The Most Important Step of All

The final step is the most important. After adding more color to the hill on the left and smoothing out some color on the mountains to the right, I did the most difficult thing in the entire painting process: I asked a trusted artist frien...d what she saw when she looked at the picture.

Her response suprised me. "Is it supposed to be raining?" she said. I looked at the painting again. Sure enough, my fog covered ocean had the verticals streaks of a rainstorm at sea. Using a top secret technique (it involves the kitchen sink and a big sturdy brush named "Mike" after Crocodile Dundee's knife) I gently scrubbed away the rain and left a smooth transition from sea to fog and clouds.

I don't always follow my trusted artist friend's recommendations, but that is why she is trusted. It is OK with both of us when we disagree.

I hope that you have a friend like that.

Stay tuned for my next painting. I have taken thousands of wildflower photos in the last month, so I suspect that the topic may lie there!

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Making Fine Lines in Watercolor

When there are very dark lines in a photo, like the rock outcroppings on the hill to the left or in the half circles surrounding the tiny waterfalls, I will sometimes use a sharpie. But for this painting, I wanted to be 100% watercolor, so... I took the time to learn to use an old fashioned ink pen dipped in concentrated watercolor that comes in an ink bottle. As usual, I had trouble with the standard process and made up my own: using an eyedropper to put a drop of ink on hole in the pen nib before scratching it across the paper.
The pen gave me lots of nice dark squiggly rock lines and branches but it also made me wonder about the patience of the generations of folks who wrote with these cussed tools! They drag and skip and go dry and then dump all of their ink at once...

 

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexashIllCountryArt.etsy.com

Glazing

Glazing is a watercolor term that means adding a layer of paint over one that has already dried.  It is tricky, because if you have too much water and not enough pigment on your brush, you will wash away the first layer instead of adding to it.  I have done that a lot!  In this photo, you can see that darker greens have been added in many places to create shape and add depth.  Some browns were also added to draw your eye to the ridges in the valley, shadows and the branchy bits of brush. 
I use the black and white photographs that I showed you in the beginning of this process to decide where to do more glazing.  It is hard for me to see all of the variations in the color photo of this beautiful valley, but when I look at the enhanced black and white versions of the photo, I can easily see what are the lightest and darkest bits.  And of course, some places I glaze on more color just because my head tells me to!  Or maybe it is my artist's eye talking,  I am never sure!!!
Nan Henke
Texas Hill Country Art
www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Adding the greens

I'm still painting!  I just have not had much internet access lately...  
Here I have added the greens: different ones for the distant ridge, the ravines running down to the tiny waterfalls, the hill on the left and the bushes that drop away behind the ones in the foreground.   Then the dabbled green leaves on the bushes are all sorts of different greens because they look different depending on how much light or shade each one gets.   A little green grass and red-ochre (classic Kauai!) dirt in the foreground and it is time to let it dry a bit! 
Some people think that, since the paper now has paint all over it, I must be close to done.  Not true!  The next steps are the difficult ones, adding depth and detail without overdoing it.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Start with the lightest colors

In watercolor, you can always darken things that don't turn out right the first time,  but it is next to impossible to make them lighter.  That is why I am starting with the whites and yellows. 
First I applied a tiny bit of masque (like rubber cement) to protect the white of the paper in the tiny bits of surf and two waterfalls.  Next a lemon yellow on the ridges coming down from the right edge of the painting, then a more golden yellow on the tips of the bushes in the foreground.  But right now they just look like dots, floating in space!
The next step is a misty cobalt blue sea that drifts into a cerulean blue sky.  It was painted with a lot of water and a lot of dabbing away where there was either too much blue or too much water. 
Finally, some browns and greens in the valley and the foreground and it is time to let this stage thoroughly dry.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Na Pali Coast from the Kalalau Valley: a start

I start by making a sketch with watercolor pencils.  That way the pencil marks will be washed away by the watercolor as I paint.  I used to be terrible at drawing.  I had to draw a light grid on my paper and a matching grid on my photograph, then try to sketch what was within each square on the grid.  Erasing the grid was always difficult, but critical to fooling people into thinking that I could draw!  I also used a projector and many other drawing aids. 
The good news is that, even with aids, the more you draw, the better you get.  So now I use a variation on the grid method: I fold the photo into 16 squares and I put dots on the drawing paper where the corners of the squares would be.   Then I draw the main lines of what I see in each square and VOILA! a rough outline of the scene appears.
A photo like this has a million details and I need to choose only the few that will make it to the final painting.  The lines of the mountains, the two waterfalls, the tiny bit of surf, the places where Kauai's famous red-brown dirt shows, and of course a suggestion of the foliage.  Some on the right above the waterfalls is almost a lemon yellow.  The tips of the bushes in the foreground are a slightly golder yellow.  The bushes are represended on the drawing merely with little circles showing where the yellow tips fall.
The background is unusual in that the sea has fog in the distance and no horizon shows.  I put in some dotted blue lines to give me a clue as to where the blue and the white meet, but I think I will need to erase 90% of those lines or they will show thru the painting.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

I'm ready for a vacation

I'm ready for a vacation, how about you? But nothing is on the calendar right now, so I am living off the vacation photos that other folks post on facebook. Here is a favorite from Kauai, and the couple who posted it just gave me permission to paint it! So my first step is to look at it in black and white, with the contrast high and the brightness all the way to light, then dark. This is reall...y helpful in teaching my eye to see the details and the variations, the pattern within those jungle covered hills. Can you see two small waterfalls on the right?
I also posterized the photo to see what details that might reveal. All of this will help me to decide how much detail to put into the painting. Stay tuned for more steps!

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com