Altered Book spread – Tea

Many of you know that I’ve been involved in a collaborative altered book project since May.  I got off to a late start due to the birth of my grandson Kai in May so I’m just winding up now.  I have this spread and one more to tell you about. 

The hospitali-tea theme for Heidi’s book has been fun.  It has brought to mind all the fun tea-parties I’ve attended over many years - first as a child, then a mother, and now a grandma.  We could all stand to have more of the simple joy of a child’s tea-party.  On the left page I transferred a photo of 2 little girls entertaining each other and their doll.  Weeks ago I found some colorful photos of china in Sheila’s [thanks] stash and I collaged these on the right side along with a quote from George Gissing, “the mere chink of cups and saucers tunes the mind to happy repose”. 

Have a cup of tea with a friend soon!

Stephen Quiller Workshop – Sunday October 25

I have just one more demo to review from Sunday at the workshop. This one involved snow again – I think we caught Steve in his windup to the ski season!

In this demo Steve was using Crescent watercolor board which had been toned with a thin layer of neutral violet and blue acrylic, cooler at the top and warmer towards the bottom of the board. As Steve sketched up his demo he briefly reviewed the way that, given a single light source, cast shadows radiate out from an object. He also described these shadows as darker and cooler closer to the object casting the shadow, and lighter, warmer and more diffuse further away.  Obviously this was not news but described in a way I finally “got”. 

After this introduction, Steve laid in some tree shapes in the top right of the paper to give us a feel for where the light and shadow should fall. Then he took a titanium white tinted with yellow and painted negatively around the shadow shapes. He added a warmer yellow mix along the edges of the light and made sure to add some of the dappled light that would filter through higher branches. Some of the warm yellow-orange was painted negatively around in the tree shapes as well as on the sky area beside it. Finally, white dots were added inside the light areas to create halation effect. The result is a very convincing scene of woods backlit by a sunrise or sunset. [first 3 photos were in overhead mirror, thanks Janis and Joanne for the pics]. Beautiful.

It was such a privilege to learn from such a gentle, humble master painter. I hope I have the joy of sitting under his teaching another time – who knows... maybe even next year in Scotland!

The Calgary contingent with Steve on Sunday 

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the folks at Spokane Art Supply for their awesome hospitality, especially Shirley for keeping things organized and running smoothly and Claudia for her amazing baked goodies!

And now to paint... ciao!

Stephen Quiller Workshop – Spokane, Oct 21-25

Yesterday’s blog described Steve’s teaching on the use of acrylic transparently. The terms transparent, translucent and opaque are discussed in depth on page 43 of WaterMedia Painting with Stephen Quiller. Suffice to say that an artist can achieve some very interesting visual affects playing these techniques off of each other.

Please note – many of the photos appear backwards as they were taken in the overhead teaching mirror.  The finished pieces are oriented correctly.  Thank you to Janis Kestle and Joanne Edie for providing most of these photos. 

Saturday afternoon. Steve demonstrated the use of transparent and translucent color in a dockside demo. He used a transparent background wash of yellows which had been allowed to dry completely. Adding a small amount of white paint to a thin wash of     muted blues and violets he painted negatively around a boathouse, a dock and a boat... but the subject did not matter as much as the point. The transparent passages just glowed against those translucent areas. By this point I was mesmerized and apparently incapable of making decent notes. Therefore I am going to let these photos tell the story.  Magic…

After allowing us some time to work on our own we regrouped and Steve began a demo using transparent, translucent, and opaque acrylic on Crescent watercolor board. This is a very thick support relative to even the 300lb watercolor paper Steve had been using to that point in the workshop.

Steve had prepared the board with a neutral blue through violet tone and had allowed it to dry. After a very quick sketch Steve painted in a shockingly red-orange tree – his centre of interest before developing the snow bank and trees with broad loose strokes. He laid a purplish, translucent veil over the left top trees which just melted in to the previous paint and muted it. He moved on to paint the light falling on the hill behind the red tree a thick, juicy yellowy white. A similar mix was used to define the light peeking through the trees in places. Various details – snags, scrapes, branches were put in here  and there with a rhythm that was a lot of fun to watch. It was like seeing a musical performance on paper. At one point Steve commented that “mark and energy is the key to the emotion of the piece and is what the viewer will connect with”.

Steve wet the entire bottom section and painted the reflections by pulling straight down from top to bottom. He worked his magic on the details even here lifting out some areas and lightening others with the yellow/white mix. He described this as partly defining the  reflections that would be visible and partly just responding to what the painting needed. The entire process continued into Sunday morning but I think I will just let the photos complete the story.

  It was an entertaining and stretching experience indeed! 

Stephen Quiller Workshop – Saturday – Acrylics

Steve began the day with an introduction to the acrylic medium. Acrylic is by far the most luminous medium available, even surpassing oils. It is also thought to be the most durable, although it will take a few hundred more years to prove that. It is a non-yellowing, strong, transparent and versatile binder. Steve believes Richeson’s acrylic to be the best binder of all acrylics based on the “stretch test” which proves it holds the most pigment. You can read more on this subject on the Quiller Gallery website.

Statistics show that 1/3 of painters use acrylics to some extent in their work so it has become a very popular medium. Next Steve reviewed his 12 color spectral palette [MUCH more on page 54 of Watermedia Painting with Stephen Quiller] and began a demo of how to use acrylic transparently similar to using watercolor.

Here Steve shows us his preliminary sketch and has his tubes set up to squeeze.  

40 minutes later Stephen arrived at a stopping point…  FORTY minutes!!!!  In this photo you can see the overhead mirror which made it easier for students to see what was going on. 

I must admit that, having painted very little in acrylic, I was scrambling mentally to keep pace with the volume of information at this point. I did relearn these points:

• When acrylic is used transparently [like watercolor], it will dry the same value as laid. If it is applied thickly it will dry darker.
• Paint does not granulate the same way it does in watercolor applications.
• Lifting paint and softening edges must be done before the paint dries – once it dries, it won’t lift.

After we had a chance to use these techniques for a bit, we regrouped and Steve changed the entire feeling of his demo simply by glazing [applying paint very thinly] over the top portion of the painting with a red/orange color. Look at the difference that made...

   Before the glaze                             After the glaze.

And, once again hidden at the bottom of my blog, here is my effort on this technique.  [ouch]

I’ve got a lot to learn about painting with acrylics.  Fortunately, I’m going to get a chance to review this again soon.  Sharon Williams is instructing a class through Chinook Learning Services called “Paint Creatively with Watermedia” and we begin tomorrow.

As I plow through the notes and photos I took over the course of the week I am reinforcing the things I learned.  It’s amazing how much ground we covered in the five days.  Part II of Saturday tomorrow…  ciao!

Stephen Quiller Workshop – fabulous Friday

October 23, 2009 opened with Steve teaching about greys & near greys. We select neutrals that best fit with the colors and desired mood that we have chosen for our painting. Naturally, the choice of support will also influence the visual quality of these color choices. Rough watercolor paper is ideal where granulation is desired.

1. Grey /neutrals -- these are mixes of color in which no color bias is visible. Example red-orange and blue-green [if the correct hue is used] will mix to a perfect neutral gray. 
2. Near greys -- like a neutral grey, these can be mixed with just two colors. However rather than having no color identifiable, one or the other color is allowed dominance. Example, red-orange and blue-green mixed just to the blue-green side.
3. Near greys using a complement’s neighbor. Example, rather than using blue-green to neutralize red-orange, beautiful nearer greys can be made by using either blue or green.

Examples 1-3 are labeled on the chart below:

Steve also demonstrated how naples yellow, cobalt violet ,and cerulean blue can be used together to make a high key triad. All of these colors are beautiful granulating pigments and a mix of all three gives a gorgeous near grey [see centre of next photo]. I'm a big fan of granulation so this was a real fun eye-opener for me. A more complete description [a full two-page spread] of this triad is given on page 38 of Water Media Painting with Stephen Quiller.

 Since returning home I've had a chance to read Steve's description of the various categories of watercolor paints [in WaterMedia Painting], including a description of organic versus nonorganic watercolors, the visual qualities of watercolor paint [granulating versus staining], and how to best employ all of these various types of watercolor paint. Suffice to say I think this book is a valuable resource. I expect to be referring to it for years to come.

In the afternoon Steve moved on to a discussion of various binders used in water-media painting. All of the binders [watercolor, gouache, casein, & acrylic] in use today have their own natural strengths. To demonstrate the various strengths, Steve painted a landscape using a combination of acrylic, watercolor, and casein paint. Believe it or not he began with a loose wash of acrylic! Like most of the students, I had assumed that once you used acrylic you would no longer be able to over paint that area with watercolor. However, as long as the acrylic paint is applied thinly, other water media can follow because the surface has not been sealed. Once the acrylic was dry, Steve painted over portions of it with watercolor first, and then with casein, allowing the background color [yellows and oranges] to glow through in places and leaving it completely uncovered in other areas. Again, it was quite a show!

Naturally the next step was for us to go away and execute our own little painting using these principles -- here is mine.

Enjoy!

Stephen Quiller Workshop – day 2, part II

The last portion of Thursday Steve did a major watercolor demonstration.  Before beginning the painting Stephen provided some background information that was very valuable. In short here are the points:

• Steve uses Richeson watercolor paper, usually 300 pound rough. The Quiller Gallery website has some interesting information with respect to this paper. You can find more information in Stephen Quiller's books also sold on his website.
• The watercolor paper was prepared with a sketch made in pencil with very little detail. Stephen does not work from photographs but sketches in a fairly large sketchbook. In the margins he makes notes with respect to the color, time of day, ideas he has for a finished painting, etc. so that he does not lose that information. This is enough for him to paint from but not so much information that he's "painting to a photo". He recommends making thumbnail sketches to pre-determine shapes as well as a quick value study in order to ensure that we are painting a composition that will be pleasing. Good composition trumps good technique.  Sounds VERY familiar.
• When Stephen works at home he works vertically. When he's wetting the paper before painting he would begin working from the bottom up. This is to avoid having water running down the page multiple times creating troughs in the sizing [gelatin] which would result in streaky applications of paint.
• He has only one painting going at a time! I found this very surprising -- he works from beginning to end on a single painting almost always.
• There a few colors in the expanded palette that should always be squeezed fresh when working in watercolor: cerulean blue, manganese violet, viridian green, and naples yellow. These colors do not reconstitute well. 

Then he began to paint!!!  Over the course of the next two hours we were treated to a wonderful show. What fun to watch a master at work -- the rhythm is amazing! He paints in a very mindful, deliberate, responsive way, constantly "listening to the painting" and doing what it tells him to do. After 40 years of wet brushes paintings do talk to you!  Here are a couple of photos of the work as it developed Thursday afternoon.

Background washes – very careful to leave the light on top of the distant hills.  The brush says the form.

The first, loose foreground shapes…

Lifting out some tree trunks – watch the intervals!, watch the shine on the paper!, brush drier than the paper to avoid blossoms!….  Mindful of all these things AND telling us about it as he painted. 

Pure Thalo blue there???  Yep, sure enough it worked.  Developing more tree forms.

Pop some of the trunk area by adding the winter branches and a few snags [do it FAST].  Surround the work with white strips, step back and think it over.  Push on when you know the next step – not before!

Stephen quoted Robert Genn as he concluded and sent us to our painting - “Better to stop 5% too soon than go 1% too far”

Here’s the study I did late Thursday afternoon.  I like it – the feeling of cold and wet is there. 

Wow – what a great afternoon!  So much fun I would love to do it again.  Enjoy!

Stephen Quiller Workshop day 2

To begin day 2, Steve briefly highlighted day 1 color theory before launching into a discussion of color family [see his books “Color Choices” and “Painter’s Guide to Color” for details].  A limited palette, such as he employed in both of the examples below, helps emphasize a mood.  In both studies, “neighbor” colors were used to create mood, in some cases they were neutralized or grayed down by using their compliment.

It’s amazing to see Steve sketch up these quick studies carefully constructed to showcase the particular point he is driving home.  He keeps up a steady monologue about the colors he’s chosen, why he’s putting what where, composition choices, etc.  He uses humor at the least expected moments to keep everything fun.  Note – there is no “black” pigment on the Quiller palette.  Like many other artists, Steve uses complements to mix lively blacks and neutrals.  The wonderful darks that can be created using phthalo blue and it’s compliment are evident in the dock study. 

Next step – a double analogous study [see Painter’s Guide to Color].  In short, double analogous simply means 3 neighbor colors PLUS their compliments are used and are visible in the painting.  In the examples above the compliment color was used only to move the colors towards neutral but always played an invisible role.  Just for laughs and chuckles I’m including Steve’s effort [done with an annoying audience] below that mine “paint along”… 

  To capture the point of this exercise [which I think I missed at the time] Steve allowed each of the 6 colors to “live” in the study.  If you zoom in to his you can see yellow-orange, yellow, yellow-green, red-violet, violet, violet blue ALL visible.  However, he was careful to consider dominance in color temperature…  his has a dominance of cool, dull tones and a few notes of pure yellow that sing by comparison.  Beautiful…  by comparison my little study has roughly equal area of cool colors and the yellow is popping out all over.  So, plenty to chew on for me…  and enough for today.  Day 2, part b tomorrow!