To glaze or not to glaze, this is the question.

Here is my watercolor picture of Winter Wonderland. If you had an opportunity to visit Swallow Falls State Park in Maryland then this picture would look familiar to you. This waterfall is much wider in real life but to improve composition I decided to narrow it a little. This trick let me bring trees that grow on the opposite sides of the river closer together and create a nice opening for the misty background forest.

            At a first glance the picture looked finished but after a while I noticed that it was lacking the depth. Since Winter sceneries are mostly white it is hard for us artists to emphasize shadows, and shadows add the depth.

In such situation simple glazing can improve the picture. Glazing is a well-known watercolor technique that involves painting wet-over-dry picture.  Because watercolor pigment, even when dry, is not fixed to the paper, glazing needs to be done very gently. To do so, I used a very soft and large brush. I loaded it with diluted paint. I mixed previously used indigo and crimson red and started darkening the background and carefully avoiding areas that needed to be white. Then I added shadows to mid-ground snow covered trees. Finally I added an extra layer of paint to the water at the bottom but left the waterfall foam and yellow reflection untouched.

The idea of glazing can sound frightening because it involves painting over a picture that is almost finished and full of details. But if glazing is done properly it brings loose elements of the picture together and simplifies busy compositions. 

So, to glaze or not to glaze?  Definitely glaze!

How to find an art inspiration?

Let’s say you have time, and you want to create some art. Your studio is cleaned, your materials are well organized, and you have desire to make something nice. There is nothing else to do but art. Unfortunately, instead of submerging into the creative process, you realize that you don’t know how to start. Something very important is missing. The inspiration.

They say that you can find inspiration everywhere and this is true. So let's look for it.

First, leave your studio because there is nothing interesting there. Walk away from your computer, drawing from old photographs is not that thrilling. Real subjects are much more inspiring.

 At home the best place to find something attention-grabbing is your kitchen. You have constant supplies of fresh food there. Fruits and veggies, bread and meat are perfect subjects to paint. They are rich in attractive form and color. Look at them with fresh eyes, cut them in half to find what is inside, make slices or simply take a bite. Create an appealing composition by moving the elements quickly. Highlight them with a good source of light. Working close to the window is the best but artificial lamps are also helpful. Quickly you will find that even in the comfort of your home you can find a lot of ideas for fantastic drawing or painting.

For me though the best way to look for inspiration is outdoors. There, the possibilities are endless. Your backyard, neighbor's doorway, old trees, rocks, buildings, parks, rivers, lakes and mountains.  Everything is just waiting for you to discover it. Move around to find the best angle for your composition.  Don't be attached to the first idea.  Draw several quick sketches and then choose the best one. Strive for progress not for perfection. Take reference photos. You can finish your art outside or bring it back to the studio. Notice how refreshed you feel by stepping away and meeting with your art Muse. 

After such an experience you will soon be reworded with a beautiful drawing or painting.  Pablo Picasso once said "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working" so lets go for it.

Willow

I was in Maryland's Zoo last week and I met newborn baby giraffe. Her name is Willow. She was born 7 weeks ago and she is the first baby giraffe at the facility in more than 20 years. I guess she will have a lot of visitors this spring and summer.
Willow, I wish you happy and healthy life :)

Improving Daffodil Watercolor Painting

This is a picture that we created at AC Moore's watercolor class during 2 hour period. It is good and you can leave it like this but also you can go farther and add some more details. Below I'll show what I've done with it later at home. I hope it will help you to improve your paintings. 

I decided to darken the background and make it richer. You can see that I sketched leaves and a flower bud at the top left corner. With such helpful pencil marks I was ready to start to paint around. I used in turns Phalo blue, yellow ochre and sap green colors.

When the paint dried off I added some more leaves with positive painting this time. I used deep green and darkened it with Phalo blue. 

Next step - shadows.

Here is a finished version. Darker shadows made this picture more three dimensional. To create my gray for the shadow I used a mixture of Ultramarine blue and Burnt Umber. You can also use Paynes gray.

Warming up a ski run

I've just came back from a ski trip. I was skiing in a beautiful state of Vermont. The mountains were ready, perfectly covered with the white powder. It was a nice change from all that gray Maryland's scenery. Surprisingly there was not too many people there.

The views were spectacular and inspiring, especially from the mountain's summit. Although my sketchbook was in my bag all the time, I wasn't able to sketch. The wind was too cold to remove the gloves from my hands. Nevertheless I wouldn't be myself if I didn't take some photographs. 

Here you can see one of my pictures. I took this one on the trail down the Ramshead Mountain. I knew right away that I would like the scene. Layers of mountains and small figures of skiers are great subjects for a watercolor painting.

Later at home I studied this picture in more detail. I noticed some drawbacks though. Heavy, gray clouds made this picture dull and almost monochromatic. Also the skiers were hardly visible on the dark background full of trees. I knew that I had to rearrange the composition of this picture a little.  

I began with making the sky more dramatic. I painted it with wet-in-wet technique. On the wet paper I threw yellow pale color just to add a little sunshine. Then I painted small part of the clear sky with cerulean blue. I carefully painted around white clouds. At the end I added darker tones to make heavier clouds. I used mixture of french ultramarine and crimson red.
Then I waited until everything dried out. After that, I painted the mountains starting with the farthest one. I used mixture of french ultramarine and crimson red.
The conifer trees were done with a combination of phthalo blue and yellow ocher. To create darker trees in the front I mixed french ultramarine and burnt umber. On my photograph, the trees are in all shades of gray. To change this and warm up the scene, I painted some bushes with yellow ocher and burnt sienna.
To emphasize skiers I painted them on a white background. I also narrowed the ski trail to eliminate the overwhelming whiteness of the snow in the foreground. Thanks to that, the skiers automatically became more pronounced. One of the skier's jacket had neon blue color. I found this tone too destructing so I changed it to the dark gray.
Now my dear readers it is your turn. You can take my photo and paint from it. Modify it to your taste and most of all enjoy the process. Start with quick pencil value sketch, it help to determine what you like. Let me know how it went :)

Watercolor Pocket Set Review

Watercolor pocket sets are great for quick outdoor sketches. There is a big variety of sets like this in the stores. Usually I have a big dilemma, should I buy something expensive from the brand name company or should I buy something cheap made in China.  This time I had a really good coupons to AC Moore and I was able to buy 2 sets to do the comparison: Winsor&Newton and Reeves.

	Windsor&Newton	Reeves
Price	$23	$10
Box quality	excellent	good
Brush quality	excellent	poor
Pigment intensity	good	good

Windsor&Newon is a really cute set, the box is super small and handy. The brush has excellent bristles with point. The Reeves’ box is larger but still fits in my purse. I don’t like Reeves’ brush at all, it is too soft and it is not pointy enough.
The biggest surprise are pigments. Both companies have comparable color strength and tone. You can see it on my sample color test.
To conclude Windsor&Newton’s watercolor set is a great choice when it comes to overall quality. On the other hand Reeves is great when you want to save some money. You can create great watercolor paintings no meter which set you choose. Although you definitely need a better brush for the Reeves set.

Moonlight Village

Hello All, It's been awhile.

Usually I'm drawing or painting from real life, this time I made a watercolor from my imagination. I love creating unusual, magical scenes, good for some fairy tail story.
First I worked really hard on my sketch. That mean I draw and erase in terns until I got a composition I like. Painting was a pleasure because I love this color combination. Mainly I used 3 colors: yellow ochre, phthalo and ultramarine blue.

I made my first real video tutorial Moonlight Village. So far I made a lot of speed painting videos but I don't think anybody can learn from such. So please enjoy this one, and let me know what you think

Color versus Black&White

They say the watercolors are all about water and colors so I painted this Autumn woodland with water and all colors of the rainbow. The scene is a place from my imagination. 

I like vibrant colors - they make me happy. On the other hand I can feel that this picture is too colorful and because of that not real. What is the point of painting real images? We can see them all around. Lately I'm asking myself a question which road should I go - realism or abstract? Is it possible to jump back and forth these two roads? 

Immediately after paining "crazy colors" I have to draw black & white. Simple drawings calm my state of being. It is right what they say about "art" that it is all about emotions. 

June Flowers in Bloom

It looks like I've painted one picture in cool and one in warm colors. A white Clematis is front lit while a Tiger Lily has a back light. So far I prefer painting white flowers so Clematis is my favorite. With Tiger lily the colors of shadows were tricky and it was very hard to paint the sun shining through the petals.  Well, I tried to do my best.
 

Summer in the Garden

Backyard Hare

I painted this one from the photograph.  This time I used India ink first then I added watercolor paints. Complementary tones work well here. I used yellow ocher, light brown, little bit of red, Prussian blue and deep green. 

We have a lot of wild rabbits at our backyard. Whenever I'm walking my dog I keep my camera handy. The rabbits are not very fearful. I have a feeling that they figured it out that the dogs are on leash. 

The more rabbits there are, the more foxes can prey on them, so also there are lots of foxes in our neighborhood. They are rather hard to photograph because they are extremely shy.

Magnolia

Magnolia trees have large and beautiful flowers. This particular one grows at my neighbor's front-yard. Also flowers have nice smell, unfortunately I can't paint it :)

Interesting fact: Fossilized specimens of plants belonging to the Magnolia family have been found dating to 95 million years ago. They appeared before bees did. The flowers evolved later to encourage pollination by beetles. 
It is so hard to imagine world without flowers and bees, isn't it?

Clouds

One Happy Window

My watercolor painting was inspired by an old town of Katowice. The real building is much more beautiful. My version is crooked and I gave up on details. I was lucky to grow up next to such jewels.  

Angry Lose Happiness

Third Day of Spring

Phil Bosmans Quote

Frosty Birches

I think my little kitty is buying this one.
This simple watercolor sketch was done with two colors only. Ultramarine blue and yellow ocher. 

Keiko the Bunny

I made pencil sketch first to study color value. Then I decided to paint the bunny in watercolors. 

ACEO White Flowers