Watercolors at Shasta
Latest Shasta workshop with Stefan Baumann
Funny enough I didn’t do a water color at this location but I tried oil. It was very windy but luckily I have painted oils plenty of times in the wind, my backpack was secured to my easel tripod, and I was situated behind my car in a nice way to block most of the wind. I noticed I was low on my paint thinner so I went around to my van door to get what I needed and I hear a crash. There went my oil paints and canvas into the dirt. I think oh well its happened before ill just dust it off and…… Nope no hope, big hole in the top corner and now the painting became a frisbee.
Watercolors have not been a priority for me but I cannot help but feel that the more I practice watercolors, the more I will be a decisive painter through the nature of water. My first real taste of watercolor En Plein air when on my Yosemite trip back in June (link here). That experience was unlike any other even with using the water around me from lakes a rivers we are at I couldn’t help but feel a little more intimate with the paintings I would do.
This workshop was many aha! Moments with watercolor technique and finally, I am happier with my watercolor work.
Sadly, the first step was better at “drawing”. For me the pencil is stress, don’t know if it is from the years of college but I must hold my pencil as I do a brush and barely outline the idea. From there I use to hydrate the whole paper with my little spray bottle for basically an uncontrolled wash and that worked for a few paintings but ultimately I was not happy with my work. Another artist there Cindy, is an amazing watercolor artist that I saw has the effect I want to achieve, so the first location of the day Castle Lake, we went I sat with her and studied with her. First in the gallery of below pictures is the proper snippet of history with a good amount of cultural history that I feel many other parks need.
First Aha moment, do the damn drawing haha.
Next was learning the controlled washes and almost drawing with water in sections of the paper outlined by the drawing.
From there I started achieving the effect I wanted and taking off from there!
Castle Lake painting location had this rock was the first subject that I sat with Cindy and studied with her. The drawing came first and the first painting I did, which is the more complete one, right after the reference photo. This process was my usual, spraying the sheet of paper down and going in with brushstrokes, but you can still see the edge and not letting the watercolor do its thing. Then, after the bird visited with his critics, and Cindy’s expertise the second painting was a controlled wash, not spraying the sheeting wet first but drawing with the water to saturate the shapes, then add in deep color and let it sit. Then move onto then next shape that isn’t adjacent so that shape can dry. This is where the drawing can really come in handy for breaking up the shapes.
Next location was McCloud River, lower falls, and I find a more intimaite rock scene next to the waterfall to try my newly learned technique. However for this one I didn’t use a drawing it was almost 2-3 basic shapes and some dark strokes, so I setup and went with controlled washes.
After Lower Falls at McCloud we were done for day two and I was feeling happier with my watercolor work already, now is just practice practice practice. We had one more day of the Shasta workshop and the final location was Siskiyou Lake. With an amazing view of Shasta right over the lake I chose to zoom in on a room to capture one of difficult paintings to get, a rock in shallow water.
