Clouds

Third time is a charm: I had to paint over two earlier versions of this 24x36 cloud painting (Where the Road Crosses the Creek.) I love looking at clouds while I drive, but I learned that they are much harder to paint than they look! Luckily it was acrylic and just gets more interesting as texture builds with the new layers... To see it in person, go to Intermezzo Gallery and Studios, it is two houses behind Bear Moon Bakery in Boerne (next to KIss The Cook).

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

I get by, with a little help from my friends

We are back from our National Park vacation (insert laugh track here) and I reviewed the painting along with some notes from friends. It helps a lot to take some time away from an almost done painting.
Then I added some browns in the background (thanks Gail!) and some shadows on the rocks (Thanks Jan, although I have to admit that they went through another baked potato phase on the way to where they are now) and I posted a much larger photo (thanks go out to my brand new etsy friend, Lawrence.)
"Cypress Cascade" is done and I like it!
It will be centrally located in my upcoming (Friday Nov. 1) show opening at the Fredericksburg Art Guild, but you can stop in and visit it there any time during November.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Dots!

Dots!

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Connecting parts of the painting...

Back to the top half of the painting: I have softened the roots of the nearest cypress and I like the way it looks, so I think I will do that to them all.  A few slim tree trunks in the background make it look less abstract and their reflections in the water connects the background to the still water.  My painting buddy says that I need more browns in the background and I think that I agree.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Here is my plan: dots!

I started the rocks over completely and have added more colors in the water that runs over the steps and rushes on the right.  I'm much happier with the rocks.  I am layering and layering.
Foam is starting to become a focus at this point.  It is white, but it has a lot of tiny little shadows and reflections that pick up every color around it.  Here is my plan: dots, dots and more dots!

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Too much dark green!

I needed more darks in the rushing water on the right, so tried some very dark blue-green.  Too much!  I'm going to have to layer some light stuff on top so that only bits of that end up peeping thru.  Also, is it just me, or do the rocks look a little more like baked potatoes than hill country limestone?

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

How will I know when it is right?

Back to the top half of the painting...  At this point, I am just dabbing randomly at the background, trying to get the right balance of greens with yellow peeping through.  How will I know when it is the right balance?  When no blob of color jumps out at me as being too strong or too sharp edged.  I hope.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Still water is easy. Rushing water is hard.

Lots more colors are going into the water at this point.  Still water is easy.  Rushing water is hard.  All you can do is stare at it for a long time and then put on some of the colors that you think you see.  Then go away and empty the dishwasher or something.  Then come back and look at it again.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

So I add some stronger colors in the cypress roots, the rocks (which were looking like baked potatoes) and the falling water.  Probably too much, but that is how acrylics work for me: I get things too strong, then I tame them down, then they get too tame, so I punch up the color, then they are too strong again...  You get the cycle.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

When I am not sure what to do next, I put the painting next to the photo and compare.  YOWZA!  I am not shooting for photorealism here, but the colors sure do need work...

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Starting to look real

It is starting to look like a real stream...

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Beginning the rushing water

It is going to take a lot of layers of a lot of colors to get that rushing water to make me happy...  Here is the very beginning.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Base colors on cypress roots and starting down the cascade with some blues...

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

river

Laying in the creek....

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art 

www.TexashillCountryArt.etsy.com

Big and Acrylic!

I'm happy with the small watercolor sketch, but for the painting I am going big and acrylic.  I think that I will need the flexibility of being able to paint layer after layer till the shift from one color to the next is just right. 
I have been experimenting with using a palette knife instead of a paintbrush and think that this painting will be a good application.  So, I started with my favorite part - the background.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

First step, a 5x7 watercolor sketch...

First step, a 5x7 watercolor sketch... 

I did not like the look of the messy tiny roots in the cascade, so I have replaced them with rocks... 

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Cypress Cascade photo inspires a new painting

I fell in love with the composition of this photo - especially the light shining through the trees in the background. I also love the way the water changes from flat calm to a rushing cascade and the knotty intricacies of the cypress roots.
I took this photo at the Cibolo Nature Center in Boerne.
Journey along with me as I paint this...

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Doodle Shoes!

My new Doodle Shoes!
I bought canvas tennis on sale and decided that it was going to be too hard to keep them white, so I doodled.  First with Elmer's gel glue, which is a great masque to protect the white.  I added a watery coat of blue acrylic paint.  After that was dry, I scrubbed off the glue, then I just went crazy with a sharpie till it looked done.
Expect to see me wearing them any time I am feeling like an artist.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Bluebonnet macro complete

Finished at last:  Pat, start watching your mailbox!

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Bluer blues

Pat asked for bold blues, so I am making my way around this painting, on the every other petal method, adding more cobalt blue.  I use a black and white photo to decide where to darken things up a bit.  I use my fingers a lot to smear the edges, so that they don't look like brushstrokes.  I am also dotting and smearing in some of the light areas that are too light right now.  Can you tell which petals are done and which are not?

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Crazy end to the day

Watercolor demo update: I started painting outside again, then it started to rain again and I moved everything back inside. Good thing, too, as I noticed a roof leak and was able to have our maintenance man take a look at it. But that does... not get my painting done any faster.... It is the Art Guild closing time now, and I have a meeting to get to in Boerne, so I will wrap up for the day. The first layer is complete on the blues and I added some shadows in the white centers, plus browninsh green on the stems. Next will be more blue on the flowers to make them bolder and to smooth out the light to dark transitions.   After that, I will try to figure out why these photos look vertical when I select them and come out horizontal when I post them.  I hope you don't have a crick in your neck from looking at them!
Nan Henke
Fredericksburg Art Guild,
Facebook: Nan Henke - Texas Hill Country Art
www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Pat asked for strong bright blue flowers, so I chose my favorite, cobalt blue. I paint one section of a floret at a time with a blue wash, then dab off where the blue needs to be a little lighter and drop in more c...olor where it needs to be a little stronger. I try to not paint a section that touches one where I have already painted, but as you can see, I messed up on one of these. I had to be very careful to make sure that one did not flow into the other. Even though they are the same color, the dampness from the newer section can cause a "cauliflower" in the older section that is not quite dry.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Get that masque off!

OK, the background paint is dry.  So I tore off the wax paper, then went outside on the porch to rub off the masque.   Outside is nice because you can listen to the rain on the tin roof, but also because you don't have to worry about cleaning up all the tiny bits of masque that fly off as you work.  as you can see, the background does not perfectly fit the initial drawing.  That is OK.  Wherever the background ends is now officially where the flower begins. 

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

a "Free" (wet on wet) background

I had to bring everything inside, as it is raining steadily now. Yay for the beautiful Texas Hill Country!

Pat, the future owner of this painting, had requested greens with some touches of color for the background.... So I got the whole background so wet that it did not drip, but you could see water glistening all over it, then dropped in some reds and yellows. After they moved around a bit, I started filling in with sap green. Where it seemed like too much green, I added some quinacrodone gold, the color that makes every other color look more interesting! Then I thought that the whole thing was getting too strongly colored, so I dabbed some off with a paper towel. I always like the way random dabbing changes things.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Wait for it to dry

The edges have all been sealed, now I we wait for it to dry. That sounds like an inside task today. So I will be outside for a little while, painting some small demos for the hoards of people who decided to spend their day on our rainy porch!

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com



2nd step

2nd step is to prepare for painting the background by protecting the flower areas. For this painting, I am tracing and cutting a piece of wax paper which I will "glue" down to the paper with masquing fluid. It is a lot easier than using masquing fluid (think rubber cement) over the whole thing. Last week I got a blister on my thumb taking off masquing fluid!

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Art Guild watercolor demo update: first step is the drawing. I draw with water color pencils, so that the pencil marks will later be "eaten" by the paint. I fold the photo in 8 sections and draw one section at a time because it is less overwhelming that way. 

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Pat's Bluebonnet

Pat's Bluebonnet: I set up outside on the Fredericksburg Art Guild's front porch, despite the overcast, drippy day.  Today I am the docent on duty and I hope for some marathon painting time in between visitors!

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Bluebonnet background thoughts

Here are a couple of tiny watercolor sketches that I did to experiment with backgrounds.  I'm leaning toward the style on the left and Pat says, "I would like (if you think so,... you're the artist!) some color... maybe bits of green or a distant red... ???"

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Bluebonnets very close up

Pat likes the image on my Bluebonnet Close-up greeting card, but wants a painting in a portrait (vertical) format.  This is the photo that she chose for her commissioned watercolor painting.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com



I finished Michele's Bluebonnet and Indian Paintbrush today, and I love the way it turned out.  I hope she does too.  All it took was removing the masque from the bluebonnets and adding some small details.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Almost time to take off the masque and see what whites add to this brilliant bloom trio!

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

More progress with the every-othe-petal method, now including the coral to red variations of the main Indian Paintbrush petals.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Rather than finish the bluebonnet, I have moved to the tiny hot pink sections of the Indian Paintbrush.  Watercolor must be VERY dry before you paint some more right next to it, so I use an every-other-petal pattern when I paint wildflowers.  This keeps the colors from mixing or from creating a "blossom" or "cauliflower" where one color drifts into the same color next to it.  I also like this method, because as I continue to mix up small batches of color, they all come out a little different, so there is great serendipitous variety in the petals.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

I had a great Paint Day with my best Paint Friend yesterday, so made some good progress on Michele's commissioned Bluebonnet and Indian Paintbrush.  A sketch, masque, dark green lower background, then a "wet" lighter mix of yellow and green for the upper background.  Last photo shows some blues starting to fill in on the bluebonnet.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt

 

photos for art

When someone commissions a painting based on an existing piece of art ("I want something like that") I still have to find a reference photo, because working from another painting is an invitation to lifelessness in art.  But the Bluebonnet and Indian Paintbrush photo seems to be long gone.  Or maybe it predates my digital files and I am unwilling to sift through boxes... 
So I hunted for a great new photo with both of those flowers and did not find one.  If I can't take a really fabulous one in the next few days (thank goodness they are both in bloom!) then I will need to combine two shots.  On the top are the current candidates.  But one is more of a close-up than the other and the light comes from different directions.  So on the bottom, you will see that I have flipped and shrunk the Indian Paintbrush.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Just for fun

Just for fun: I did a tiny watercolor portrait of my sister-in-law, close up!  When I told her I would make her a 16x20 painting for a birthday/housewarming gift, she wanted it reproduced in acrylic, with her favorite lipstick color and the shadow of her lips in Sherwin Williams Radish Red, to match the room paint!
Next on the agenda, some wildflowers, finally!  I will be doing a small commissioned Bluebonnet and Indian Paintbrush.  Stay tuned for details!

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

One more flower on the right for balance, then thier masque comes off too.  Some details on the flowers and a ton of work on those little rods and buttons that had been masqued out on the saxaphone itself.
If you are in south central Texas, go to the Fredericksburg Art Guild this weekend to see this painting as part of their Rythem and Blues April show.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TExasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Have I mentioned my new respect for anyone who can play a saxaphone?

Several layers of color on the sax, then the masque comes off!  And the bluebonnets go in the horn.  Have I mentioned my new respect for anyone who can play a saxaphone?  They are chock full of little buttons and tabs and tiny arms that attach to flapping hole covers.  It took me a long time to get all the details on this.  I can't imagine learning to play one. (like my sweetie, Doyle does!)

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

This is going to move fast because I am up against a deadline. Luckily, time has been set aside, because I knew it was coming.
First step is a sketch, some blue shadows and a LOT of masque. some is the liquid you have seen me use before... and some is a special tape that has been cut to the right width for the many metal bars that adorn a saxaphone.
Second step is a layer of the lightest color (other than white) that I can see in the metal of the saxaphone: pale yellow.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Have you got the Springtime Blues?

One of Paula's Facebook thoughts was pretty close to what I was toying with for the April focus at the Art Guild, so I went ahead and did a couple of ACEO (baseball card sized) studies for something I call Springtime Blues. There won't be room for a subtitle, but in my head the subtitle is, "It is hard to work up a good case of the blues during spring in Texas!"
 Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

That magic moment

Some softening around the previously masques areas plus just a touch on Mr. Bunny's eye and it is that magic time: the moment when I whisper to myself, "If I touch this once more, I am going to screw it up for sure!"  And so, the painting is done.  It gets signed, branded, photographed, packaged, sealed and mailed in short order.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

As promised, layers of bunny-ness create shape and texture with black, then red, grey and brown.  I had a lot of time today for layering and drying.  Next step (you guessed it,) is "off with the masque."  Warning: now that the bunny is starting to look soft, the masque will leave behind some temporary harsh edges.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

A layer of pink (!) goes over about 90% of the bunny.  But don't worry, future layers will start giving him a brown coat.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Suprise!

Once the masque is off, the next step is a SUPRISE:  it is putting masque back on!  This time it is just a tiny bit to protect the white around the bunny's eye, along the edge of the ear, the hilight in the pupil, and some light edges on the tower.
Then we start to build the colors in the bunny and tower, starting with the lightest, a base layer of light gold.  Figuring out which bits of the tower were the back legs and needed a darker base color was my intellectual exercise of the day.  But it will be worth it to have the tower appear three dimensional, instead of just a mass of wires and metal leaves.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt

The worst moment

It always looks worst just before you take the masque off: too loud, busy and smeary.
 Here is the "after" photo:

Oh yes, much better!  You can even pick up on some stems near the bottom.
I think I will soften a few hard lines and add a few more details, but overall, the background of lettuces is finished and it is time to move on to the bunny and the tower.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Peggy voted for more detail. So the next step is masque again, this time to protect the colors I have already painted. Some lines for stems, and some leaf shapes in the lighter areas, just to keep me from going too far overboard with darker details!
You can see that the new masque is white and clear, and the old masque (still needed) is gold.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Purple Lettuce

I painted the sky and purple lettuce first, then after they were totally dry, I went back in with the light green and darker green lettuces.  It does not matter as much if the greens overlap a bit.  I painted the lightest shade of each color first, then bled in the darker bits, wet on wet.
I am trying to decide if I want to leave them with this soft look or add more detail in a later step...  Any input?

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

BAck on track

I am back on track with a better sketch. I added masque to the bunny and the tower so that I could wash in the background loosely. It is kind of like rubber cement and will come off later to reveal the clean paper underneath.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com