Painting water that isn't blue
Mar. 30th, 2012 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
corvideyeI did this painting last August, just hadn't gotten around to scanning and posting it. I was camping on the south McKenzie for a long enough stint that I could spend a few hours doing a real plein aire painting. I had been pondering for a while that one's programmed instinct is to depict water as blue--but the river up there isn't blue at all. It's crystal clear, and the rocks beneath the water are mostly gray-green or rust-colored, while the depths take on a green tinge. So how to paint that without it looking murky and dull? That was my experiment.
This was a good learning exercise for me in many ways. For one thing, I tend to be more interested in depicting figures than backgrounds, but in recent years I've been grappling with some concepts of color and lighting and with the desire to paint complete scenes with directional light instead of just isolated figures of interest in objective color. So a river/landscape isn't something I would normally set out to paint. I also may not have ever done 1. a complete painting (not a sketch; not a drawing) of 2. this type of outdoor scene 3. in situ (not from a photo or imagination).
(click to see the whole thing)
Given all that, I was fairly happy with how it turned out. It took me three hours. I deliberately chose to paint a section of river that didn't have any really striking features of distinctive rocks or trees; the painting would have to work in terms of my rendering of light and color, not because of dramatic composition. And I would not use any pure blue.
If anything, I went a little too far to the green side, vs. the more muted gray-green, but I really didn't want it to be murky. The rocks got a little too yellow, I didn't entirely capture the translucence, but I feel it was a good effort. I used Yarka's cheap yet wonderful semi-moist watercolors plus a little opaque white, on a cheap 7x10 watercolor tablet.
For reference, here is a photo of approximately the stretch I was looking at, though the light had changed a little, and of course I simplified the background. (I did not paint from the photo, I just took it for later comparison). The photo doesn't really convey how much movement was in the water.
And here's a closeup of the water. Not easy to paint!
This was probably also good for me in another way... I've been noticing that left to my own devices, I really don't use green much in my artwork!
This was a good learning exercise for me in many ways. For one thing, I tend to be more interested in depicting figures than backgrounds, but in recent years I've been grappling with some concepts of color and lighting and with the desire to paint complete scenes with directional light instead of just isolated figures of interest in objective color. So a river/landscape isn't something I would normally set out to paint. I also may not have ever done 1. a complete painting (not a sketch; not a drawing) of 2. this type of outdoor scene 3. in situ (not from a photo or imagination).
(click to see the whole thing)
Given all that, I was fairly happy with how it turned out. It took me three hours. I deliberately chose to paint a section of river that didn't have any really striking features of distinctive rocks or trees; the painting would have to work in terms of my rendering of light and color, not because of dramatic composition. And I would not use any pure blue.
If anything, I went a little too far to the green side, vs. the more muted gray-green, but I really didn't want it to be murky. The rocks got a little too yellow, I didn't entirely capture the translucence, but I feel it was a good effort. I used Yarka's cheap yet wonderful semi-moist watercolors plus a little opaque white, on a cheap 7x10 watercolor tablet.
For reference, here is a photo of approximately the stretch I was looking at, though the light had changed a little, and of course I simplified the background. (I did not paint from the photo, I just took it for later comparison). The photo doesn't really convey how much movement was in the water.
And here's a closeup of the water. Not easy to paint!
This was probably also good for me in another way... I've been noticing that left to my own devices, I really don't use green much in my artwork!
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Date: 2012-04-01 10:44 pm (UTC)He sings to the brook as though it were his dearest friend and cruelest fate, all at once. When I look at your painting, I see a brook with all of those possibilities!