Skin in Watercolor

A simple sketch to study skin color temperature.

Boy in Watercolor

After the Snow Storm

Winter snow storms are a beautiful but difficult subject to paint in watercolor and gouache.

Afternoon after the Snow Storm

Beautiful French Countryside

This is one of those beautiful motifs you find everywhere in France.

Midday Sun. French Countryside.

Charcoal Sketches

Some sketches of bird behaviors.

Green heron with the catch

Sittelle torchepot about to fly.

Landscape in Gouache

A view of one of the beautiful barns you often see in Vermont's countryside, USA.

Vermont Sunshine

A Winter Scene

Snow storm in Nordic Europe. Gouache on paper.

After the Storm

Sunlight Drama

Landscape sketch on cardboard coated with acrylic gesso.

Reflections

Windmill Without Sweeps

Another gouache landscape on newsprint paper. The paper is very fragile but offers a beautiful texture to work with and it forces me to paint with  the utmost economy of brush strokes.

Windmill, Stockholm, Sweden

Sea Man

A charcoal drawing captured with carefully placed marks made with the side of the pencil and a few lines. To achieve the likeness the sketch must be observed at a distance.

Man under the Sun. Suez Canal, Egypt.

Buryatian Forest

A scene in gouache on gesso-coated paper.

Morning in the Forest

People in the Streets

I think the purpose of sketching people should be -aside from practicing mechanical skills and keeping the proportions- to capture the particular essence of the form in that moment in time; the "Gestalt" if you will.

Simple Sketches in Charcoal

Its Autumn But Winter is Coming!

A 35-min. sketch on mixed-media paper. Winter is coming!

Frozen Winter by the River

Sunny Scene

In honor of the Buryatian artist Bato Dugarzhapo. This is an attempt to imitate one of his paintings and wonderfully free style using gouache on watercolor paper.

Sunny by the Beach

Wilderness landscape

Invention based of several of my photographic references.

Wilderness Invention

Autumn Sketching

Here is a quick sketch with gouache experimenting with watercolor paper primed with gesso. The colors stay on the surface and remain more vivid. This surface is ideal for wet-on-wet techniques.

Misty Autumn Day

Watercolor and Goauche Potential

In this painting the clouds are carved out of the negative space following the traditional watercolor process. The background forest on the other hand, was worked out by painting it with opaque gouache.

Sheep Paradise in Norway.

An Small Sketch

This painting was made with a palette knife and thick gouache.

4 x 3 in. Sketch

Sketching with Light Watercolor Washes on Newsprint Paper

A simple sketch with watercolor and charcoal in a brown-green color harmony.

Time Textured Barn

Hills and Storm, South Wales.

Small painting in gouache on paper.

Afternoon Storm

Snow in Watercolor

Snow is typically rendered with cool blues in the shadow and warm ochres in the light areas. Here is an example painted with watercolor and some touches of gouache.

Sunny and Cold

Peaceful Pond

Romantic landscape of late afternoon. Gouache and watercolor.

Tree Groves and a Pond

Sharp Edges Sketch

An example of a quick gouache sketch with sharp edges.

Noon Sun in Luberon

Blue -Magenta Harmony

Dry-brush styled impressionistic landscape in gouache on watercolor paper. The blues and magentas are the dominant colors while the yellow complementary was used sparingly.

Changing Weather

Controlling the Values

To give the impression of full sunlight, values must be carefully balanced.

Noon at the Edge of Town

Impressionist Landscape

An example of a quasi-abstract painting. Media: Gouache on watercolor paper.

Sunset Abstraction

Working On Installing The Walney Wind Farm

Barges and ships working on an offshore wind farm.

Barrow in Furness, Cumbria, UK

Gray-scale Watercolor Painting

This is the result of a short demonstration painting for the Vista Painting Club. I used  the sketch in my previous blog entry as a reference.

Dusk

Another Treeline Scene

The compression of values in the shadow area made it interesting to paint. Gouache on watercolor paper.

Sunset by the Meadows

Forest Landscape in Oil

This is a 20x16 in. painting, using oil on 100% polyester canvas.

Duck in the Pond

Color Sketch

Another gouache painting on mixed-media paper. This is a horizontal composition suggesting restfulness.

Little Red Barn

Charcoal Sketch on Gesso-Primed Paper

In this sketch I used cold-press watercolor paper coated with a light coat of gesso to pull some texture in the drawing.

The Mill and the Storm

Sketching with Abstract Shapes

In this kind of sketching the form emerges from the careful placement of abstract shapes.

Rainy Day Shopping

3-Colors Notans

Some examples of 3-color notans as explorations for a painting. Gouache on watercolor paper.

Scranton, Pennsylvania

I have included the notan [with notes] of the painting so you could have an idea of my thinking process in balancing the composition. Squinting helps you see how closely I followed the notan.

Gouache on watercolor paper. Historical painting based on the development of Scranton area, circa 1959.

Sketching People

High-contrast scene in watercolor on paper.

Into the Alley

3-Step and 4-Step Notans

Notans are useful for more than just practicing sketching or for getting familiar with the potential subject of a final painting. Notans can be a serious tool for exploration and focusing your creative skill so as to maximize the abstract beauty and pleasantness of the final work of art. 

Black and white notans can give you a global idea of a good or weak composition. Notans are an essential step in simplifying the application of the rules of composition to the subject. Being very small, notans make it easy to see where we need to improve the composition within the borders. If the abstract masses seen to interplay together well, being in balance and creating interesting shapes and patterns, then there is a good chance that the final artwork will keep a strong design until finished. To this end, squinting enables the artist evaluate how close the painting is to the notan in its global value range.

The 3-step notan is used for studying the distribution and balance of the forms in the shadow zone. It is up to the artist to modify the shadow values to create different moods in the painting. The simple 3-step notan is appropriate for most dark scenes. Sunset scenes fall in this category.

 The 4-step notan quickly lets you see additional elements of the design in the light zone. Good for sunny scenes with lots of contrast that usually have less dark values. Notice how this is true when you are painting the sunny side of buildings in a cityscape

In my private classes I teach step-by-step how to transfer the approved [design] concepts in the notan into the final painting. Once the color harmony has been chosen, the notan helps as a general guide for color mixing and keeping the correct color values within the light and shadow zones of the painting. That will make for a better painting!

3-Step and 4-step Value Notans