This is the second part in the series on how I create a painting. Like I said last week, these are the steps I usually follow for full size paintings. This is my process, and it may be different from yours if you paint. There is no recipe for painting, or right way or wrong way, as each artist brings their experience and preferences to the process. It is also something that can evolve, but this is how I do it, in 2020. This week’s topic is: Working out a plan After deciding on the subject of the painting, the next step is to decide what medium I will be using. This used to be a simpler step, as I only worked in watercolor. But you may remember that I started using oils as well as chalk pastels during the pandemic, so now I have an additional decision to make. The choice of medium has quite an influence on my process, because watercolor is much harder to correct than oils or pastels. You can correct small things, but once watercolor paint has touched the paper, it never can be completely removed. You can paint dark colors over lighter ones, but you can never get the white back, and unlike in other media where you can use white paint, in watercolor, the paper is the white paint, so once it’s gone, it’s gone. Some people use white gouache, but it will never look the same as the virgin paper. I will occasionally use a white gel pen for very small white specks, like the sparkle in an eye, for example, but I avoid using white gouache. One way to make sure certain parts of the paper are kept white is by using masking fluid, which is a rubbery liquid that can be applied before painting and that, once dry, will prevent the paint from reaching the paper underneath. But this requires planning! So watercolor in general requires more planning than other media. Whatever the medium I have chosen for this new painting, and unless I find that the reference photo is already a perfect composition, I will usually do a few quick pencil sketches to work out the best composition or placement of the elements of the painting in relation to each other as well as to the edges of the painting. This has to be done following the same proportions as the painting, so the size of the painting will also have to be decided, depending on what paper or canvas boards I have available. I may also take into consideration what frames or pre-cut mats I may already have that could be used to frame the finished painting. No sense making a wonderful painting only to find it won’t fit in standard frames! Custom frames are an expensive option I would rather avoid! So again, planning is key! Depending on the medium to be used, the surface has to be chosen next. Watercolor paper comes in different surface types, from smooth to rough, depending on the effect the artist wants. The best papers are actually made from cotton rag, not wood pulp! Watercolor paper is usually white, but the white varies from one manufacturer to another, and some manufacturers offer different brightnesses of white! Most watercolor paper is machine made, but there are some beautiful handmade papers available. Although watercolor can be used on other surfaces, I have only tried a plastic paper called Yupo, which I didn’t like. Watercolor paper can also be used for dry or chalk pastels, but there is also specialised pastel paper, which comes in different colors and finishes, depending on the effects wanted. Oil can be painted onto a variety of surfaces, including special oil paper, canvas sheets, canvas boards, stretched canvas, wood panel, masonite, etc.; canvases come in different textures, from smooth to rough. Whatever surface or medium is chosen, the most important thing is that it be archival, which means it will still be around in 100 years or more. Once the size, composition, medium and surface are decided, it’s time to transfer the drawing onto the surface. For watercolors, a light but detailed pencil sketch is usually required, mainly because you get one chance at getting watercolor in the right place. You can erase pencil lines if they are wrong, but you can't erase watercolor. This drawing could be done freehand, or using a grid system on both the original and the painting surface to reproduce the image as faithfully as possible, or by tracing, or by projecting the image on the paper and tracing it. I have used all of these methods, and the choice is made case by case. If necessary, scaling the image up or down is also done at this time. Large areas of white are easy enough to leave untouched during the painting stage, but if I need small areas to be preserved, I must apply masking fluid to those before starting to paint. This can be applied with a variety of tools, but usually not with a brush because masking fluid dries rather quickly to a rubbery mass, and if it dries on a brush it will ruin it. Many artists stretch their watercolor paper so that it doesn’t buckle when they start painting, but I generally don’t use that much water in my style of painting, so I don’t find I need to stretch it. Unless I leave it in the pad or block that it came in, I may tape the paper to a rigid board with painter’s tape to make it easy to pick up and turn in whatever direction I need to while I paint. The tape also can give the painting a nice clean edge. For oils and pastels, although you can draw the main elements with pencil, it is usually done with the medium directly, and in a very general way. Because it is easy to cover mistakes with more medium, a detailed drawing is not really necessary. An approximate position of each element (sometimes called a block-in) is sufficient to get started, and this can be done either in a single base color (brown or grey for example), in the actual color of each element, or in its complementary color. As the painting develops, you will refine the shapes with more medium until they look like you want them to. So with this base step completed, we are ready for next week’s topic: the actual painting! See you then! I hope you are enjoying this series. Please post comments or questions in the comments section below!
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AuthorMy name is Claire Bureau. Archives
March 2023
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