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Composing a digital watercolour- Jays in the Field Part TwoYesterday I finished the post Composing a digital watercolour- Jays in the Field Part One with a question. I don't really expect I will get an answer, but it does illustrate the importance of planning all areas of the painting before starting. (Yeah, well I did that, but I changed courses halfway through! Lol!) I can’t really tell you how to compose a landscape beyond what many books, and articles on the web say, so I urge you to do some research. Your public library will probably have a wide assortment of painting books. Digital painting is no different than other mediums in that these things have to be learned. When I first started painting I remember finding "Landscape Composition Rules," by Johannes Vloothuis on Wet Canvas. He lays out 40 ‘Rules,’ which was very daunting at first, but I found many of them were ‘intuitive’ for me. Meaning obvious things like, don’t divide the canvas in half, and don’t stick the focal point right smack in the middle. He has examples of good and bad compositions which is most helpful. I have found myself referring back to this article time and time again. I like what he says at the end of rule number 40. “In conclusion we should take from nature what looks good and improve what doesn't. I believe talent is not essential to be a good artist. Hard work is. My definition of talent is the following. Talent is the ability to spot what looks right or wrong in a painting. Knowledge is knowing how to correct what doesn't look right.”
 Jays with Fence Illustration No. 1
 Jays with Fence Values Illustration No. 2
Not sure if I have enough balance. One art book I read recommended taking the rule of thirds further and applying it to the other elements in your design, as well as where to place the focal point. It boiled down to using a little bit, some and a lot for things like contrast, movement, light, dark, colours, soft focus and hard focus...you get the idea. I am guilty of having too much detail usually, not enough variance in soft and hard edges and not enough depth of field. I think that's what I mean. Perspective drawing has improved, but distance is still hard to portray with colour. There are probably numerous things I'm not paying enough attention to at all, and certain skills are lacking, but my 'eye' is getting better all the time.
 Jays with Fence Work in Progress (WIP) Illustration No. 3
Illustration 3 and 4 just show how I painted inside a selected area using a version of Skip Allen's Watercolours. I gradually made it darker as I went down the paper. It would be a graduated wash. This would take a lot more brush strokes to paint around the bird and fence in a traditional watercolour (it seems too big an area to use Masking Fluid on!) and would show the brush marks I believe. I will probably put a little grass in for detail later.
I want to see how my proposed colour scheme works first. Doesn't seem to have any zip yet (in my head). It's a point that I reach in a painting when I feel, "this is what I'm saying here." Of course I have to have some of that figured out beforehand...like the birds actions and the setting have a certain message to get across....what???
This is reality blogging people (meaning I am writing about the process, as I am doing the process, so I may be going in the wrong direction again! lol!) What do blue jays do? What are their characteristics? How can you use them to tell a story?
 Jays with Fence Work in Progress (WIP) Illustration No. 4
 Jays with Fence Work in Progress (WIP) Illustration No. 5
 Jays with Fence Work in Progress (WIP) Illustration No. 6 I like the colours so far, the green is fresh and clean and the blue greys will 'go with' the blue jay. I am going to leave the sky overcast and white. At least until the birds are done (because they will be on different layers) and I'll be able to tell then. The sky might help tell the story.
Composing a digital watercolour- Jays in the Field Part One
the link at the top of the page works
Composing a digital watercolour - Jays with Fence Part Three Related postsCommentsAdd a comment |
John Garrett said:
Joan,
That is a much better composition and the tree branch with the leaves is rendered very nicely. I was looking at your reference to the Landscape Rules and that is very interesting, I will have to study that. Are you using photo reference for the Jays?
~John