Keeping My Whites White!

I got inspired by a few comments that I received in regards to yesterday's blog and decided to try a watercolor of trees in winter.

As we live in the country, there's no shortage of material for this type of endeavor.  I also looked at a couple of pictures in some magazines we received and then took out a blank piece of watercolor paper.  No doubt you remember blank spaces from my previous post.

There are two methods for keeping white spaces white when doing a watercolor.

The first is to paint around all of the spaces that you want to remain white (not as easy as it sounds); the second is to apply something called Maskoid to protect the white spaces.  Maskoid is a masking fluid that dries so you can paint over it and not worry about dirtying the white spaces.

On the right here you'll see my white paper with Maskoid applied where I want to save all of the snow highlights I decided that I wanted in my picture.

I didn't do a drawing ahead of time (don't tell anyone).  I sort of drew the places where the highlights would be on the trees and ground with the Maskoid, so I guess you could say I Maskoid-ed a drawing!  It's not cheating...it's being creative!

I had actually given some thought to stopping right here, framing it and calling it "Winter Study."  Always a good thing to stop before you ruin a good thing, but my friend Guy would say, "Take a chance and make it better."

I've taken many chances in the past and have a stack of rejects to prove that I tried!

Anyway, on to the next step.

For this, I mixed some colors in my little tray that my friend Carol from New Paltz gave me and made a dark wash to lay out where the trees will be.

The nice thing is that you can paint right over the Maskoid after it dries (it's like plastic on a sofa) and the highlights are still there.  Really!  They're under the Maskoid.  You're going to have to trust me on this!

Two things about watercolor.  First, you have to remember to give the Maskoid and subsequent painting steps time to dry before you go on to the next step.

Secondly, the time allowed for drying is just about the right amount of time to make a batch of margaritas or to put together some cheese and crackers and aerate a nice Shiraz!

Here, on the right, I thought I would share what my paint tray looks like at this point.

I generally only use three colors, primaries of course, and love cobalt blue!  Along with that blue, a cadmium red and a cadmium yellow.

The three combined will make just about any color you might need.  I don't use black or white, but have been known to eat half a dozen black and white cookies!  They're the best.

After a glass of wine and some snacks...I mean after the first tree layout has dried, I go back and paint in a few more smaller trees, such as those that would be in the background, and put in some shadowing to represent folds in the snowbanks up front, shadows in front of trees, and start to show some differences between tree types.

Here you'll see Hemlock, Spruce and White Pine, Sassafras, Maple, Ash, Oak, and Elm trees.  

Trust me!  I know trees.

Under the snow, there is grass, acorns by the ton (of course), ferns, moss, trees that fell and are rotting, and many leaves that I didn't bother to rake up this Fall.  I gave up.

Oh, by the way, the third tree on the right, the big one?  There's a squirrel climbing up the backside!  

Can't see it? 

Sorry.  Maybe next time I'll paint facing the other side of the trees.

Now we'll start to add some character to the thing and add some color.  As shown on the right just below here, I do a wash of blue where the sky would be, add a little blue to the trees, for contrast and then some blue in the snow at the bottom where I've dripped paint across by mistake.  Trying to hold a brush and a wine glass at the same time, while mixing paint and thinking about the drawing can be very complicated...but, we always make the best of our mistakes and snow shadows do have a blue tint to them, no?

 

You can see here that the white spaces are still protected from the paint (and from the wine and the cracker crumbs).

The shiny stuff you see is the Maskoid that's still in place.  You have to imagine what the painting will look like when the Maskoid is taken off.  

Many times, I have to imagine that my painting isn't going to look anything like what I intended.  It hurts less if you're flexible.

You see, there have been times when I've been asked what I was painting and pointing straight ahead at the subject have still had the inquirer say, "I don't see that!"   I keep painting.

The nice thing about nature landscapes is that a they don't have to be exact representations...unless you're painting Mount Rushmore (and if you do, please use exterior paint and check with the park rangers first)...and we're not doing portrait work here, so most will buy the fact that this is titled "Winter Trees" and that there's snow here and there, even if it's not exactly as it is in my backyard.

The next part is the fun part!  I get to take the Maskoid off!  I do it by rubbing my fingers across the dried Maskoid.  There is a removal tool, something akin to a hard sponge, but I like the feel of the stuff peeling away and I get some exercise doing it.  

As a result, I have very, very strong fingertips!  I can tap so that it sounds like thunder!

When you get all of the Maskoid off, as pictured here on the left, you have exposed the white paper (it's not illegal, so don't worry), and can now think about what you're going to do next.  

Usually, a second margarita or a vino refill may come to mind, and that may give you more time to contemplate your next move.

I might mention here that it's important to keep your drink away from the water you use to clean off your brushes.  I only learned this one day working on an oil painting when I found myself reaching for what I thought was my drink and realized, from the smell, that I was about to take a swig of turpentine and my brushes were resting in a gin and tonic!  I can tell you that mixed drinks don't clean brushes well, and there's some sort of lead and other chemical poisoning information on paints in general that are important to heed.

Some people won't eat or drink while they're painting.  I say, why bother painting?

I digress.

Once the Maskoid is off, I paint branches below the white spaces where I want branches to be, put some blueish hues here and there to show shadows on the branches and play in the snow, adding things that I hope will make the painting better.

The next steps are very important.  At least, to me.

When I think I'm close to done, I put the painting away in another room and I don't look at it for 24 hours.  

Sometimes, I'm surprised with what I find.  

Once, I came back to a painting to find out my mother had tipped over the easel and put a hole through the canvas.  

Another time, I had left a watercolor standing up and some of the paint was still wet and it ran down the paper.  Several times I was certain someone had taken my beautiful work and left their reject!

On those wonderful occasions, you see a work that needs one or two things to be "people ready." 

So that's what I'm going to do with this one.  

We'll look at it again tomorrow.

As you can see by my little tray, on the left, I still have a bit of blue left and the darn stuff costs a bundle so I'll see what I can do to get it back in that little tube!  

 

Actually, it's okay if the colors dry a bit.  They can be re-wet and used again.

Wash your brushes, put the caps back on your paints and be sure your wine glass is empty...if that stuff dries up, all is lost!

Sidewalks are Christmas!

Christmas was very nice this year!

We spent less on gifts and more time and effort on the time and meals we were going to share.  We enjoyed it all.

As we get older, I find that the emphasis is more on family time and less on material things.  And face it, at this point in my life if you're not getting me a Maserati GranTurismo or an all expense paid cruise to several European ports, there's only so many socks I can wear at one time and, since I left the job this summer, I really don't need any more ties!

I always have a need for chocolate covered cherries (scored those) and I like a new flannel shirt each year...they're warmer when they're fresh!

What I have come to understand is that I find Christmas in the little things that surround the holiday; the ones that make it easy.

There's the fact that the tree hasn't fallen over (yet).  Less cursing, no water damage to the floor, and we look forward to having most of the same ornaments on our tree next year.  It costs less if they don't break and, while we'll still find pine needles in strange places in June, there's no picking of colored pieces of glass out of feet.  (I didn't get new slippers).

The outdoor lights stayed lit, without a single bulb replacement, and the electrical burning smell we experienced last year has not returned.  Maybe those new light strings did the trick.

We have experienced a minor masking tape issue.  We stick cards that we receive to various spots on our walls, as decoration, but the masking tape I got this year is less sticky than usual.  At times, we'll hear a sharp crack.  I'm thinking it's a mouse trap securing a victim, but so far it's been about a dozen cards falling off the wall, making that noise as they strike the hardwood floor.

Not too much to complain about.  I did get new tape, I'm still indoors when I'm rehanging them, and I can do it in my pjs.  Not like last year, when the wreaths kept flying off the porch posts and shed doors and I had to track them out in the cold like a truancy officer.  I was ready to superglue them to their spots, after about a dozen trips outdoors to rescue them, but knew that would come back to haunt me (as in, my wife would find out).

Even without sidewalks, a few family members made it to the house.  Due to the fact that it's been more like Spring than Winter, the driveway hasn't turned into a skating rink and cars and people can come and go safely.  

I had amazingly low cookie breakage this year (that's a big thing for a cookie maker...if you remember I made ninety dozen sugar cookies and they can be fragile and break during frosting) and we've had five nights worth of meals out of a ham we bought for Christmas!

Okay, that wasn't planned.  We thought we were having company on the day after Christmas, but the famed nor'easter of that day put the kibosh on those plans.  I kept cutting ham, and cutting ham, and cutting ham, and it turned out to be the proverbial cornucopia of meat...tomorrow I'm turning the rest of it into soup.  From the looks of it, maybe ten gallons.

I know that's a lot of soup, but nowhere near as much snow as some places around us saw.  We got a dusting...maybe three inches...here's our deck after the snowstorm.

I did take out the snowblower to deal with the driveway, but more as, "Why not, it'll only take ten minutes," as opposed to having to do it by hand...I could have shoveled what was there.


If I had a sidewalk, I'd shovel that for sure.  Did I mention that I didn't get a sidewalk for Christmas?  Wanted one.

A city friend of mine who knows of my desire to be living adjacent to a sidewalk sent me a Christmas card, below, with the note that she hoped she hadn't invoked city sidewalk envy.  She did.  

To poke me in the face, on the front of that one card, there are representations of just a few of the people she sees in just a day, yet more than I see in a year in my neighborhood.

True, I could drive all over the place to find most, but she can walk out the front of her place, greet the doorman, get almost run over by a bicycle, jump out of the way of a guy walking thirteen dogs, as she passes the neighbor (mumbling to himself) who works on Wall Street, check out all of the shoppers in the stores lining her sidewalk, wave to cabbies if she wants a ride (or just to confuse them), order food to be walked to her place, catch a bagel on almost any corner, shake her head at the kid skateboarding in the middle of the street, point out any number of famous people hiding behind sun glasses, have a Broadway star or starlet wait on her at her favorite restaurant (that she can walk to because her sidewalks connects to the one by that place), and bask in the glory of nature as she views the pigeons in Central Park (or on any building anywhere).  Okay, pigeons aren't high on the list of nature's "must sees," I admit, but they beat running into a bear or cougar.

You see, I did have a bear run towards me in my driveway one day, and I can state they are much more intimidating than a pigeon.  Although, now that I say that I have to tell you that I've never had a pigeon come after me, so I should hold back on further thoughts about that.

Anyway, I don't know what all of this means.  Except, I think that people connections are really important, and the holidays prove that as people make the time and put out the effort to get together.  Sidewalks connect people to people, and make it easier for them to get together, so sidewalks help to make Christmas!

Wouldn't it be nice to have Christmas all year long (I'll find that sidewalk, yet!)