Cling Film

After encouraging you all to experiment last week I thought I would explain some of the exciting methods you can used to transform your watercolours, by using clingfilm.

This is a very simple method, which can be used for certain effects. You would not want to use it on every picture, but for certain effects like stone, water or foliage it can be very effective. It will give you a random texture that is difficult to make any other way.

In trying to make textures, we often struggle as humans, because we are always trying to make sense of the random world. Things like trees and rocks are difficult to recreate because our brush stokes are never as random as real life. In real life trees are clumpier and they have more holes and the leaves never actually all line up in the same direction. Unlike when we paint them when every leaf can seem to be painted with the same brush in a nice repetitive line.

There are a couple of things you have to remember when using cling film – Firstly the paper needs to be wet when you put the cling film on. Very thin paper will not hold the moisture and so it will not work very well with this technique. Also there needs to be quite a lot of paint pigment on the paper. You may struggle if you are using cheaper watercolour paints which have less pigment in, and you may end up with a very pale effect. Remember the paint will always dry lighter and it is often difficult to paint it too dark. Go on be bold.

Once you have covered the area with paint and it is still wet just place the clingfilm on the paper. Make it so it has folds in it. You can push it around a little, but try not to mess around with it too much – then just leave it! It's a simple as that. Once it has dried you can lift it off. If the paint is still a little moist it will have a softer edge to it. It will take slightly longer to dry than usual, as of course you have covered it in cling film, but it should be ok after about ½ hour. This can seem a long time if you are just twiddling your thumbs, so this is why I sometimes work on two or three watercolours at a time so I am not temped to rush the drying of the picture. One of my friends does his ironing while waiting for his paint to dry – each to their own, but I try and avoid ironing as much as possible.

You can apply this effect to just a small section of your picture. The clingfilm will only effect the wet paint. However you do have to be more careful as you can pick up wet paint on the film and transfer it to another part of your painting. If you do that you will have to try lifting the paint with a damp brush and a dry tissue.

Here you can see an example where I have used clingfilm to get the dry stone wall. I have then worked over the top to produce a three dimensional look. If I tried just painting this I would have struggled to get such a random effect, and it would look slightly contrived. Also I get the lovely dark lines around each segment, which I have enhanced to create a shadow for the rock.

Why not give it a go – I would love to see some or your pictures.

Allowing yourself to make mistakes.

Cling film placed on wet watercolour

My friend crashed his racing hovercraft in practice. We thought there was no need for this, the exit from the water was smooth and clear of any obstructions. Instead he choose to take a wider line through the reads and long grass to the side of the exit. As he came back with his hovercraft on a trailer, and the front all smashed up it was obvious this was not a good idea.

Why, we asked him had he tried such a line? His reply astonished me. He explained that during a race he might need to overtake a craft there and so he had to know if such a thing was possible. I had always concentrated on “the racing line” trying to always find the perfect line. Always trying to get my hovercraft to go as fast as possible, any deviation was a mistake. He was already was a fast driver, so he had started to experiment. This meant during a race he had more options, when faced with a hovercraft he wanted to get past he knew where and when he was able to. As hovercraft have no breaks, sometimes it was a choice between overtaking a slower craft or crashing. 

Salt makes little stars

Now when I am painting I take time to experiment, to allow myself to make mistakes. Last week I allowed a whole class to spend the afternoon just making a “mess”. As I explained we were not there to make a masterpiece – although if we happen to make one accidentally that would be OK.

We played with salt, cling film, granulating medium and much more. Everyone had a lovely time, they learnt many techniques they had not tried before. Although no one did create a masterpiece, everyone had some samples of something they could use in another piece of art.

Cling film can make good foliage.

I have learnt sometimes I have to give myself a safe environment where it is all right to make a mistake, because I will learn something from it, even if the only thing I learnt is not to try that again!

Cling film was used to create this dry stone wall

Have you allowed yourself to make any mistakes lately?

Drawing Ellipses

How to draw an ellipse – or how to correct a squashed turnip shape.

Many people struggle to draw ellipses. They normally end up looking something like this a squashed Turnip:

Now there’s nothing wrong with a squashed turnip if that is what you wanted to draw, but normally we were trying to convey the perfect circle of a cup, created on a machine, with not a hint of a wobble, normally, unless you brought it from the seconds shop, then you may have a hint of a wobble.

Firstly lets think about what we know about ellipses. The one I am trying to create is really a circle seen from an angle. The axis is flat and horizontal.It has no pointed corners. It is symmetrical about it’s two axis, so the top half is the same

On our squashed turnip shape we can see the horizontal axis is not horizontal giving it the feeling that it is leaning over – fine if it is on a slope, but normally it is not. Also the top half is smaller than the bottom.

So first draw a horizontal line. Run your little finger down the edge of your sketchpad as you do this to ensure a straight line – this is usually OK if it’s a pad otherwise as we all know there is nothing worse than an paper cut. Although I have considered that having your head cut off may be worse!

Then draw two lines which will be your top and bottom marks the same distance from the middle one. Draw a vertical centre line and then mark on where the two side lines are, again these should be equidistance from the centre line.

Now we just play dot the dot to join up our ellipse. Making sure that it meets all four of the small outer  lines. The curve is quite flat at the front and back but gradually gets tighter as it meets the edges.

I hope this has been useful to you. I would welcome any feedback you can give.

Mono Lisa

I've never quite understood why people seem to think the Mona Lisa has such a strange smile. To me the answer is obvious - she wasn't a very good sitter and kept changing her facial expressions. Which is why when you look at the Mona Lisa her smile only seems to appear when you don’t directly look at her mouth.

Creating a realistic image is most important if you are attempting a portrait. It has been made easier since photographs as you have one fix vision of a person. Da Vinci had to work from life, and as anyone knows who has tried painting a real person – they move. They start off happy, smiling and looking directly at you, and then they get bored and their head drifts and their expression changes. So you start off painting a happy person with happy eyes and by the time you get to their mouth you have a non smiling mouth. Which gives you the impression when you look at the eyes that she is smiling then you look at the mouth and the smile seems to have disappeared.

What do you think? Am I over simplifying it? Have I missed something?

Avoncroft Ex

It was the Avoncroft Annual Exhibition this weekend, which I help to organise. It is always good to see what all the members have created, and everyone worked hard to make it a success – even if I do say so myself. The only trouble was I was spending so much time sorting it out I didn't really get much time to finish the painting that I wanted to. Still I managed to paint the Walled Garden at Avoncroft for the demonstration I did today, so that was enjoyable.