sketches in the earlier post, "Training Session", are for this painting also.  I find that by doing these I can calm my senses down and think about colours, tones, effects of light and what is happening in the picture.  Also what I want to happen in the picture, after all, by the time a sketch makes it to become a finished painting, destined for the framers and then the gallery wall, you the artist, are most defiantly the boss.  You can twist light, move mountains if necessary, smooth a cliff or ruffle up a forest.  It is your world, you get to decide what you want to show, to hide or to underline.  

Ah ha!  I have just worked out why I have spent my life being an artist.  I am very bossy, didn't get to be God so became the next best thing, an artist.

Swaying grass in the Loire

I'm wishing you all a wonderful Christmas with this post. As from today, I'll be spending some time with my family and I'll see you back after Christmas.
A while back I took some photo's and earlier last week I played around with it in front of the fireplace. First started off with watercolours and then an oil. It is some swaying grass in the water, in case you don't recognize it!

I painted study 1 from a few photos and wasn't happy, so I did study 2 , using only the first watercolour as reference. And then I did quite a few trying over and over to get to something that made that "click". The first two were the best efforts. I completed the oil painting using all of the first. I would love to redo this again some time.
What was I trying to achieve? I don't really know. Sometimes I start working without knowing exactly what I'm after, but I can recognize it immediately when I see it. When I saw the grass in the water, I was struck by the colours and the gentle swaying as well as the graceful up en down waving, like a dolphin. I felt like touching it.

I find I always tighten up when I use a photograph as reference. It is something I'll need to work on, especially doing waterscenes, since it isn't always possible to be out. Or maybe I shouldn't be choose the cosyness of the fireplace to do waterscenes.

I would love to know what your opinion is on doing waterscenes from photos?

...swaying grass, watercolour study 1...

...swaying grass, watercolour study 2...

...swaying grass, oil on linen, 40X40cm(15.7x15.7")...

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?