I had been at odds with the suggested exercises to prepare Assignment 3. I wasn’t able to follow the procedure due to weather conditions, and had to adapt to what was possible within the time available. After the compositional sketches and line and colour studies I did not feel sufficiently prepared for tackling the assignment. I also found my chosen scene only moderately attractive and did not know how I might develop it into an interesting painting.

The suggested types of studies hadn’t felt right for my scene, because they didn’t  seem to address its particular difficulties. For example, there were the complex tree shapes which merited closer study, because I hadn’t been able to disentangle them with the line study. I also wanted to do a close-up of the building to look at the size relationships of main forms and smaller elements. Then I wanted to test techniques how to paint the mid-ground silhouette of trees against the Hudson river to the left – it might work well if done wet-in-wet to let the darker colour soak into the lighter background area, but I felt this needed some experimentation.

I had detected an area of negative background behind a light tree shape in my photograph, and I thought a close-up of this might help for the final painting. Then there was the challenge of sizing up – so far, my studies had been small in the 23 x 30 standard or the A4 watercolour sketchbook. It’s a different thing combining these elements into a picture of A3 or larger, and I felt I needed some practice on the larger scale as well.

I decided to devote some more time for these aspects, before proceeding to the assignment painting. For me, this meant attempting to find my own way of approaching the topic, beyond the suggestions in the course materials. One of the aims was to develop a style and technique that would work for me, and I did not want to go into photorealism. I thought about trying out an approach of omitting detail altogether and focus only on main forms and colours.

More studies

My first study was a technical sketch in the A4 watercolour sketchbook. I wanted to try out an alternative to using masking fluid for the lighter areas of the branches. The idea was to scratch into a layer of wet watercolour to create light marks. I tried a wooden stick (did not work), my fingernails (not bad, but messy because they are too short and I smeared the paint), and a knife (worked best). Using two fine brushes, I tried to delineate some branches by adding a fine dark contour and dissolving one side of it over the ligther area. The technique created nice effects, but I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to apply it to the final painting.

Next, I made a detail study of the Cloister building’s main architectural shapes (6B pencil, 23 x 30 sketchbook). I found this helpful for getting better acquainted with the building. On the other hand, I knew I wouldn’t include all the details in the final painting because the building would appear only very small.

To prepare sizing up to the larger assignment piece, I made a charcoal sketch of the entire scene in A3. I think this was quite successful in its composition and how it outlined the main elements and their size relationships.

Then I did a pastel study with the aim of testing colour relationships. By some intuition, I chose dark green paper for this sketch, and this proved to be a difficult choice. The light colours came out nicely, but all the darker tones sank into the background and made the compositional elements almost unrecognizable. I worked over the sketch by blending lighter tones into the dark areas, and this lifted the entire sketch. I exaggerated some colours which were only slightly apparent in the photo, for example the touch of violet in the branches before the Cloisters, or an orange tone in the earth tones of the ground close to the viewer. This gives the sketch an almost psychedelic ambience, which I found interesting but did not want to introduce into the final painting. What I liked about this study was that the pastels forced me to omit details and focus on the main shapes.

  

 

The final painting ?

After a day’s break, I felt ready to approach the final watercolour painting. I started with a pencil outline and used a bit of masking fluid for the windows of the cloister tower and the light areas of some branches. I then layed a light blue-grey wash for the sky and river in the background, and added the distant background shapes to the sides of the river. I also laid a wash for the road and diluted the contours to avoid having them cutting through the trees of the foreground.

I found painting the Cloister building and the upper branches relatively straightforward, but had enormous difficulties with the foreground trees and the mid-tones in the middle ground. There is a central tree who changes its value from lighter than the background to darker than the background, and I couldn’t get to grips how to paint this. Similarly, I constantly lost focus which tree or branch I was painting and felt as if I always had the wrong colour intensity on the brush.

Overall, I am quite skeptical about this painting. There are successful elements, for example the sky and the distant background shapes, which capture the light gray overall atmosphere of the winter’s day. But I’m not very satisfied with how I painted the foreground and middle ground with all the trees and branches. There was also a problem with the colours, because I tried to capture those grey-brown tones of the winter scene and this resulted in very muddy overall colours.

I felt that I had been focusing too much on details and decided to make another painting of the same scene. I wanted to focus more on the larger shapes and use pigments and water more generously. This second painting is lighter and more fluid, but it repeats the overall muddy colour impression. I stopped painting because I was so dissatisfied with my attempts and felt that I had enough of my chosen scene for that moment. In particular, I found that the dark branches looked dead if they were not accompanied by lighter areas, but I was not in the mood to work out all those details for a second time.

Interestingly, the pencil underdrawing for the second study was much clearer in the tree shapes. But the coloured wash for the middle ground covered it and so I had lost my guides for those shapes, which made me lose confidence for the entire painting. The subject I chose proved very difficult to paint and I was really struggling with technical problems and how to handle watercolours in a painting of that size.

I’m not sure what to do about the assignment. The paintings I’ve made so far are not really to my satisfaction, but I’m finding it difficult to keep up interest and enthusiasm for the scene I chose. I’d rather continue with something else – a subject with friendlier colours and more positive overall mood than those winter landscapes with bare branches and muddy colours. I’d love to paint some flowers and maybe focus on details to avoid being overwhelmed by observational and technical difficulties.

Some more reflections

I wasn’t very confident to approach Assignment 3 after I had made the suggested preparatory work, which in my case consisted in a series of compositional sketches from the photographs I had taken on the spot, plus a line and a watercolour study of my chosen scene. Maybe it would have been different if I had made studies on the spot and visited The Cloisters several times to take photos on different times of the day and under different weather conditions, and also had collected some objects. It would certainly have added more pictures to choose from for the final painting.

I’m considering having a second go and doing an entirely different painting for assignment three, maybe getting back to my initial idea of using photos of Tuscany landscapes gathered from the web. Another idea was to make another try with the chosen photo of The Cloisters, but approach it in a different style – focusing on clear cut shapes and clean colours, no mixing on the fly. I also think it would be better to soak the paper and tape it onto a board, because my paper buckles on the block when wet and this makes painting difficult.

The Cloisters, third try

I decided to stay with my chosen topic and just give it another try. I painted this one in several sessions distributed over a week. I tried to be more cautious with the light and dark tones and the light and dark twigs. I seem to get along quite well with painting only for a short time and then making a pause. It protected me from getting exhausted and impatient. The final session in which I finished the painting was longer. Maybe I could still improve the painting by intensifying the contrasts, but I decided to stop and leave it at that because I felt that I’ve exhausted my enthusiasm for the topic.

I think it was good to try again and overall the result has improved. But I also think that this was not my best choice of topic. I’d have preferred to paint something more colourful and visually appealing. I felt obliged to remain truthful to the colours of my photo because I see the assignment as a technical exercise rather than a piece of art, but I must also say that I find this type of work not really satisfying. I understand that Level 1 courses are about acquiring technical skills and I have focused on this task, but for the future I’d like to develop more freedom in interpreting my subject.