Pots and Seascapes at AVA

Two very different subjects this past two weeks at Avon Valley Artists.
Two weeks ago the subject was World Wide Culture. A lovely wide subject with lots of scope for some interesting subjects.
I chose to draw and paint 3 lovely 'Persian' pots from a photograph that I had found at some time or other.
I fell in love with it for its beautiful colours which I wanted to try and capture.

 

 

 

Once the pots had been painted, using Cobalt Teal Blue, Transluscent Orange, Cadmium Yellow, Pyroll Red and Quinachridone  Gold, they looked quite startling on the stark white paper, but I wanted them to have a more Eastern mysterious flavour to them. Using the same range of colours without the red, I washed the colours onto wet paper, adding a little indigo where I wanted the darks, and tried to get the feel of 'hammered', patinated copper, which reminds me of that part of the world.I added a line to designate the change from flat surface to upright, and then added a little shadow under each pot to ensure it sat firmly on the flat surface. And it was finished! It did take longer than the mornings session so the background had to be finished once I got home.

 

This week we were asked to produce a Seascape. The scene had to be predominantly water as opposed to a beach scene.

I had a bit of difficulty searching out a source photo as I am not a great photographer, but once I has found my image I was set to go.

I started by masking out the edges of the large areas that I wanted to keep white, like the crest of the waves, and I added a few extra small white crests out at sea. I did this the night before so that the masking fluid was completely dry by the time I went to the group meeting. I used Hahnemuhle 'Cornwall' rough 450g paper, so I could be sure that the paper would stay flat with lots of washes and the masking fluid would not take the surface of the paper with when it was removed,  having been on for over 12 hours. This is not always the case with cheaper, thinner paper. A bit of testing is a good idea if it is not a paper with which  one is not familiar.

 

 

 

I really liked the idea of a strong dark sea, and used pure indigo to put in the top half wash. I then added the rocks using Burnt Umber,  Quinachridone Gold and Yellow Ochre.

I then mixed various blues and blue/greens to paint in the middle ground and finished off with generous amounts of White acrylic gouache. To get the spray, I first used a sharp point to drag some of the gouache into spikes on top of the dark sea, and then used a toothbrush to splatter over the top to give the fine spray.

The 'Cornwall' paper seems to lend itself to these rough landscapes as it has a very textured surface which I really like.