Shari's new book is out!

One evening this winter I came home to discover Shari Blaukopf's new book in my mailbox.  If you know her work, you will have recognized that she has a painterly approach - volumes, atmospheric depth, skillful colour composition and often a detailed description of paint colours.
Working With Color takes a deep dive into her extensive knowledge in an accessible, topic per page, format.  And true to Shari's graphic design roots, the production values are very high, including the Moleskin-like elastic band on the cover.  I highly recommend it!

Oh, and the reason I received it so early was because one of my sketches was included as an example of using a limited palette.  That sketch was from Spain, when I walked the Camino de Santiago de Compostella several years ago.  In my book, Drawn Along The Way,  I described the limited palette I used and credited Sahri for the choice of the five tubes of watercolour I relied on for that whole month.

Oh, and for the editors out there.  Shari's book was published in America where there is a severe shortage of the letter "u".  Although somewhat humourous, I am honoured, nonetheless.

Barcelona Primaries

I used my little water colour field box for the majority of the sketches, but a few times I did experiment with mixing from three primary colours.  I had a couple of sunny hours on a Sunday afternoon in Pamplona and worked with just three tubes of paint.  I would have done this more often, but didn't have a cover for my little palette and didn't want to goo up my paint kit.

I got onto this through one of my on-line mentors Shari Blaukopf who is going to use this as part of her sessions for the Urbansketchers Symposium this summer in Barcelona.  Her Barcelona mix is French ultramarine (blue), Aureolin (yellow) and Rose Madder (red).  The green, orange and purples are obvious, what I didn't expect was the subtle range of beiges and greys possible by using all three pigments.  Shari introduced me to limited palettes last summer in a workshop and believes they contribute to harmonious paintings.  She has a very sophisticated understanding of colour, so I'll take her advice.

This 'Barcelona primaries"mix will be perfect for the stone buildings and crisp shadows in Barcelona, but I haven't been too pleased with the range of greens.  I learn by doing and only then investigating theory.  After two years of blundering about with watercolour, I'm now ready to do some reading as well as experiment with some other primaries to see what I can mix for greens.

Watercolour Workshop - part 2

These are some of the exercise sketches I did while participating in Shari Blaukopf's most excellent workshop this week at MacDonald College in the west end of Montreal. 

The black and white sketches are value studies , done as a plan before undertaking a painting.  Shari put me on a colour diet and I only had three near primary colours to work with.  This is also a good way to achieve unity. This was a great exercise as it was also a jump from my little travel kit of hard pans to tube paints which where different hues from those in my kit.

The planning sketch also inherently addresses composition - not only fitting the whole subject of the page, but how to lead the eye and provide a point of interest.  I think I'll start doing 2" x 2" blocking studies on the left (backside) page in my sketchbook prior to starting a sketch. if nothing else it should keep me from running out of room on the page for the whole subject, as I sometimes do.

I brought away several other very practical little reminders and techniques to use as I continue to try and figure out to make watercolours work.

Shari Blaukopf's Watercolour Workshop

I'm spending a couple of days at a watercolour workshop given by Shari Blaukopf at John Abbott College in the west end of Montreal.  Shari is also a member of Urban Sketchers and has been faithfully posting a sketch every day since last fall. http://shariblaukopf.com/2012/06/05/montreal-workshop-day-1/

Today we worked on values.  The exercise was to do a planning sketch which blocked out light, mid and dark areas then do a painting.  I found this very helpful and will continue to block out  a 'plan' before starting into a full page. The photo was my third practice sketch and painting.  It is a mundane representation of a magnificent ginko tree with a huge buttress and multiple stems, which in my experience, is unusual as most of the ginkos I know are one trunk with higher branches.  This illustrates my challenge - my quick sketch is better than my painting.