Tuesday, September 12, 2023

Painting Fantasy on Location

What struck me about the exterior of the Jules Verne Museum was the way the historic building sits on the brow of a steep cliff, with a statue of St. Anne atop a long flight of stairs.


So I painted this 7 x 9-inch sketch on location, trying to imagine it separated from gravity on its own journey to another world.



I worked on a separate piece of hot press watercolor paper, using fairly traditional watercolor. After laying in the broad masses of the sky, rock, and architecture, I further defined the details and textures using water-soluble colored pencils. This is a fairly fast way to sketch; the whole painting was finished on location in two and a half hours, but it would have taken me far longer to do the same thing in the studio.
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3 comments:

  1. James BamfordSeptember 12, 2023 at 2:11 PM

    Does anyone have a good recommendation on a good watercolor pencil that will lay down on top of paint? I think the ones I got were too hard. They damage the surface without leaving much pigment... It's hard to know what will work until I try them. I'm trying to practice some of these techniques. - James Bamford @casualblitz

    ReplyDelete
  2. BevanSeptember 13, 2023 at 12:08 AM

    I like my Caran D'ache watercolor pencils

    ReplyDelete
  3. Coffs ArtistSeptember 13, 2023 at 12:17 AM

    Hi James
    When you say "but it would have taken me far longer to do the same thing in the studio" would that be because in the studio the project would be a bigger size, use different materials or have more detail etc?

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