"BREAK" some Watercolor RULES with Linda Kemp

if you want to watch a really fast painter who's going to do something really unusual today you need to watch our guest today is Linda Kemp what are you going to do everybody I am planning to bend a few of the watercolor rules and hopefully Inspire painters to try something new and even if you don't know the watercolor rules hopefully we're going to have some fun today [Music] well hi everybody I just want to introduce what negative painting is first before I launch into actually painting so the typical way that we paint is positive so you might draw your shape in and then fill it with color texture shading gradation and details with negative painting rather than filling in the object we created by painting the space around it now you can still do the shading and the um Transitions and details and so on but instead of putting them inside the shapes we're going to be putting them around the shades so that's a simple enough concept now the fun comes when we start to layer the shapes and that's what I'm going to be doing today I'm going to be doing it wet into wet so that's the that's the big challenge so here are a couple of little things to keep in mind when you start to do the layering we always start I'm going to pull up a little Tip Sheet here you start with the shapes that are closest to you and then work back you're always tucking the new shapes behind so for example here's my little my little Daisy sketch so here would be the first step and then I would let it dry and Tuck the next layer underneath so you can see here's another little Daisy but it's underneath and then we put the paint around it so it would look sort of like so those are the layering that's how I build up my shapes and let's just have a quick look at a couple more little things to keep in mind you might want to take a screenshot of this or maybe just get your camera and take a a picture of it just so these are little things to remember when you start doing this so the new shapes are tucked underneath we rely on the shapes and the edges to tell the story not the inside details if you want hard edges you work on dry paper and if you want soft edges you work on damp or wet paper now watercolor painters generally work with value changes going from light to dark so you would begin here's our little here's my little value scale so you would start with the lights and then watercolor naturally builds to the dark we have other options as well but today that's really what we're going to focus on is building by value and I am going to work wet into wet it's going to be all soft Edge so let me get started here I will show you what my colors are because I need to get those up to begin with and I've written them down at this side just so that you can refer to the colors it's going to look like I've got a lot of colors and I'm putting them out fresh as you can see foreign so I work with Holbein paints which I love and these are the fresh colors right out of the tube I'm not working from reconstituted paint in a palette does that make a big difference oh it's a huge difference Eric um you'll see when it comes to painting with the fresh paint there's so much more impact with the color I'm not diluting it down with a lot of water it's a very fast way to paint and it's just so much fun it's just a blast to work this way so let me just go over the list of the colors even though it looks like I've got a lot of Paints in here which I think there's 11 of them I'll just read through the list that we've got Leaf Green olive green shadow green Cerulean blue cobalt blue royal blue which is like a phthalo blue and this is Cobalt violet light permanent Violet a quinacridone red Russian and burn Sienna now that looks like a lot but what I want to point out is that I have a light a metal and a dark green a light a metal and a dark blue a light Violet a dark violet and so on because I'm working wet into wet I'm not diluting my color down so if I want to have a light color I'm not taking a dark and adding a lot of water to it I'm just piling the paint on straight as it is you're a good teacher I I love teaching I love teaching and I I'm just absolutely crazy about painting and you know I'm so excited about the possibility of putting paint down on on paper or canvas or even on a wall you know and that's why I'm happiest is when I've got a brush in my hand so tell us what paper you're using here okay this is a piece of Strathmore Gemini 140 pound cold press and it is about 11 and a half inches by 11 and a half inches so I'm working with a square today I I love painting with a square kind of Suits my personality but it also works really well with the format of the screen so that you can see as I mix my color and lay my colors down that should be about in the right in the right front can you see all that paper yep okay so I don't breaking rule number number two first rule being I'm using the wet paint fresh paint so the next thing that I'm going to do is I'm not taping my paper down to a board I don't do that I just wet it front and back I've got it thoroughly saturated here we go and I'm using a big soft wash brush that's a one and a half inch brush so you why do you paint why do you wet the back that's what that's what keeps it down on the onto the board there's absolutely no buckling that's going to happen and what kind of board are you on so this is a piece of um a white plastic but what I really like working on is um one of the I think it's a dry erase marker board you can just get it at the hardware store you know when they do the the conventions and they have this white board and they write on it with magic marker I like that because it has a a wooden backing so I can dry my painting on the back of it so this will stay wet for a long time because there's water trapped under the paper so for working wet into wet this is just so much fun and how much water do you want to have so you want the paper to be thoroughly saturated but not so wet that if I picked it up water would stream off of it I want the surface shiny and I'm going to just leave that sit for a minute so that some of that moisture is absorbed into the paper and I have um I think you have my my reference photo there which what I'm going to paint for you today is some wild Asters I'm not sure if you can bring that up or not there we are okay so this is what I'm going to use for my reference photo and just to give me some ideas of the shapes and the colors that I'm after you will never see me sitting with a photo in my hand and trying to replicate it exactly as I see it I look for the shapes I look for the color now it's up to me to be the designer as to where I put things so when I start I begin with an under painting and this is all wet into wet so if you have the second picture there you'll see it's kind of a blurry one that's the sort of thing that I'm after in this initial stage and then I bring it into Focus as the paint starts to set up and I Define the edges so basically what you're saying is Big shapes first correct all right and I want to lay in the color in that out of focus sort of manner love it okay so let's get started now here's another thing that I don't do I don't bother to sketch before I begin I'm just going to put some paint down on the paper so here's a little bit of cobalt violet light and then I'm going to pick up just a touch of the Rose violet or quinacridone red and some Cerulean blue when I start I'm going to begin with light or bright and that's the way it's going to work and then I'm going to get darker as it goes from there so I'm thinking about where I want these little flowers to be and I can see by the texture on the paper showing but this paper is starting to dry a little bit more than I'd like it to be so I'm just going to dampen it down a bit more Big Brush there we go okay let's get some more color on a little Cerulean I'm using a one and a half inch flat brush here and I'm just putting the color down I'm not thinking here's a flower here's a flower I'm just putting this color down so that I have a base in which to begin my flower making I think that's kind of that's pretty there's a bit of Cerulean you will not see me making puddles with my watercolor I don't work with a palette and add a lot of water and stir stir stir I just get the color on and I like this plastic board to work for my um mixing surface I have a paper towel in my hand I want to make sure that that brush isn't too wet and I think I'm going to just pick up a little round brush and drop in just a touch of some color that may or may not become the centers of these little flowers so I just put a few bits here and here and here and here just random dots and then I might just put some there there's my start okay now what start to pump up the value a little bit so I use the Cerulean blue which is my light blue and I use the Cobalt violet light which is my light violet and so now I'm going to just go a touch darker that is the cobalt blue I think I'll stick with that Cobalt Violet white I've written the names down here so that if I start saying this and this you can just refer over here so thinking about a flower shape and I'm going to begin to cut some of these shapes into little flowers there's the first shape started Isn't that cool it is cool it's so much fun now when you dilute your paint a lot which most of us tend to do with watercolors what happens is as that paint dries it starts to reduce in value it becomes lighter and that's because we've got all this water a little bit of pigment and a lot of water and you put it down and you spread it over it over the paper and then as that paper dries as the water evaporates you're left with just a little bit of pigment spread out over a large area when you work with fresh paint like what I'm doing here fresh paint and you pile that on even once it evaporates you will maintain the value so this will dry pretty close to the color and the value that I put down so when we talk about value that means how light or how dark a color is and that's what we're after here and I'm building this from white to dark okay so there's two little flowers that have already started to be built hopefully you can see those with negative painting I want to build the next layer behind so I'm going to just take a little bit of darker color so now I've got a little bit of the the royal blue and a little bit of the permanent Violet darker value and my new shape gets tucked underneath so here we go there's two little flowers there's another section underneath shapes and edges tell the story when you work with negative painting not the inside details put another Little Flower right there just submerged out of nowhere I know one thing isn't that neat it's you're carving away at the shapes okay so I've got one two three four I think that gives an idea of that let's get some color in now to establish where the leaves are going to be I'll clean that off that's me working cleaner than I usually do I usually don't bother take back off okay this is called this is whole body leaf green isn't that Sensational color all right so I'm going to take some of that I'm going to take some of the raw Sienna my light green my light raw Sienna so I'm back to the light values and I'm going to lay down the color that will become the leaves here make this look so easy oh good good you know I I fear so often people who are um have it in their in their head that watercolors are unforgiving and that that's the hardest medium and you know I think the whole trick is to allow the paint to do the work for you and not to fight it enjoy what the paint will do and that means experimenting not a good thing for control freaks and understand what the paint is going to do for you and how to take advantage of it and to make it work rather than fighting with it okay at this point I've just kind of got this ball here of flowers I've got the greens down which are kind of nice um as a start and I'm going to I'll break up that shape I'll break up this mass in a bit so one of the photos that I gave you Eric you'll see that was the third one that you showed and it's got some circles that say captured negatives yeah we'll pull that up yeah would you show that please so a captured negative the leaves and the stems so the outside negative space is that area around the flowers and then the captured negative is that those little holes um that are the dark dark dark spots you can see them there on the little illustration so I'm going to pop in some of those right now okay this is uh this is my favorite part my my okay you changed brushes I did I picked up a round brush all right because I'm not carving so I use my flat brush to carve shapes and I use my round brush to paint in and I'm going to pick up my darkest colors this is some burnt sienna and I'm going to get a Gob of that pick up a goth and then I'm going to pick up a Gob of the um royal blue which is like a phthalo and I think I'm even going to get some of this shadow green I have to look at my own list to see what I've got okay no water no stir stir stir I've got gobs on there and I'm thinking about those captured negative spaces so the spaces between a stem and I'm painting in those darks so there's there's my first stem the stem is light and it's got the dark on either side of it now if I want this stem to be a quarter of an inch wide you know it looks pretty thick there now I painted about half an inch because I know that paint is going to seep together and blur that and I'm so I'm just going to put that in there so I'm thinking about the spaces between the branches I'll get some up in you here I will also cut the bottom edge of that that little flower let's get some more darks in gobs God here's some more burnt sienna and the darks in there no stir stir stir no extra water I'm just putting this paint down so thick you know the first few times that you do this it's going to be terrifying and you might just make a mud ball it looks terrifying now it's in here just a few little spaces just like so one thing I think everybody needs to understand is don't get so invested in your work that you're not willing to experiment absolutely absolutely like it's it's just part of the the game of it it's learning to put that color down and try taking a few risks I'm going to add a bit more birdsian into there because I want it to be nice and warm those that's I mean I'm just plopping that on there okay now let's go back up into this top section well that sits I'm gonna do more with that in a minute I'm going to allow the paint to do all the work down here but before then I'm going to cut a few of the leaf shapes up in the top section so those layers of leaves and to do that now I'm going into my mid values this is the olive green all of these colors are transparent that I'm using all right okay so no extra water this needs to be thick in order to maintain control of the shapes that I'm making the paint needs to be thick and fresh gooey if you try to make it with reconstituted paint from your palette this will not work it's just going to go all over the place there's some leaves so there's the first set of leaves there are there are some of the yellowy green and then I'm surrounded it with the darker color Linda there's a question uh from Ellen who says how do you know that a paint is transparent oh that that do it is to test and I actually have a test on my website that you can perform yourself in your studio or in your painting space so you would draw a line on a piece of watercolor paper I usually just use um magic marker and then you paint a stripe of color over top of it and if the pencil line or the magic marker shows through the paint then that tells you it's a transparent if it disappears if it's blocked out then you know it's an opaque good to know all right let's get some of this down here Edge and shape I'm having fun with this mucking around well if you're not having fun there's no reason to do it yeah that's kind of my thoughts on it all right so we've got one here's a here's a flower one two three layers of flowers popping back in there then I've got my first layer of leaves and now let's get another layer and to do that I need to go darker because we're working along the value scale going darker and need to have the paint heavy but not so heavy that I can't get it off of my brush which is where I am about now all right there we go look at that that's nice and dark you'll also see that I paint beyond the edges of my paper because I'm using a big brush and I Like to Swing my brush rather than get a choke hold and try and stay within the lines dark as far as figuring out the balance of this how I want this design to move and flow and how I want it to swing and the kind of angles that I'm after I can always work on that later so here's the corner this is the angle of this dark corner here and here's the angle on this side so that's nice that's a little bit different I don't want it to be exactly symmetrical here's a question Barbara asks how do you know when a color will move fast for you oh that's great I'm going to show you that right now I'm going to do something so you guys ask you get answers yeah exactly how many professors and just say perfect timing Rumble all right I'm gonna pick this up and first of all I'm going to show you how wet this is you can probably see how shiny it is and how thick it is see this is also wet I'm really really working with wet paper and here we go this is my very favorite thing to do very favorite of all things it is so now I'm going to start to spray this with some water and I'm going to spray it starting from the bottom and moving up until I hit that line right here where the color is and then you're going to see which colors are fast moving and which colors are slow moving here we go does it depend on the thickness of the color well the thickness makes a bit of difference Eric but a lot of it has to do with the pigments themselves so the staining pigments the dye type of pigments any of the quinacridones and the phthalos are very fast moving colors anything that has a lot of sediment in it is very slow moving that is a good time to stop because I got a chance to clean my arms of the paint that was all over them you know I'm a messy painter but here's what I want to show you do you see how this paint has separated out and the heavy slow moving colors such as the burnt sienna are just sitting there and then those phthalo colors they're moving and that's why I say it's painting itself and I'm going to do a little bit more with that as well but we're just going to get in a few little inside captured negatives to break up this space and I'm going to here's this lovely dark hole that I've got but I want to just give a bit of definition and break up a bit more of the space in here so I've got the dark up here and I've got dark down below but I'd like to be able to connect those two to allow the eye to move from here to here with a stop or two in between so I'm just going to pop in here's a question from Jenny dearest who says how do you avoid muddy colors with so many colors mixed well I'm not stir stir stirring because when you go because you put your colors down add a lot of water and then mix mix mix them that's pushing those paints together and that's what's causing a lot of that muddiness now the other thing is that we think about the term muddy is a thing that we fear as watercolor painters but really I'd encourage you to think about it instead of being muddy I'd like you to think about it as being reduced intensity and so when you have reduced intensity what you need to do is just go grayer or darker and I'm going to give this a little bit a shot of water in there just to see if I can soften that up a bit because it's a little harder Edge than I'd like it to be there we go now the other thing that's really neat going to happen down here as this is sitting I call this The Velvet stage it's lost the high shine it's extremely vulnerable and when I put little bits of water on it we get the most Sensational textures happening and you see that and then I'm also going to encourage it a little bit more this is a rigger brush and it's wet and I'm going to just tickle a little bit of water lines through there to break that up because I love to let the paint do the work for me and that's what's happening down in that section dipping the brush you dip the brush into water and then we've kind of made some stems the water is on this long long hair and then I just put it on you're actually forcing a background to happen but it's a background where you want it to be and if it doesn't move enough for you you can just take a soft brush after a while and just tease over it just a brush like this and just tease it at the um the line and it'll spread out a bit more I'm going to get another bit of darks into here Linda are you at all a Plein Air painter would you do would you follow the same principles when doing Planner yeah absolutely absolutely this is how you paint this is You're Breaking All the Rules you are such a mean and nasty Rebel it's true just ask my mother all right is that the 300 pound paper somebody's asking no it's 140 pound cold that's it that's my exact weight that's funny you would guess that there's another as this paper is damp and I'm able then I'm able to put this paint down and build up these soft Edge layers when it starts to get too dry and I see the texture of the paper showing then I have to stop and okay that's it can't do any more I can go back in afterwards and tighten up a few edges but not not when it's wet at this like this stage now close this is really fascinating are you guys digging this if so give a thumbs up or a like or something a comment that would be great we have a world very broad worldwide audience today I've seen people in there from Ireland the Netherlands England it's just it's just so amazing that we can get together like this Eric thank you so much for hosting these events so that people can just come into my studio and watch me do what I love to do yeah you wouldn't want us all in there probably we wouldn't fit no especially since I've actually moved upstairs into my office for today oh that's nice because of the internet connection I'm guessing yeah correct correct tell us in the comments folks where you're watching from yeah I'd love to hear I'm just going to start to fool around here with some of these shapes and see if I can make some changes that I like now I have to tell you when you work this way there is no promise that it's going to turn out you know you could well there's no promise with any painting no absolutely I think I'm going to try something here this is a don't do this moment I'm going to pick this back up and I'm going to spray this area down and see if I can let that slide a little bit more I'm going to start right here and take it down just to soften that up there we go and if I want the stems to move this way I tip my paper so that it changes the direction of the flow oh fun so you can see now it's now the now the boss or the loose weight you don't like that you pull it up and straighten it up I see somebody from my hometown of Austin Texas hey Austin welcome Norway Finland you guys rock thank you for tuning in right yeah I'm so appreciative we love we love everybody we've got people all over the United States so nice can't read them all now because I re-wet that melted together yeah that's all right I can go back in afterwards I think I'll just cut down into that shape a little bit and I've taken as much I take as much water out of my brush and see how I'm still working with these gobs of color just pull a few little shapes in here so the tiny captured negative spaces that are trapped between the the little leaves and the stems that's what I'm popping in here now just a few of them just to allow your eye to work from there to there to there pop scotching through the piece Donna Ebert says I took courses from watercolor purist they would scream watching this laugh out loud it's true isn't it like oh no well I love it because you completely reversed the process I I think it was really exciting yeah yeah I I actually with all of the things that I do it's quite very much the the backwards way I go about it in a different way and you're going to be teaching I'm sorry to interrupt you you're going to be teaching something entirely different on watercolor live what are you going to be teaching so what I'm teaching in watercolor live are the basics for doing this how to if you haven't have more how to begin how to see it and how to build the layers on dry paper and and that's how I learned and that's where I worked for many many years before I became more adventurous with my painting and started to work a little bit more looser so it's it's the basics that I'm going to be doing with watercolor one on beginner day awesome hello Israel in Greece welcome shalom I don't know what to say in Greek you have any idea what to say in Greek not a clue It's All Greek To Me that's bad oh that is so pretty now when I when I paint the landscape Eric I start at the bottom and work to the top which again is the reverse of what most painters do because with working with negative painting as I mentioned I I start with the thing that's closest to me and then work to the distance and so with landscape that means I start with the foreground built middle ground and finish in the background the word is oppa oh good thank goodness to our crowd that's great how do I say it in Norway I'm going to Tamara is a Greek say calamara all right see we learned something new every day hello Portugal I think I'm going to just I'm looking at this area I re-sprayed it it lost all the texture that was in there I'm going to attempt to get it again I'm going to do two different things here okay one isn't going to Spritz and my water sprayer puts out pellets of water not a fog it's just little droplets so I'm just going to sputter it over you can see hopefully that those textures are starting to come right here oh how lovely isn't that nice yeah I have one of those bottles that puts out little pellets yeah that's what you want not not one that makes a puff of water now in this area I'm I'm gonna see if I can do something rather dangerous I don't know we'll see whether it works or not all right I'm kind of nondescript so I've got my round brush and it is wet I have not dried it off I haven't reduced the water and I'm going to put a drop of water drop of water drop of water so I'm forcing those back runs that thing that watercolor painters are so afraid of happening I'm actually going to put them on there on purpose that does you are truly a rebel oh if I do it there though I better do it somewhere else right I don't know if that's for Greece what's that a yasu oh that's really lovely and tickle this through again see if I can hold those lines you know with with this um tickling of water through with the rigor brush into this uh area if you do it too soon nothing happens if you do it too late nothing happens so I always say well what's the worst that can happen nothing nothing I think I just cut that edge just a little bit all right now for for watercolor painters that are worried about this color that I have out here and think well that's wasting paint what I do is when I'm finished my painting I just scoop this stuff up and I put it into a palette like so and I fill up I'll clean that up afterwards but that's how I do so I'm not I'm not well there are times when you will have to reconstitute your pain yeah absolutely when this is Thoroughly dry if I decide I want to firm up some edges I want to give it some crisper kind of definition I'll do that on the dry paper and I will use reconstituted paint to do that now the next thing that I need to do just get this off in order for this to dry without buckling and so that it will dry in a reasonable amount of time I'm going to take a uh my Big Brush and I'm going to go underneath it like a spatula and I'm going to pick it up and then move it on to a wooden board just like that that's going to absorb some of the water yeah that will that will allow it to dry and um that that will help out it's a nice soggy mess right now but I'm satisfied with that I like soggy messes that's a good soggy mess and and when you uh when you're painting or do you have your paint at all at an angle or is are you this is flat wow yeah the most eye angle is just I you know the the back of my desk might be an inch higher than the front of my desk but pretty much flat all right well that's another rule you've broken I know we're going to have to contact the watercolor police oh Jeepers I'm not I'm not going to open the door when I finish this this today unfortunately the watercolor police do not have a division in Canada you're very lucky well that's good to just so you can see it without the muck around the edges so that you have a better idea of what the finished piece looks like how would you frame that uh a float mounted I thought so yeah so that that whole Edge shows do you have anything float mounted handy that you could grab um yeah I do let me just pull that up for you see I'm always making people work too hard you know pulling things off my so this one is actually in in that you can see how you see all the decal edges yeah so it's it's mounted on a uh a piece of um the same color map board as I use on the top and then and that's it so I hope that shows you what you're a lot of watercolorists are now not putting things under glass yeah I understand that that they're um they're using uh um they're varnishing and so on I'm I'm working with acrylics now I don't know if you've seen that here's one of my I've just got this fella right here so here's here's one of my little acrylics the same idea layering front to back um with my acrylics rather than starting with the light I can start mid value and then go darker and then come back to the light beautiful same concept okay so that gives you an idea of how I paint so you don't look like a rebel you look like a very normal law-abiding citizen and you're just breaking all the watercolor rules well I love to paint and I love to share painting ideas with people so thank you so much for you are you're very welcome and you are such a good teacher everybody give her Applause thumbs up smiley faces thanks everybody for joining us you're a terrific inspiration we will see you on watercolor live see you then thank you [Music] foreign

Channel: Art School Live with Eric Rhoads

Views: 3,693

Keywords:

Id: H8vht7CKA34

Length: 42min 15sec (2535 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2023