Omissions in Real Watercolor

I do watercolors from time to time, but not enough to be considered a watercolor-IST.  But I love looking at them and studying their technique.  For me, watercolors fall into two categories: 1) the fussy, goody-goody, neat-huh, look-at-me-I’m-coloring-in-the-lines types and 2) the real thing.

A real watercolor makes me sigh.  For many reasons, but today I want to focus on just one reason.  Namely, a real watercolor lets the white of the paper do half the work.  This is difficult to pull off.  It requires that you study your subject—hard—before you dunk your soft sable brush into that pot of clean water.  One of the tricks of this medium is that in order to make this unforgiving medium look spontaneous and airy, you have to carefully plan your steps ahead of time. In other words, before you start with the brush, you know in what sequence you’re going to apply the colors.  And you know where you will apply nothing at all.  You plan the omissions where the white of the paper will shine through and make your watercolor look like…the real thing.

So you’re in my “Impressions of Landscape” class and you’re set up in the little pavilion on the other side of the parking lot.  You see the old mansion, the cars and an overwhelming thicket of shrubs and tree trunks.  Good grief, how can this become a “spontaneous and airy” watercolor?  John Macsai obviously was not overwhelmed. He knew what to omit, what to edit out.  To let the tree trunks “breathe” he turned them into dashed lines, which is actually how they look when you notice that all sorts of foliage interrupts their upward sweep.  Easier said than done.

Notice the restraint in the use of complementary color: greens, blues and sepia.  Restraint, both in omission and use of color, is rooted in a love for this medium.  It’s not everybody’s choice but in a real watercolorist’s hands, it makes me sigh.

All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.

www.khilden.com 

http://facefame.wordpress.com

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Face Studies, Deglamorized

Of all the things you can draw, the face will grab you the most.  We must have special wiring in the brain to make us respond so powerfully to faces. A baby, three to six weeks old, will respond with excitement when looking up at a mobile that shows faces.

One of the reasons we like drawing faces is that they’re emotionally engaging.  The emotion is the fuel that keeps us working at it, but it also gums up our perception of the larger picture.  The tendency—tell me I’m wrong here!—is to overdraw the face, to add too much detail, to want to make it appealing and “perfect.”

So, yes, draw the face.  But, try to see it as  one of the elements in your composition. The whole is greater than…

Here are some examples of how my students have been drawing the Almighty Face, but with a twist—or a line through it, or in shadow.  This is hard to do, emotionally.

Look at the little girl sitting on dad’s shoulders. The artist found it hard to pull the hat over that endearing face and then to scribble a shadow over it.  There’s a natural resistance to do that.  But without the shadow, the face would not be tucked in and the hat would not have a convincing brim.

In a still life that included the customary drapery, a silk flower,  a garden hose and a plaster cast of an academic head. Linné restrained himself from overdrawing the head, which  is always a temptation.  This is probably not a completed drawing, but the battle against the dominance of the head is already evident and it’s admirable.

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Gaby, “Head in Planes.”  Plaster cast of academic head in a still life set up.

Linné, “Liz.”  Two studies of Elizabeth Taylor.

Gaby, “Girl on Dad’s Shoulders.”   Drawn from magazine cover.  Aquarellable Pencil

 Linné, “Still Life with Head.”

Click images for enlargements.

All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.

www.khilden.com 

http://facefame.wordpress.com

http://katherinehilden.wordpress.com

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