Weekly watercolor thread
5mo
Gannon Beck
I wish I could commit to painting in watercolor daily, but I think that's a bit unrealistic. Nevertheless, I want to paint more and I am starting this thread with the intent of posting to it at least once a week with watercolor paintings and sketches.
Here are a few of my recent efforts. The first two floral paintings were demos I followed out of Julie Pollard's book, "Watercolor Unleashed", and the last two were studies done from the same photograph.
This is a community thread, so let's exert some positive peer pressure on each other and sling some paint!
Live watercolor study around my neighborhood. I added some white gouache on the railing of the bridge after coming back at home.
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9d
A study of a Chien Chung Wei demo, I really learned a lot from this one. His extreme simplification of background elements to large washes of warm and cool really struck me. I love the feeling of over exposed light seeping through the leaves. It's a fun photography trick to try to emulate. Also a quick sketch from a photo I took in Lake Tahoe a few years ago. I'm far less happy with the overall composition of that one, the bench became a tangent no matter how I tried to scoot it around. Should have played around with some thumbnails before hand, but I was mostly concerned with putting brush to paper with the short time I had to paint. On to the next ones!
Great study. The interplay of warm and cool really makes it so interesting.
Yes, thumbnailing always helps to fix composition. Your sky looks beautiful. If you want the sky and the mountains to be the main story, you can think of foreshortening the sea some more to avoid tangents or cropping the bench as in a close up shot. But it’s really better to try multiple paintings rather than being hung up on one.
I've started doing these little sketches on 4" x 6" paper. They re pretty fast to do. I think they are the painting equivalent of doing quick sketch. It's useful to have a five minute version of something you want to turn into a habit, and I think this is it for me.
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14d
This is a cool one
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9d
This has a Bill Watterson foliage vibe, love it!
More mini-master studies. The first one is a study of Steve Rude and the second one is a study of Tony Couch.
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9d
These are incredible little color bombs! I love the idea of doing a mini-master study like this. What size are you working here?
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Superb studies! The landscape is phenomenal. I checked out Tony Couch. His landscapes are very inspiring.
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9d
Great work! Love the indicated foliage in the foreground. Beautiful negative/positive shape over the water reflection.
Practicing negative painting in a watercolor class lead by Julie Pollard tonight. We were painting roots.
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24d
Here's one from a watercolor workshop lead by Jared Cullum this weekend. He's a great teacher, awesome youtube videos on both watercolor and gouache!
The brushwork here is so elegant! Are you using both round and flat brushes?
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24d
Incredible work!
This is fantastic. Wonderful work.
I second the assessment of Jared Cullum. That dude is a national treasure. It's rare to find someone who can both do art at a high level and explain it. Not only can he do that, he is great on giving insights on how to practice for the long-term. For instance, the reason I'm doing master studies at a smaller size is because of Jared. You'll see a lot of these smaller studies coming out of me in the upcoming weeks, and it's all thanks to a push in the right direction from Jared.
Coincidentally, I signed up for his Patreon this weekend. For $10 a month, I'm getting access to a treasure trove of information. This weekend, I'm going to go through his tutorial on painting skies in watercolor. There is so much there.
I've taken one workshop from him and will take more in the future. I want to spend time going through a lot of his videos so that when I have him on video call I have good questions.
Awesome studies! Good to see that you finally did the Sargent study and what a great job you have done! The florals are phenomenal. You have handled so many colors so gracefully! Julia would be very happy:)
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28d
Inspiring work, as always!! The gators are fantastic, strong negative shapes, great sense of light. The color transitions in the flowers are beautiful.
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28d
Beautiful!
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1mo
An attempt at a Trevor Chamberlain study from this weekend. Tried to go straight in with paint, no underdrawing so it veers off a bit from the actual piece but this was one of the first times I kinda saw the process in my head before putting brush to paper. Started using Andy Evansen's method of working back and forth between a value study and the finished piece simultaneously to plan the composition and washes in steps which helped keep me focused on the piece while waiting for washes to dry. And I got a little plein air time in with a quick palm tree/sky sketch from the back yard
This is fantastic. You are really doing great with your painting studies.
Looking up Andy Evansen now!
Wow! Your study is phenomenal. I just checked out the artist. He is awesome!
The palm trees of your plein air study are also so fluid. I always struggle doing palm trees, getting bogged down by the details is easy.
Took a leap of faith and did some plein air watercolor painting today. Whenever I try to draw vegetation from a photo, I find it very hard to simplify the noise and vary colors to create interest. This one is the most satisfactory one till date, though I was on the verge of ruining it by overworking the details.
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1mo
Excellent work!! You captured the mountains beautifully!
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1mo
Love these colors! The rusty blue pickup is fantastic. Are you finishing with ink on top of the watercolor here, or doing an ink drawing and painting over the line work?
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2mo
These are cool
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2mo
Took the watercolors out for a walk today! First time getting out plein air painting. This is a 60 minute sketch done a few blocks south of Griffith Observatory.
Awesome study! I have always found painting foliage from life very difficult. There is so much information that needs to be filtered out. It overwhelms me. You did an inspiring job!
Progress on one of the master studies I'm doing of the Dan Brereton World's Finest covers. I think I'll let it sit for a while before I do a few final touches.It's almost done.
Wow! It's absolutely mind blowing. It's my most favorite piece amongst your watercolor paintings till date! The forms in the muscle are so well defined!
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2mo
These are really striking! Excellent work!
I'm so impressed and inspired by these. The placement of values, the negative painting, the beautiful shapes--this is already at a high level. You should really lean into doing florals.
I'm trying to upgrade my process by doing more preliminary work. I'm doing master studies of the three covers Daniel Brereton did for the Legends of the World's Finest mini-series he did with Walter Simonson.
These are three small color studies I've done of the covers to work out the colors I'll use as I do the full studies.
I have been procrastinating to sit down with my watercolors for a bit too long. This thread is so inspiring that I needed to do something today. This is a study from a painting that I found on pinterest. After 2 failed attempts, I managed to do some justice to the sky.
