Hands-On Watercolours 2

copying Cezanne
Copying Cezanne – pine tree sketch

COPYING CEZANNE
So – I had discovered the palette of just 3 colours that Cezanne used. I modified it a little to include yellow ochre and burnt umber, and added Payne’s Grey myself. But essentially I had the colours to start copying the master. I only had photographs in books or online to guide me, so the colours might not be exact, but close enough for my purposes. I also discovered the brushes he favoured, both flat and round.
I wanted to keep in mind the 3 qualities I admired – minimalism, light, and his use of colour.

Cezanne copy apple

Start simply with a round shape. A simple outline in light pencil, with a few gestures about shadows and ground. Look how much of the paper remains, and the shadows are purple! But it is enough to show the viewer that it is an apple.

How few strokes are needed to make the apple real and solid and sitting on a hard surface!

Then I looked out tree sketches that were as close as I could get to what I see locally here – pine, cypress and fir. The page header is one example. I looked for the brush strokes, the colour combinations, and the simplification of the form. I was pretty certain that pine sketch of his was preparatory to an oil painting.

Cezanne trees - copy

And I used so many sketches to simply learn by copying how the paint was applied, how foliage could be suggested, and how the colours worked together.

As I continued I was curious about the harmonies he achieved across even the simplest and most minimal sketch. There was more going on than I had realised at first!

Next I found another way to learn, another angle to approach the original. I included an extra step, which was to make a copy in pencil first, to begin to get an idea of the tonal qualities and colour values. I often lean toward softer, gentler colours!

3 stages of Cezanne trees
1 Cezanne original -2 Pencil sketch – 3 painted copy

Then I decided to take the merest hints of colour, and try getting bolder. It certainly served to illustrate how clumsy my beginner strokes were!

Copying a Cezanne orchard
Copying a Cezanne orchard with bolder colours

I was beginning to add and vary things within my copies. I wondered how to paint rocks here. Our local stone is granite. I realised that the palette would be quite different. I guessed that blues might dominate … so began to experiment with a landscape far removed from the Aix-en-Provence that Cezanne lived and worked in. My mountains and rocks are quite different!

Cezanne rocks
Cezanne original study of rocks – and my experiment

There is such wonderful complexity of Cezanne’s study of these rocks. I can only stare and admire!
But to conclude …. back to my attempts to simply copy and absorb!

Cezanne Pistac
Cezanne Pistachio tree and my copy

The colours are Provencal, the tree is Mediterranean, but the composition and colouring are stunning – so let’s simply enjoy copying!

On to Watercolour 3 – In the style of Cezanne
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Hands-On Watercolours 1

cover Cezanne
Cezanne watercolours

As I approach watercolour painting for a second time, after a long break, why have I chosen Cezanne as my guide and teacher? Well, his watercolours are mainly either landscape or still life – the two areas I am interested in. Yes – but it’s more than that.
He painted hundreds of watercolours, but rarely displayed any. Maybe he thought they were inconsequential (in his day watercolour was seen as a second-rate medium) – maybe he used them to think about a subject – maybe they were a personal passion, and private. I can’t say. But to me they are more ‘alive’, more vibrant than his finished oil works. To me they express his soul in a way that moves me, and I want to learn from them.
But I need to dig deeper into why they draw me, and leave me breathless in admiration.
If I look at the photographic work I do, there may be some clues. The camera lens can do so much. A macro lens can show details that escape the naked eye. A landscape lens can record the scene before me accurately. Specialist lenses like the Lensbaby can distort the image in surprising ways. I enjoy all of those capabilities, but I don’t want to reproduce them in paint! But some of the qualities and effects I seek through the lens do resonate when I look at a Cezanne watercolour:

Cezanne landscape

Minimalism
He can take a landscape and extract the essence of the scene. With delicate strokes he can suggest an entire landscape with a minimum of paint.

Cezanne water-melons

Light
The paper is rarely if ever covered in paint. The white of the paper shines through, and allows the subject room to ‘breathe’…. to suggest rather than reproduce the subject in detail.

Cezanne Still life on a table

Use of colour
The closer you look, the more you realise that the colour choices he makes are quite amazing. And the variations in tint and brightness make the subject vibrate and sing!

These are just three of the things that draw me to study Cezanne. I want to discover how he can paint a watermelon, an onion, a knife or a carafe and be both a suggestion – an impression – and also jump off the page as so alive I feel I could reach out and touch it!

So some research was called for! I needed to find out how he created the watercolours, and then start to study them carefully!

Cezanne palette colours

Luckily I came across some information about the palette he used. It comprised just 3 colours – lemon yellow, cobalt blue, rose madder (genuine). To save having to mix them each time – I added yellow ochre and burnt umber.

Cezanne palette

And I made up a small box of the same colours. OK I added one of my own favourites – Payne’s grey for darker lines. The plan was (and still is) to work on copying Cezanne using his palette.

On to Watercolour 2 – Study and learn through copying
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Hands-On Watercolours

Watercolour paints
Watercolour adventures start here!

As I commented in the ‘Hands On’ cover page, after years of creating images through photography, I find I want to be more ‘hands on’ and paint again! I have so many photographs in my graphics store – I want to re-imagine those landscapes and still life studies myself, with real paints, paintbrushes and paper. So my question is ….. can I find the skills to make them into the images I see in my imagination?

And the medium that draws me in is watercolour. Why watercolour? It is a medium that is still greatly undervalued, seen as useful for preliminary sketches, or for weekend amateurs. Yes – the art world is still incredibly snobbish! I suspect that both pastel and watercolour are also looked down on through misogyny – because historically they were seen as ‘women’s media’.

I have come to admire watercolour as the most subtle and luminous of paint media. I’ve spent years with the camera chasing the light, expressing myself with light (both natural and studio). Watercolour begins with pure white paper, so the light is there from the beginning. And watercolours are delicate, bright and luminous, and the light of the paper can shine through them. Everyone seems to agree that watercolours are the most difficult medium to work in …. as once a stroke is made you are committed. You can’t scrape back the paint and start again as you can with acrylics and oils. So there is a tension, a ‘holding your breath’ aspect to the painting. It is all too easy to make a false mark … and that is both scary and compelling!

So the first thing for me to do was to open up the drawers and cupboards in my art room, and find out what I had! When the big relapse happened I was already investigating watercolour painting – but that is so long ago that I’d forgotten – so it was a voyage of discovery, or re-discovery! I knew I had a full-pan set of quality watercolours, some brushes, some paper and some books. So I was ready to roll! But would the paints and paper still be useable ? Would the books be way out of date … after all it was about 20 years that they had been lying unused!
I needed a quick refresher course – but I didn’t want to start from the beginning, I had a fairly clear idea of where I wanted to take my painting, what I wanted to achieve. Maybe the best way was to simply jump straight in, and learn what I needed as I went along … it seemed like a good plan, and I was impatient to start!

Ettore Maiotti

I picked the small book that I had used as my starting point all those years ago. Ettore Maiotti described how he learned from studying the artists whose work he felt most drawn to. He would learn their techniques.

There were a few basic exercises such as copying a simple apple by Cezanne, some advice on equipment and technique … and I felt ready to start something of my own!
I’ve been shooting trees for so long, they are difficult to capture, but they fascinate me. So I started with a tree. A rough sketch of one I’d photographed. I wanted to keep the tree trunk and branches white, and create a dramatic sky behind, weaving gently into the tree itself.
I must have made every beginner’s mistake!!
* I didn’t mask out the white areas before applying the background washes.
* I didn’t realise that my colour choices were all wrong for the effects I wanted. I was using opaque and staining colours when I needed transparent ones to build up luminous and subtle colour effects.
* I tried to remove or soften the colours, and ended up scratching lumps out of the paper!

A change of plan was called for – I really needed to go back to basics and learn about pigments, and how to apply them! But I didn’t want to spend months painting flowers, or figure studies. I knew who I wanted to learn from – Paul Cezanne!

Watercolour 1 – The Journey with Cezanne really begins
Watercolour 2 – Study and learn through copying
Watercolour 3 – Make my own ‘in the style of’ Cezanne
Watercolour 4 – Choose a palette – cutting the ties!
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Zen Camera

Zen Camera book cover
Zen Camera – the book cover that first caught my eye

Recently this book caught my eye. Well, it was the title that caught my eye first, as anything ‘Zen’ always draws me! And then it was the book cover, with a long-exposure shot of the seashore and the sky in black and white – elegant, uncluttered, with a Zen feel to it. I was curious to find out more!

Disclaimer: I am not advertising this book. I don’t know the author or the publishers. My interest is purely in my own interaction with the text and the enjoyment and illumination I have gleaned from reading it and following the exercises, albeit in my own way!

I’ve been seriously engaged with my camera(s) for 7 years now, and I am always on the lookout for ways to refresh my photography, to quite literally keep my photography ‘fresh’. Usually I collect books centred on the work of famous photographers, past and present, or on a specific area of technique – but this promised something rather different. Book shopping for me has to be online, as I live a little too remotely to access a bookshop – so I read online reviews and decided to take the chance, and bought it. Not a Kindle version, but the real thing, as I do still love the physical experience of a book – and this one looked like the design and physical layout might be rather special, and an experience not to be missed!

I have not been disappointed. More than a month on and I am still revelling in the first two ‘lessons’, reading and re-reading, and engaging with the text and the exercises that round off each lesson. There is so much to enjoy, to think about and ponder, so I decided to write about it all as I go along. My division of topics here will follow the six lessons of the book, but picking out parts that resonate especially for me.

1) Daily Practice I expected to skip these first steps that are designed to get the reader into the habit of using the camera every day, regularly, to snap everything that catches his/her eye. To start seeing as a ‘photographer’. I do something similar already – but I was surprised when I took a trip down memory lane!

2) An Open Mind Getting into the ‘zone’ – the right frame of mind for the ‘magic’ to work. For me this is the centre of the refreshing experience I want to find through the book. Mushin is the Japanese name for the state where the mind is calm, uncluttered, no distractions, no rush.

3) Show – Don’t Tell Learning the language of photography. This set me pondering the wider implications of the question – why don’t we teach our children visual literacy? We teach them verbal literacy – to speak, read and write. But where is the teaching of how to see?

Back to Basics Section.
A look at Ulrich’s 5 basic elements that together give us the visual photography ‘tools’ we use every day. He divides it into: The Frame – The Light – The moment – Colour and tonality – Treatment of the subject.
Sounds easy and straightforward! But the elements are all interlocking, and each covers a whole lot more than you think!
So I’ll still use Ulrich’s division – just separating out one more element, Composition, to look at in depth. And to make it easier to navigate through the elements I’ll split them into 1 or 2 elements per page, then link on to more in-depth pages. That way you can take a quick look, and move on – or click through and go a bit deeper. So:

4) Back to Basics 1 – This covers The Frame and Composition. Just a few thoughts on both, and how I think of them and use them myself. Then there are extra pages that delve a little deeper into these two areas:
a) The Frame – and how to use it
b) Composition – and some thoughts on shooting trees and ‘still life’
c) Negative Space – some more thoughts on composition

5) Back to Basics 2 – This covers The Light. Light is the absolute basis of seeing, and the absolute heart of photography! A few thoughts on this essential subject, and looking a little deeper into some interesting areas:
a) Shooting with natural light
b) Shooting with artificial light
c) Mixing natural and artificial light sources
d) The elusive Bokeh and lens flare

Back to Basics 3 and beyond (still to come)
d) The Moment
e) Colour and tonality
f) Treatment of the subject

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© 2019 Elisa Liddell