Tag: Reflections

Wet weather street painting

Here is the wet weather street painting I did with my students last week. Actually the painting was completed over three classes. Here are the three main stages:

Drawing a street scene

The first week we covered how to draw a street scene. The key point is to start with eye level (horizon) and then draw your objects relative to that. What do I mean by this? Well, when drawing with proper perspective, objects above eye level will appear to move down to it the further away they are. While objects below eye level will appear to come up to it as they move away. Another point about eye level which is important is that it basically tells you how tall people are – hence eye level. You can then make all your other objects, cars, awnings, posts, fences, etc. , relative to that height.

Here is my reference photo for this watercolor painting. I took the photo a few years ago as I was leaving Bathurst after having completed a workshop at the Mitchell School of Arts. I have obviously made changes to aid my composition. The Church on the right is St Stephens Church.

Bathurst after the rain reference photo for watercolor painting
Bathurst after the rain reference photo for watercolor painting

Watercolor under painting and buildings

In the second class we did the watercolor under wash for this wet weather street painting. Other than the muted colors there was nothing to say it was a wet weather scene. The important part of this stage was to get our areal perspective right. Here are the key points:

  • Objects in the distance are lighter in tone. Because of the effects of the atmosphere things in the distance will look lighter than those which are closer to the viewer. You can observe this easily by going outside and looking at a distant object like a hill or mountain.
  • They are bluer and duller in color. Again the atmosphere causes colors to look duller the further away they are from you. They also move a little towards blue hence making them look cooler.
  • They are soft edged with less detail. When you look at a hill covered in trees, from a distance you see very little detail. The edges separating the different shapes tend to merge into fewer and fewer shapes.
  • The strongest tones will be in the foreground. In this wet weather street painting the trees on the left hand side are the strongest tones.

Finished wet weather street painting

The painting was finished in the third class with the details and reflections. The cars, poles, and people were painted. They had to be painted first as it was their reflections that would add the wet character to our wet weather street painting.

To paint the reflections I wet parts of the street area and then dropped the color of the reflections into the wet. If you don’t want such soft edges in the reflections you just need to leave parts of the street dry. I will be doing this painting as a full demonstration and will post a link to it here when it is completed.

Bathurst in the rain wet weather street painting by Joe Cartwright
“Bathurst in the rain” wet weather street painting by Joe Cartwright

Watercolor painting demo of warm red sky and reflections

I have just finished posting my latest watercolor painting demonstration. This one is of Lake Bonney in South Australia. You can view the complete demo at this link: Lake Bonney watecolor painting demonstration.

You can see the finished watercolor painting below.

Lake Bonney sunset completed watercolor painting demonstration by Joe Cartwright
Lake Bonney sunset watercolor painting by Joe Cartwright

 

Tea Gardens sunrise watercolor painting

This is a class demonstration watercolor painting titled “Tea Gardens Sunrise over the Myall river, New South Wales”.

I was attracted to this scene by the light reflected on the water of the Myall River at Tea Gardens in New South Wales. Watercolor is a great medium for capturing light so decided to do this as a class painting. I simplified and made other adjustments to the photograph below to improve its composition and also to make it work better as a watercolor lesson.

My key focus was to teach my students how to create a feeling of space and how to capture the early morning light reflecting off the water surface.

Sunrise over Myall River at Tea Gardens reference for watercolor painting
Figure 1: Light reflections on Myall river, Tea Gardens

The main adjustments I made were:

  • Raised the horizon to focus on the light sparkle on the water
  • Lighten the sky
  • Remove all boats except the one little house boat
  • Remove foreground grass and car

The next step, after making my design decisions, was to do a very simple drawing of the scene on my cold press watercolor paper.

Pencil drawing Tea Gardens Sunrise for watercolor painting
Figure 2: Drawing prior to watercolor painting.

My next step was to paint the sky with my watercolor paints and while this was wet to paint the distant hills. I worked with progressively stronger tones (more pigment, less water) as I moved closer to the foreground.

The land closest to the viewer was completed after the sky area had dried so I could produce hard edged shapes against the sky.

Notice how the land jutting into the river is basically  horizontal where it connects with the river. This stops the river area from looking like it is flowing up hill.

I let this dry completely.

Watercolor painting of distant land on Myall River watercolor painting
Figure 3: Painting sky and distant river sides with watercolor

The water in this scene is painted with the side of my round watercolor brush. I used quick movements to create a dry brush stroke which gives the impression of light on the water.

The distant water is lighter (thinner mix) and bluer than the foreground which is stronger in tone (more paint) and slightly warmer – there is a little Burnt Sienna in the mixture.

The sparkle on the water is just left white paper.

After the water area is fully dry I painted the house boat and then its reflection. As the boat is very light colored the reflection has to be a little darker.

This watercolor painting was finished with the addition of various bollards and poles in the water and a few strategically placed birds in the sky and over the river.

Completed watercolor painting “Tea Gardens Sunrise”

Watercolor Paintng Tea Gardens sunrise with house boat on Myall River
Figure 4: Watercolor painting of house boat on water with sunlit reflections “Tea Gardens Sunrise by Joe Cartwright”

This article is not meant to be a full demonstration but more a reference for my students to use. You should be able to understand some of my watercolor painting technique for this type of scene however. I do have a similar and more detailed demonstration here: simple watercolor painting demonstration of boats and water.

Sunset watercolor painting – Lake Bonney

Lake Bonney sunset watercolor painting

How to create a sunset watercolor painting was the topic for my Monday watercolor class this week.  For this work I chose a sunset scene with lots of warm colors and interesting reflections.

The reference photo was provided by my friend Robyn Lovelock and is of Lake Bonney in South Australia, close to the borders of Victoria and New South Wales.

I chose this photo reference for my class for a number of reasons:

  • Firstly we had just completed a work which was predominately green and I wanted my students to have experience with a work with very little or no green in it.
  • Secondly this photo required very little editing to turn it into a nice watercolor painting.
  • Thirdly I wanted to teach them how to capture the light in a beautiful sunset.
  • Finally I could show my students how to tackle soft water reflections in barely damp paper. If not done at just the right time you can end up with unwanted backruns or cauliflowers. On the other hand if you wait too long you end up with hard edges which would not look right for this watery scene.
Lake Bonney SA reference photo for watercolor painting. Warm red sunset with red reflections.
Lake Bonney SA reference photo for watercolor painting

Very little prior drawing was done for this watercolor painting. In fact the only drawing was of a horizontal line representing the distant shoreline.

Painting design decisions

I made a number of decisions about the design of my watercolor painting at this point:

  • I placed the distant shoreline lower than in the photo to keep it well away from the center of the work.
  • I also decided to leave out the diagonal shore in the foreground as well as the tree on the left hand edge of the photo. They did not add to the painting and the hard edge of the diagonal would have acted to lead the eye out of the painting rather than keeping it in it.
  • I moved the position of the sun to the left for a more pleasing balance.
  • When I paint a scene like this I never slavishly try to paint everything that is in a photo – if I wanted to do that then I would just frame the photo. As artists we have the ability to extract the essence of an image and hopefully improve on it.
Lake Bonney sunset completed watercolor painting demonstration by Joe Cartwright
Lake Bonney sunset watercolor painting by Joe Cartwright

Brief steps for painting this watercolor

The sky was painted with the board held in a portrait position so that the water colors would flow parallel to the horizon line. Otherwise if I painted this with the board in a normal landscape position I risked all the colors flowing down into one another.

I made sure to leave some of the paper untouched where the sun is positioned. This gives my painting the greatest light.

I left the sky to dry fully.

I then painted the distant tree line running some of the dead tree trunks into the water (this is why they are dead).

Again I let this dry fully.

Finally I painted the water with horizontal brush strokes. Water reflections are a little duller than the object they are reflecting, in this case the sky.

While the lake area of our scene is still quite wet- the shine is still on the paper, I dropped in the soft edged reflections of the distant bushes and trees. The after it had lost its shine I used a small brush with a good point, and very little water to paint the soft edged reflections of the dead trees in the foreground. It is a good idea to practice this on a scrap piece of watercolor paper till you get the timing right. When you practice something like this make sure you use the same paper as the watercolor paper of your painting.

I have now produced a full step by step demonstration article on how to paint this watercolor paintng. You can view it at this link: Lake Bonney warm sunset watercolor painting.