Watercolor Painting: A Comprehensive Approach to Mastering the Medium (27 page)

For many painters, making adjustments to the
composition is more difficult when working from life than from a photograph. It is easier to see a photo, already translated into a two-dimensional page, as a collection of shapes. Moving them around a bit does not seem so outrageous.

In the
photograph below the composition gets confusing on the left side, where several boats overlap. The aluminum boat in the foreground feels attached to the blue boat. If you squint or close one eye, you may notice that the light horizontal band on the foreground boat happens to line up exactly with a similar stripe on the blue one. This juxtaposition confuses the eye, making the two boats feel connected. Once the confusion is identified, potential solutions become apparent: Move the aluminum boat lower or higher on the page until the stripes no longer converge, change the color or value of one of the stripes so they are noticeably separate, remove the foreground boat altogether, and so forth. Standing before the actual scene, it may not occur to you that changes like these are even possible, let alone helpful. The scene attracted your attention, after all. It must be good the way it is.

What works in the real world or in a photo may not work in a painting. Learning to notice what might cause uncertainty is a process of moving back and forth between form and content. The translation from reality to illusion does not always flow without interruption. Unless you are some kind of natural watercolor wizard, you should get used to the idea that making a good painting usually takes more than one try.

Compared to the choices we make as we move a brush across the paper, compositional decisions are made mostly in relatively calm moments. Before any paint touches the paper, or when an early version is being assessed, we can take our time considering alternatives. Still, it can be difficult to see your own work objectively even when you don’t have a brush in your hand. The questions presented throughout this chapter are intended to heighten your
objectivity, helping you focus your awareness on conscious choices that can enhance your intentions.

Much of what improves a composition is quite subtle and can easily be overlooked. The convergence of light stripes, for example, that runs through the center of this image is just the kind of problem I might not see until I had made at least one version of the picture. This is another reason to begin with a simple study or sketch, saving both time and paper.

How much drawing does the picture need?
Drawing can be the painter’s primary tool in the early stages of studying and sketching a new subject. I wholeheartedly believe in creating at least one
thumbnail sketch of a new subject—particularly to work out
compositional issues. However, when the good paper comes out and the proper painting begins, I like to keep the pencil work to a minimum. “Drawing” and “composition” have become almost interchangeable terms in my watercolor practice. I see the role drawing plays mostly as arranging the components of the picture. Once that job is done, I want to stop making lines and start painting shapes.

A drawing done as a work of art in its own right can involve mark making that would be inappropriate in a transparent watercolor. Shading, for example, would cover the paper with so much graphite it would not receive the paint gracefully. Of course, there are many wonderful combination watercolor/pencil pieces, but, in general, we expect to see mostly paint on paper in a watercolor. The line work that precedes the painting is meant to make it easier to apply the paint with confidence, but too much preliminary drawing ends up constraining the brushwork, making it feel necessary to stay inside the lines.

As a general rule, I use a pencil or very pale paint to locate the major shapes. These are the relatively few shapes that need to be separated from each other for the illusion of space to be realized. It is not necessary to describe the objects at this stage of the process. We only need to know
where
they are, not
what
they are. Making sure the viewer can tell what he is looking at comes late in the painting process, usually after a couple of layers of paint have been applied.

For the most part, the less drawing I do on the watercolor paper, the freer I am to invent as I go, and the more likely I am to stop when the painting tells me to. I am not recommending doing no drawing at all, though. I do this sometimes, and it can get me into trouble. If I am overconfident and skip the thumbnail sketch, or don’t lay out the page at all, I often end up with a composition that doesn’t work, as happened with
Houseboat Backyard,
opposite. Most of the trouble comes from the dark cluster of pilings in the center of the composition. The dark rectangle on the right side of the cluster happens to line up with the rectangular buildings that are supposed to be way across the water. And the light and antenna on top could easily be mistaken for the Space Needle. Chances are I would have noticed these issues if I had taken a few minutes to make a sketch. Considering that a painting succeeds or fails at the level of the basic shapes, a little preliminary drawing can’t hurt.

TOM HOFFMANN,
HOUSEBOAT BACKYARD,
2010
WATERCOLOR ON ARCHES COLD PRESS PAPER
10 × 14 INCHES (25 × 36 CM)

The illusion of space in this scene from one of Seattle’s houseboat communities is undermined by the placement of the cluster of pilings. It appears to be perched directly on top of the orange kayak. In addition, its shapes are similar to the buildings in the distant skyline. If I had created a thumbnail sketch, I probably would have realized that I needed to keep the two elements more separate.

As painters, we are accustomed to looking at an image or a scene in terms of pure form. We squint or close one eye to see the relative value of shapes or the distribution of color. We learn how to pay attention to what is happening on the picture plane completely apart from what it means. Any illusion we succeed in creating, whether it is space, or light, or mood, is just that: an illusion. When all is said and done, all we really have is paint on paper. We make the washes and strokes that we believe will call forth the story we hope to tell, but it is the viewer who ultimately supplies the meaning.

This translation of form into content is very often done subconsciously. To the untrained eye, content appears to be coming directly from the painting, and all the credit for a convincing story is given to the artist, but the viewer must be ready to meet us halfway, or nothing is communicated. The individual viewer may not be aware that he is interpreting form, but the role is still gratifying. And, just like reading a poem or listening to music, it takes talent. At least, it
can,
if the artist has faith in his audience.

Try as we might—and some try very hard—we cannot control exactly what every individual will read into our paintings. Even the most carefully rendered duplicate of a photograph leaves the door open for a viewer to interpret the image according to his own associations. This, of course, is a good thing. If we could manipulate every viewer’s response completely, we would be propagandists rather than artists.

For the realist painter, creating an effective illusion of space in a painting is especially important. Although everything is actually happening on a flat piece of paper, the individual shapes that make up the scene must appear to be in different planes. We ask ourselves:
Is the message clear?
We usually want the viewer to know where the elements of the scene are relative to each other, so we take care to establish foreground, middle, and background planes, like the flats in a stage set. The wonderful irony is that the primary tool for creating the illusion of three-dimensional depth is how we arrange the shapes on the two-dimensional picture plane.

KATE BARBER
THE PRICE OF GAS,
2005
WATERCOLOR ON PAPER
15 × 20 INCHES (38 × 51 CM)

Although this scene is crowded with shapes, the foreground, middle ground, and background are clearly separated. Care has been taken to overlap forms and show where they meet the ground plane, making it possible for the viewer to make sense of the space.

Sketch the subject.
Notice how the horizon lines up with the eave of the cabin, and the profiles of the mountains meet the corners of the roof. The tops of the trees also just happen to touch the outline of the hills, and the cloud, which mimics the shape of the mountain, teeters on the highest peak. All of these alignment choices undermine the illusion of depth.

Look for awkward alignments.
This configuration of lines comes from the previous drawing. Do you see it? Out of context, it appears completely abstract. The lines radiate from a central point, seeming to be in a single plane. At the same time, they are attempting to describe shapes that are separated by considerable space (cabin front, roof, hill, mountain, and sky). What we see (the visual reality of lines on paper) works against what we know (the illusion of depth).