Imaginary Trip to Paris – part quatre

Our pretend trip continues! And I continue to learn new watercolor techniques… and crash and burn a few times along the way.  For the 4th week of our trip, we focused on “day to day life”, and city scapes.

For our day to day life, we were given a great assortment of doors to paint – kind of a “common man” type door.  I was really drawn to a picture of a doorway on a balcony. There were flowers hanging off the wrought-iron balcony that called my name. I used a gazillion colors in this one too… which I happen to think worked well this time.

The picture below shows my journal entry after I made changes suggested by our teacher. I added shadows under the balcony, some shadows on the outer edges of the shutters, and darkened the windows of the doors.

The next project was our city scape. I found a terrific Creative Commons licensed image by Nick Smarto on Flickr.  My first attempt did not do his photo justice.  I started with a limited palette and instead of sticking with it, I just kept adding more colors… There was also a small building in the lower left of the photo that I liked, but I think it detracts from my painting. And don’t even look at the little Eiffel Tower – it’s crooked! Eeeek!

At this point I was disappointed… there was no “city scape” – only two crooked columns and two sad little buildings in the distance. This was not at all what our goal was for this stop during our pretend trip.

I tried again. Although the columns were crooked in the original photo (looking upward), I decided to straighten them. I also removed the building on the left (Sacre Couer?) and keep the colors to a minimal.  In the original photo things looked sepia-ish, so I tried to recreate that by using only WN VanDyke Brown with a touch of French Ultramarine Blue. I added some Burnt Sienna as highlights.  All the ink work was done with a brown ultra-fine Sharpie Marker.

I’m much happier with this “city scape” and very glad I tried again.

 

Imaginary Paris Trip continues, part trois

Day Six. This was a fabulous project. I found, with the help of Laure’s (our teacher) previous lessons, I’m no longer afraid to try and paint people! I feel like a whole new world of painting possibilities have opened to me.

This is my photo reference from Flickr, CC licensed for modification and commercial use (original photo by m-louis here).

I timed my sketch and it took 12 minutes. You can sure see the division lines I used to draw the bike rider!

The ink work took about 10 minutes – thank goodness my kneaded eraser removes all those pencil lines so well.

I have no idea how long the painting took. 30-40 minutes? I lost all track of time and even forgot to drink my mocha – how cool is that! I was totally immersed in the project – I LOVE IT.

I was grabbing colors from my palette without too much thought, but I like the results. I used a lot of Neutral Tint (never used it much before, but it’s becoming one of my “go-to” paints), DS Garnet Genuine, Cerulean Blue, a touch of Burnt Sienna and Hansa Yellow Light.

Help! Should I add the spokes of the bike wheels? Should I try to add some tiny little people on the paved path that goes under the bridge? And what about the foot pedal thingie (all technical, I know – ha ha ha)?

…I can already read Laure’s suggestions: put some shadows under those bike wheels!

And the project before this one?  Can I just say that, well, the wheels fell off?  We were in Versailles – and wow, I had NO CLUE how GIGANTIC it is!  All I knew was Versailles = Peace Treaty at the end of WW I.  If you haven’t seen it, just go to Google maps and search for it and take an aerial view.  Amazing.  A must see just to wander around.

But… our Imaginary Trip project was to go inside the Palace at Versailles (can you say “over the top opulence”?), find one of the paintings there, and paint The Painting. Eeeeeeeeek! Talk about raising my stress level!  I looked around and around the palace interior and could not find a painting that interested me!  Oh no… here we go again… I went “rogue” and did not follow our instructions.  Instead… I decided that what interested me within the palace were the picture frames… not the pictures themselves.

I searched and searched the internet for images that were Creative Commons licensed for reuse… but could not find any of picture frames in Versailles.  Finally I found a framd picture that had good licensing, and was interesting, and even though it was not from Versailles, at least it had the right feel.

Here’s the Flickr photo (by Lara604), original image here.

My sketch is here – took no time at all, which is probably obvious!

Next, paint. I decided to use just Quin Gold Deep and Quin Gold. But after I started it was just too boring, so I experimented with some complimentary colors and settled on Winsor Violet. I could also hear our teacher in my mind saying “make the darks darker” so I did. Here’s my painting, probably took 20 minutes to add the color.

I am not happy with this, but I’m telling myself it’s all good. And perhaps this is an exercise in how to deal with a journal entry that’s not at all what I pictured in my mind:

Ok ok ok… I couldn’t stand this painting. So I went back, added the “sides” of the frame and some background colors. If nothing else, it’s BRIGHT!

 

Paris Trip Continues – part deaux

I had so much fun figuring out at least a tiny bit how to draw figures, that I had another go at it.  I searched Flickr for a Creative Commons licensed image I would use and found this, by Sue Elias.  Click here for the original image.

Some of the things we’re trying to learn in class (oh – wait, “on our trip”) is to figure out what really draws us into the scene – what is the “gotcha”.  After that, we pare down the things that don’t help emphasize our focal point.  Then it’s edit, play with colors, rearrange things, etc. I was really drawn to the lovers in the upper left corner – and the contrast between them and the soldier. The light post was a bonus. Add in the lady (aghast?) to the right of the soldier and I had it.  Here’s my pencil and then inked sketch:

And my painting (remember, we’re on a trip so all of this has to be pretty fast!):

 

My Imaginary Trip to Paris!

Yup. I’m on an imaginary trip… to Paris.  I found this terrific idea on a website – taking a ‘pretend’ trip – so that I could practice journaling AND watercolor painting while in Paris.  Other trips are possible; the website is here.

While packing (!), I had to figure out my supplies, so my first journal entry was a painting of my palette – which I’m sure I’ll use a lot as sometimes I cannot figure out which color is which, by just looking at them.

Our first day in Paris was at the Pere Lachaise Cemetery which seemed an odd place to start a trip – but wow – LOTS of ideas for journaling.  Our teacher provided written instructions, a nice long video (!) and sample pics we could use as references. We’re also allowed to use pictures off the web IF we have the creator’s permission or the pictures have Creative Commons licensing.  I used a photo reference from Flickr, by L-Plate Big Cheese (hey, I could not make that up).  Here’s a link to the original photo.  And below is my painted version:

 

After the long walk in the cemetery we all stopped for pastries. Again our instructor provided a great video, sample photos for references, and some “rules” (time limits, color limitations, etc.) for making our journal entry. Below is my picture showing tea, macaron cookies, and a statue from the cemetery:

The next stop? A streetside cafe. This one was interesting because we all cruised through Google Street View to find inspiration.  Honestly… I looked through Flickr “CC” images first… then found the location in Google Street View, but fell back on the Flickr image as my reference.  Here is the original Flickr image by Metamarist.  Before you look at my version below and the wonderful original image, please note (!) that my idea was to super simplify the image, use few colors, and to move the waiter so he was next to the lady in red. Below is my version (I still need to add some text!)

And our current lesson! Eeeeek! Painting people!  The lesson above was just me, splashing paint around, but now I get to learn how to do it right!  Can’t wait… Our teacher again provided instructions, photo references and another well-done video. I used our teacher’s instructions and started sketching a little, using two images by zoetnet on Flickr as references:

And here’s my finished experiment (notice that the young lady has lost weight, while the young man has gained!). I redrew all of them on a separate sheet of 140 lb. watercolor paper in my journal.