Happy holidays

Here's to hoping that you had a productive year painting and that we all continue to learn new things in the new year.

This week's artist find is Paul Jackson

Happy New Year
Danielle

Béatrice Morel

Recently I came across the work of Béatrice Morel. Her rendering of horses is what attracted me to her paintings. She truly masters water and communicates her passion for watercolor in her paintings and the result is breathtaking.

Here is a quick overview of her approach:

• she paints on an incline to allow for the movement of water and paint to create the horse's mane
• to save time before the canvas dries, she uses three brushes, one each for red, yellow and blue
• she then applies on the wet canvas, lines of blue while leaving much space between the lines and lets the water spread the colours horizontally and vertically to create the horse's mane
• after the blue has spread, she adds red lines. She ensures her brush is loaded with paint. She does the same with the yellow
• she then continues stroking the canvas with various colours to encourage the colours to mix
• for the other areas of the horse, she uses the three primary colours but dots the wet surface and again lets the water mix the colours
• when the canvas is dry she paints the eye with very dark mix and adds other details

Here are some of her paintings:

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Have a great week and Merry Christmas

Danielle

Painting reflections in water

I follow a group on Facebook that is all about paintings with water. Every day many people post paintings with water - whether it is the ocean, lake, river, etc.  One feature that always enhances paintings with water is the reflection on the water.

A good reflection can enhance a painting. Like a number of features, the important elements include the choice of colour, values and perspective. Here are some considerations:

• consider how still or wavy the water is
• no reflection is a perfect mirror image
• the reflected shapes normally appear more vertical
• shapes that are further away from the water are less reflective in the water. The closer the water is to the viewer, the less it reflects an image of the earth and sky.
• ripples in the water appear smaller as you move further away  from the viewer.
• the more there is movement in the water, the less clear the reflection is
• when the water is calm low and medium value objects tend to have darker reflections, while darker value objects, like tree trunks, reflect lighter
• don't forget that the sky also has reflections in the water. Generally the reflection is a deeper version of the sky above.
• in shallow water, the ripples and reflections will often be broken as the water moves over rocks and other objects 
• shallow water is often warmer than deeper water

Check out the reflections in this painting from Thomas Aquinas Daly

When painting water reflections, it's probably to work from real life or from photos.

Today's artist find is Bill Vrscak

Have a great week,
Danielle

Painting rocks

If you paint landscapes, you probably have painted rocks. Rocks come in many different shapes and sizes. Not all of them are famous, but they are nevertheless beautiful and vary in shapes, size and with the material that compose them.

There are many different ways to create texture on rocks, here are a few options:

• lift wet paint with a crumbled tissue paper;
• dry brush irregular shapes;
• use a water bottle, spray dry paint and scrub some of the paint off;
• drop water into wet paint;
• splatter darker colours;
• add cracks by painting irregular lines;
• scrape the paint with an old credit card; or
• paint in some details.

This doesn't mean that anyone should use all of these options in one painting. Only one or two should be adopted. This may be the easy part to do.  The greater challenge comes in the use of colours and values:

• define rocks by contouring them with darker colours which are the shadows behind the rocks;
• distinguish some of the rocks by applying a glaze of a slightly different colours;
• emphasize how light reflects on the rocks with reflected light;
• Gradate the colours of the rocks with warmer colours at the front and cooler at the back; and
• Adding shadows from surrounding objects.

This week's artist find is Ann Pember, I'm a huge fan of her rocks and waterfalls.

Have a great week,
Danielle