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Archive for February, 2008

Book Review: Marine Life with Wyland - a Walter Foster How To Book

February 10, 2008 at 10:32 am · Filed under Books

Yesterday I bought a Walter Foster book “Marine Life with Wyland” … in reading it, he paints using acrylics, not watercolors … BUT …. just because a book is about a specific medium such as acrylics, oils or watercolors does not mean it is written in stone that you can only use it for those particular painting mediums.

One thing in particular I like about this book are the insights into viewpoints (angles if you will) … anyone who loves seascapes, dolphins and whales and other sea life has probably seen his artwork from Fine art Prints to puzzles at the local toy store. His viewpoint in his paintings are always just a bit different form the expected … his above and below sea approach is quite extraordinary and quite well done - he is not just another marine painter but one of the best if not the best. Artists painting in every medium use viewpoints to highlight their focus and focal points … perspective and composition are two key components of any painting but I believe viewpoint is just as important if not more important for a successful painting.

Someone told me once that perspective includes using viewing angles … well … perhaps …. but usually it appears to me to be used for the background viewing angles of getting proportions rights to be realistic. Many of my seascapes without shoreline or coastline showing at the bottom really bothers some people .. I believe it makes them feel adrift in a moving sea far from the safety of land and being where the rules are just a bit different from their daily expected even keel horizon - they do not verbalize or even realize that that is why they either really like them or really dislike them.

My viewpoint for most of those is not straight dead ahead one-to-one eyeball to eyeball expected placement viewpoint in the foreground. I didn’t realize until reading this book that I have a tendency to paint the viewpoint a bit unexpectedly - it does make people notice and feel … … I give this book a 10 on a scale of 1-10 just as I do to Mr Wyland’s artwork - I love his paintings!

When planning / sketching / painting your watercolor paintings, think about changing the viewing angle from your normal to a bit above, below or to the side to bring in some unexpected viewing angles. A 2 ft child sees the world from a much different angle than a 6 ft adult … add a child’s view looking upwards or an adult’s looking downward - I don’t advise extremes unless it really fits into the scene but it will help you to gain new perspective in your work just to attempt it and watercolor is an easy medium to look for those angles if you use watercolor pencils to create a preliminary sketch. Think about being on a cliff above a meadow or seaside or at the bottom of a canyon perhaps looking up to the rim as well for those extremes.

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Broken Watercolor Crayon to Spray Bottle of Watercolor Experiment

February 8, 2008 at 9:09 pm · Filed under Watercolor How-To Articles

Did you miss Using Broken Watercolor Crayons?

The spray bottle of water holds 2 ounces of water. I had filled it nearly full of water but not quite before I put the half a watercolor crayon inside. It sat there undisturbed until tonite. I shook it up - it was a lovely dark shade of blue before and after shaking it - I could not see through it to tell if all of the crayon had dissolved or not which seemed like a good thing - I held it up to the light and it was not see through at all.

I got out one of the watercolor canvas sheets and started spraying the colored water on it - it did splatter nicely … except I did not have enough paper toweling around the edges so my drawing table got a coat of blue spray watercolor too …

It was a nice light blue with dark blue splatter spots the first coat - the more I sprayed, the darker it got. I basically sprayed a lot on the entire canvas sheet … it looks like I have about a half a bottle of liquid left so I must have sprayed one ounce on the 9″ x 12″ watercolor canvas sheet … it lake puddled in a couple places or so … I let it sit that way while I went and got a paper towel then I lifted the entire wet off and what was left was a very nice light blue that will work quite well as a background for a seascape … a little bit of color and spots sort of nicely placed … I basically sort of stained the canvas sheet in very nice light blue splotches when I was finished.

If I had done this with watercolor paper … I might have had a lake all over the floor and the drawing table … the puddled water just sat there on the canvas sheet … the buckling was just enough to make it hold the sopping wet color [I knew before leaving it that it was not going to run all over the place - I had paper towels right there but I have a different texture of them in the kitchen so I was prepared in advance to mop quickly if I needed to do so!]

This experiment reminded me of when I was a kid with a box full of broken crayons … my grandmother would help me to melt them with wax to make candles out of them - she handled the hot pan and did the pouring into the candle molds with wicks … coloring the candle wax was a lot of fun for me … and perhaps that is where and how I got my adventurous spirit for trying different things in the arts and crafts world.

For my grandmother, it was a matter of waste not - she had been through the Depression so she squeezed every last drop of usable anything from everything. I didn’t have the same viewpoint … it was more like chemistry experiments to me.