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Deadline

Today is the end. The painting is done.

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Day 13

Tomorrow is the last day. So I washed the painting down, now it is time for detail work on the tiger.

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Day 12

Some minor tweaks.

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Day 11

Washed the painting down, and now I'm trying to get the sky just how I want.

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Day 10

Mind the wet paint! I was a bit aggressive today, but it is shaping up. There can be surprise or two, but I can see just about what it will look like in the end. After a wash, and a few days of detailing, we can call it a wrap.

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Day 9

One of the joys and pain about watercolor is it takes patience. In the beginning of a painting I can be messy and work all over. But as the image starts to take shape I slow down, usually alternating days working on the background, other days on the focal point of the image. The bad part is it can feel like progress is slow. The good, is that you can see it fresh every day and can plan and make adjustment as you see the painting take shape. I'm an impatient person, but I really enjoy the back and forth.

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This is the final week. I am setting the deadline of 10/10/10. I have learned of the positive power of a deadline. I often will work a project until it is forcibly taken from me. I am also a procrastinator; so knowing where and when to stop helps.

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Day 7

Punch up the colors.

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Color Set

Did not paint today, so I will go over what makes up my watercolor set.

Winsor Newton watercolors palette
left side top to bottom

Permanent Alizarin Crimson (this gets used in mixes a lot)
Burnt Sienna (I love this red brown color)
Vandyke Brown( a new favorite is a really nice dark chocolate color)
Raw Umber
Yellow Ochre
Raw Sienna
Indian Yellow
Cadmium Yellow

bottom left to right

Green Gold (another new favorite is a vibrant yellow green)
Olive Green
Permanent Sap Green( my most used green)
Perylene Green( a new addition, but I like its dark tone)
Winsor Green(yellow shade)(can be a bit strong but good for under painting)
Mixture GreenBlue Green Gold/Olive/Sap Green with Cerulean Blue
Mixture mid GreenBlue- Olive/Sap Green/Winsor Green with Cobalt Blue
Mix dark GreenBlue- Sap Green/Perylene Green with Prussian Blue
Mix Prussian Blue and a touch of Lamp Black

right side bottom to top

Cerulean Blue (red shade)( my favorite for painting happy clouds)
Mix- Cobalt Blue and Cerulean Blue( this is a beautiful mix)
Cobalt Blue
French Ultramarine( a new and lovely addition for a deep blue)
Prussian Blue( one of my most used colors I love the color)
Mix- Winsor Violet and Prussian Blue
Mix- Alizarin Crimson and Prussian Blue

top right to left

Winsor Violet (dioxazine) (a new additon, to help get the deep dark colors.
Winsor Violet and Alizarin Crimson
Permanent Magenta
Winsor Orange (red shade)
Rose Madder(I get more use from this than I thought, and it smells nice)
Venetian Red (a new favorite, and it lays over other color well for me)
Perylene Maroon( to add punch to my reds)

center left to right
(*with the middle area, I use a lot of water and is great in slowly building up a painting at the start of the process. This area gets used the most for coverage of large areas and to start with a base color before applying deeper colors.*)
Mix of all browns
Mix of all greens
Mix of all blues

Brushes are an assortment of brushes I have collected over the years. I still buy inexpensive brushes because I tend to use them roughly.

The large flat brush is for washing down watercolor paintings.

Eye dropper to add water to palette.

Spray bottle for texture and wet into wet.

This is what my set has evolved into over the years adding and removing different color for different reasons. Currently, I think I have my set just about how I like it. So this is my watercolor set up.

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Day 6

This is after I washed the painting down and started my second round. Adding two layers of yellow for the tiger and blue tints for the wings.

Washing down a watercolor is one of my standard practices; where I take a very large flat brush and a lot of water to wipe the painting down. It removes some of the harder edges that can happen when layering watercolor. Any example is under Day 5's left wing. It also softens and unifies the colors; compare the bottom clouds between today and yesterday.

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Day 5

Getting messy with clouds.

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Day 4

Now it is starting to look like something.

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Day 3

Another layer of color for the tiger.

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Day 2

Loose background. It seems strange that simple clouds give a feeling of space.

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Day 1

First day of painting. Keeping it loose with a lot of water and very little color.
It's more like staining in colors very lightly than anything major.

I like this stage because I can be a bit sloppy with application of color

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Watercolor Materials

Wood panels
in three sizes
36 by 24 inches 5 pieces
24 by 24 inches 5 pieces
12 by 24 inches 12 pieces
I seem to have a lot of wood. Anyway, I bought all 22 panels for about 30 dollars from HomeDepot and had them cut it to the size I needed.
I like to rotate artwork, starting new work as I'm putting final detail on older work.

Paper
Water color paper 30 by 22 (winsor newton rough paper is my current favorite)
Drawing paper 18 by 24
Saral paper, (the light blue paper) to transfer drawings onto watercolor paper
Gummed paper tape(on the left side just above the brushes)

Colors
Winsor Newton water color

Brushes
a random collection of cheap brushes I've been gathering since community college. I don't trust myself with expensive brushes because I'm really hard on them.

Eye dropper to add water to the colors

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Enlargement and Mounting

1st images shows original drawing on a 22x30 inch Winsor and Newton 300 Rough watercolor paper.

2nd image drawing enlarged to around 18x24 inches in photoshop and printed out the pieces without color.

3rd image transfer using Saral (trasfer) paper under the copy using a pen to go over the lines that I want to paint.

4th image the drawing on the watercolor paper and mounted onto a wood board with gummed paper tape, this is to prevent paper warping, and for when you wash down the painting. (pencil to show scale)

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Tight Pencil

The cleaned up pencil on the middle of the 5Tigers. I worked up the pencils with a little shading and changed the wing positions. This was done on an 11 by 17 sheet of regular copy paper.

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Value Sketch

Usually I give myself a week to finish a value sketch, which is important for planning my lights and darks in the finished painting. But this time I'm going for speed, I would like to have this whole project done in about 2 weeks.

So this gives me more or less a plan to paint from.

But why change your process?

Well, I'm calling this an experiment. I have a problem of not finishing projects in a timely manner. On top of that I noodle, doodle, tinker, and over work paintings sometimes.
So this time I will call this a speed painting.
Plus, I just want to see if I can.

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5Tigers

The far left is the concept redrawn, done without photo reference. I like the looseness and energy.
2 - 4 were drawn with photo ref, and developed with varying levels of success.
Sometimes I forget the danger of photo ref and get caught up in the details too soon, which can start to sap all the energy out of sketches

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