Local color ~ connecting to place

Trying out a new resource and exercise!

 I was recently gifted with a book by one of my watercolor students titled  Local Color: Seeing Place Through Watercolor, by Mimi Robinson.  What a fabulous resource this is turning out to be!  I have been entranced by the color palettes and swatches throughout the book, but hadn’t tried my hand at doing them until last Saturday.  

Simple, but not easy...  yet also very enjoyable!

Saturday morning, sketch-group friends and I met at Naples Zoo to draw and paint.  After a leisurely walk through the park, I chose a section of landscape as my focus and decided to warm up with a series of color swatches.  I found that what seemed to be an easy exercise was (in fact) more complex; while it was challenging, it was also rewarding.  I spent most of my time analyzing what I saw in terms of hue and value and then creating squares of color that reflected the colors around me in the landscape. 

I tried a larger rectangular swatch of the colors and movement in the water, and learned what NOT to do.  I then created a thumbnail sketch based on my color investigations that I felt was very successful.  Then of course, it was time to move on to lunch and to work. 

The landscape

Looking back, I can see that creating the 25 watercolor swatches taught me a great deal, both in mixing color, and in finding value.  I realized that the assumptions I made about what colors I saw in the water and sky were off.  While we often exaggerate color and value for effect, decisions about how far to go should be based on seeing colors correctly in existing light and in relationship to each other, not based on faulty presumptions (Isn’t the sky always some shade of blue?  hmm…). 

Exploring online later, I found the “Local Color Collective,” where artists can email Mimi to share their own local color palettes and create a world view of place through color!  Take a look!

Click on any image to view larger.

The Naples Zoo is an amazing 43 acres that’s gone through many transitions.  It’s based on the tropical botanical garden first planted in 1919 by Dr. Henry Nehrling, plant and hybrid pioneer, but now is home to primates, lions, giraffes, alligators, and water birds, as well as many other species. 

You can buy the book Local Color through my Amazon Associates store to help support this blog.  Thank you!

Sketchbook entry:

Strathmore Visual Journal (140 lb. CP watercolor), 5.5x8 in.

Daniel Smith watercolors

Niji Aquabrush, large

Painting water in landscapes

Marl pond waters reflecting sunny blue skies (painted from my photo reference).

On our sketching trip to Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park recently, my friend Karen asked me how she could represent water realistically. Like so many of us, she discovered that water is challenging to draw or paint. Along with the challenges of textures, reflections, and transparency, there is also movement – either from the surface being broken by wind, fish, or birds or by the currents below the surface.

There are a number of good books and online resources that address ways to represent water. I am by no means an expert, but I’d like to share some of the techniques I’ve found that work for me, especially when sketching in the field and trying to get a quick capture.

Water changes colors: blue where it reflects the sky,
 brown where we can see the mud flats below the shallow water.
White sparkles added with a craft knife (painted in the field).

First, I observe the water and what’s happening with wind and reflections, because sometimes it’s hard to separate out the different shapes and colors present.

My motto is to simplify; I look for the broadest colors and shapes, and for a direction of flow.  If I’m painting in watercolor, I start with the most gestural of lines in the lightest color, leaving some white areas. There are almost always white (or very light) bits of sparkling color where the sun’s rays bounce off of the surface. If you leave too much white at the beginnning you can always add a glaze of color over it.



I like to add flowing lines that indicate movement. 
I take the subtle ripples and flow that I see and
exaggerate and simplify them (painted in the field).



Next, I look for the darker colors, which may be reflections or shadows. Many times a body of water is darker near the foreground, becoming lighter as it nears the horizon. There are often many colors in water: it may contain minerals or tannin that color and cloud the water itself, there may be submerged rocks or logs that can be seen through the water, and the surface of the water often reflects the surrounding countryside. Picking up even just a few of these colors adds dimension and depth.

Ripples are circular in shape, spreading outward in broader and broader rings from the point of disturbance.  The angle these ripples are viewed from will determine how elliptical they will be.  Sometimes it's good to practice sketching and painting ellipses or ovals so we can feel more confident when we start depicting water.

You also might find it easier to practice illustrating water from a photo reference - at least nothing is moving! I hope seeing one way that one artist approaches a tricky subject like water is helpful. 

Notice reflections: they are like a mirror image
 of the object they reflect, broken by
horizontal layers of water
(painted in the field).

 




The water in this canal has dissolved
limestone in it, making it less reflective
and a bit murkier.  I kept the reflections of the
limestone rocks in the water simple -
they are mere suggestions (painted in the field).