Hello 

Welcome to the FLOAT-YOUR-PIGMENT Newsletter #71, Simplify Photo 

I hope everyone had a relaxing Labor Day and are now ready to do some serious end of year painting!  I know I am very psyched about doing some paintings for the big watercolor societies like AWS and TWSA. 
The entry dates will be coming up soon.

You won't believe who I received a call from last week.... the one and only Jack Richeson , he called about buying the paintings that I had gotten accepted into the Richeson75 2016 Competition. What an honor to have him put 2 of my paintings into his collection. It pays to try and get into those watercolor competitions, even if you don't win any awards. 

There will be a Lakes Region Watercolor Guild meeting this Thursday on the 8th and Tom Francesconi will be demonstrating. info HERE

David

Yes to CLASS this coming Thursday, September 1st at the Civic Center in Libertyville
Yes to CLASS this coming Saturday, September 3rd at The Studio in McHenry.

Most of the watercolorist I teach work from photos and many will put in everything they see in the photo no matter if it is a good or bad photo. I always like to remind them that a photo is there just to represent what you had photographed and doesn't need to be copied exactly, especially if there are flaws in the photo.

I tell my students that copying a photo to every last detail makes you a human printer. If you had taken a perfect beautiful photo and you copied it to look exactly like the beautiful photo then you will have a beautiful watercolor that looks like the photo, but it will lack a look that many artists work a lifetime to create. I'm talking about a style that an artist achieves after years of painting. There are many painting styles where you know exactly who the painter is and to achieve this you need to get away from simply copying exactly everything you see in a photo. 

I will show you step by step how I turned a busy photo into a simplified painting below.

1. First I turn the photo B&W to see the value pattern, then I determine how much of the photo I leave in and how much I change. This is something you as the artist will decide and this decision is what I like to call creating. Learn to create a painting and not just copy a photo.

2. Next step I draw in the pencil lines of the painting. Do you trace it or freehand it? This I leave up to the artist, some will trace and some will draw it freehand and there isn't a right or wrong. if you trace I would suggest that you be creative in tracing only what you feel needs to be in the painting. Freehand it if you want more of yourself in the painting, meaning you create more of a style in the work then letting the photo determine what the drawing looks like. This subject of tracing vs freehand drawing is something many artists argue back and forth about, some feel it is wrong to trace while others feel it's okay. I personally believe either way is okay, just try to be creative no matter which way you do it.

3. In the third step I float in a large light and medium wash trying not to paint pieces. As for the colors I decide to go with a purple and yellow color scheme. 

4. In step 4 I put in a simplified background using warm yellow tones.

5. Next step 5 I put in the dark's and dark values usually mean putting in the details

6. The final step is to put in all the small details.

Final Words: I could have put in all the buildings that were in the photo but I decided I wanted the horses and rider to be the focus of the painting. Either way would have been fine, that's the creative part I want all my students to learn. "Create, Don't Just Copy"