Author Archives: richardhustonart

Honey Suckle #1 Backyard Collage


A Blooming Spring Honey Suckle Vine

Honey Suckle #1

Honey Suckle #1
(4×6) Collage/Mixed Media (acrylic and paper)
Private Collection

Based on a quick blind contour drawing while I was wandering the around the backyard the other day I just wanted do something fun so I grabbed the old scissors, tracing paper and glue.

Working on a collage this way helps me focus on shapes and contrast. My two favorite elements of design/composition.

Because of the invasive and vigorous nature of its growth I don’t think this vine is a native variety but it is a vounteer. However, it is just as sweet when you suck on the base of the of the flower; you have to be watch out for the Bees. I actually saw a friend of mine get stung on the lip when were kids.

Collage; Dandelion Magic


Coming back to the collage

I want to wish everyone a happy Mother’s Day and I hope it is as gloriously beautiful as it is here in Athens, Gee Aee

Haven’t been on line for a while so I thought I would just let the work speak.

Collage, Dandelion Magic

Collage: Dandelion Magic
(9×6)

Underpainting (9x6)

Underpainting
(9×6)

It’s a fun piece and what I call paper mosaic…very time consuming…but something I do enjoy

 

Watercolor; Early Azaleas


With the Masters golf tournament starting up over in Augusta, I decided to head outside and work up a piece in homage to the beauty of the Augusta National Golf Course. I’m not a golfer and never have been but it is a big event here in Georgia. Our temperatures took a major up swing over the last few days and all the spring flowers are starting to explode as we go from mid fifties to upper seventies and beyond. As usual just in time for the Masters.

All Azaleas are rhododendrons, but all rhododendrons ain’t Azaleas

My Daddy was an Agricultural Engineer and lover of flowers. Growing up we had large plantings of Azaleas around the house and while Azaleas and other rhododendrons are native to this part of the U.S. most of what we see planted around houses and in the landscape are hybridized with foreign species.

Early Azaleas-watercolor-041013001.

Early Azaleas
(9×6) Watercolor

Nature is more depth than surface. Hence the need to introduce into our light vibrations represented by the reds and yellows, a sufficient amount of blue to give the impression of air.

(Paul Cezanne)

Once again I am working with the sealed paper substrate and enjoying the freedom it provides . Learning how to push and pull all the diverse elements available to me. I find working this way does allow me to take a much more expressive approach and augments my already loose and free style to come to bare greater fruit.

One thing I am noticing with Elmer’s Craft Glue happens because it is not completely impervious to water. The use of watercolor and water causes the glue to soften a bit and bind the pigment to an extent. You can tell when this starts to happen because there a slight resistance or drag to the brush as it moves across the paper. A new sensation to be aware, interpret and use.

I may try using aqueous acrylics on this same sealed substrate especially once I change over to acrylic medium as the sealer.

Palette:

  1. Ultramarine Blue (Holbein)
  2. Purple Lake (Cotman)
  3. Lemon Yellow (Sakura
  4. Turquoise (Cotman)
  5. Burnt Sienna (RTVG)
  6. Elmer’s Craft Glue (2:1 mix)

Watercolor; the muddle and the puddle; Backyard Volunteers #6


Using pure color and allowing it to muddle and puddle is turning out to be a great adventure.

“Color is all. When color is right, form is right. Color is everything, color is vibration like music; everything is vibration.”

(Marc Chagall)

Working on this sealed surface offers some very interesting challenges and it requires rethinking a lot of my prejudices about working in watercolor.

Backyard Volunteers 6-watercolor-040713002

Backyard Volunteers 6
(4×6) Watercolor

One of the most interesting things I’m discovering is the color works best in saturation. Also, because the color is not absorbed by the substrate a very direct application is required. You can not go back into an area easily and add subsequent layers without wiping out what you laid down previously. Like many things this can be positive and negative.

I’ve never liked the effect of lifting in watercolor because of what it does to the surface of the paper but when you work on a sealed surface lifting becomes a much more useful and usable tool. I’m still learning how this can be used to the greatest benefit. It will come down to discovering when enough is enough.

Hopefully the rains will stop and I’ll be able to get out amongst them to day for some plein air work. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Palette:

  1. Ultramarine Blue (Holbein)
  2. Purple Lake (Cotman)
  3. Lemon Yellow (Sakura
  4. Turquoise (Cotman)
  5. Burnt Sienna (RTVG)
  6. Elmer’s Craft Glue (3:1 mix)

Watercolor; falling in love with the mix and mingle


It is so much fun exploring each new small advance. Magic happens with a series. It’s wonderful to trust your inner instincts and turn off the brain chatter now and then.

(Jean Bradley)

Working in color on a project

Backyard Volunteers 5-watercolor-040713001

Backyard Volunteers 5
(4×6) Watercolor

I enjoy color. Always have. I like working on a series or a project. Bringing the two together is always fun. It is where I get to play. I like to think in terms of project rather than series. There are a number of reasons for this:

  • A project has a beginning middle and end; a series is indefinite and open-ended.
  • Because of my background as a set designer, scenic artist and production artist, I have learned to respond well to deadlines whether externally or self-imposed.
  • A project helps motivate me. It helps me explore certain aspects of my art and my craft.
  • When I’m working on a project I am better able to focus.
  • When I begin a project I can set goals and guideposts; markers that help develop a sense of progress and accomplishment.
  • I think through a project, but I am not obsessive about following through on each and every detail of the plan.

I realize that what I have written can also be applied to the idea of a series and I am probably just engaging in semantics; however, perception is everything. I believe how you think about things is of vital importance. Having said all that, What is this new project.

  1. I want to explore the possibilities of working on a sealed surface.
  2. I want to work with PVA  glue and fluid acrylic medium as the sealant.
  3. I want to work with predominately pure color allowing the pigment to mix and mingle on the surface.
  4. I want to play with lifting color in order to see what happens on this surface.

Palette:

  1. Ultramarine Blue (Holbein)
  2. Purple Lake (Cotman)
  3. Lemon Yellow (Sakura
  4. Turquoise (Cotman)
  5. Burnt Sienna (RTVG)
  6. Elmer’s Craft Glue (3:1 mix)

Watercolor on a sealed surface Backyard Volunteers 7


“I cannot “sort of” be a watercolorist; I am forever trying to be the best I can be”

William H. Condit

Bringing the Backyard Volunteers inside

Backyard Volunteers 7-watercolor-040713004

Backyard Volunteers 7
(5×7) Watercolor
©Richard Huston 2013

One the most enjoyable aspects of trying to learn how to use watercolors masterfully is finding new ways to approach the medium. For this next group I decided to return to a process I have played with in the past. It has always had some interesting results. This approach begins with sealing the surface of the paper and allowing it to dry (usually overnight). I have used various PVA glues and acrylic medium thinned to various proportions. For these paintings the mix was 3:1 water to Elmer’s Craft Glue. Once the prepared substrate is ready in this case 110lb cardstock I begin to paint. Using this thin mix of water and glue does allow a looser surface and the coverage is not absolute. I like to add some unpredictability to my challenge. I find it lends itself to a more playful and expressive result. Frankly, it is boring to have things go precisely according to plan. I’ve known other artists who are obsessive about beginning with an absolutely pristine surface. Me, I’m in the Joan Miro camp of the slightly intimidated by that blank white sheet. I have to not care about the result in order paint the way that works best for me. No mistakes just some imprecision to be dealt with.

When I was in graduate school, We had a 33′ x 29′ backdrop to be ready to be painted. The colors had been mixed; canvas stretched and sized on the paint frame; cartooned in charcoal; and inked with mixture of aniline dye and shellac. When a professor walked up; dipped a lay in brush into a 5 gallon bucket of water; then into the brightest red imaginable; back into the water and then slung a diluted drippy swath of color across the width of the back drop with all his might. “No need to worry.”, he said, “the worst possible thing that could happen just happened.  Have fun!”

Backyard Volunteers 7-watercolor-040713003

Backyard Volunteers 7
(5×7) Watercolor
Set up

I thought it might be interesting to see how I set up for these small works so added this thumbnail. I have used these notebook clips in different sizes for a number of years and like the convenience and ease of repositioning.

Palette:

  1. Ultramarine Blue (Holbein)
  2. Purple Lake (Cotman)
  3. Lemon Yellow (Sakura)
  4. Turquoise (Cotman)

Watercolor: fun and sparkle with the third Backyard Volunteer


“Practice makes perfect, and a painting a day keeps the doctor away!”

Eleanor Blair

Backyard volunteers 1-watercolor-0303013003

Backyard volunteers 1
(4×6) Watercolor

There is such a sense of fun and play in this quote from Eleanor Blair I had to go and find her work. Here’s a link to her website: Eleanor Blair Studio. Her work is filled with light, adventure, play and fun. I don’t know her but I would like to meet and talk. Maybe, I’ll get down to Gainesville someday. I especially like her landscape work in and around central Florida.

The idea of fun and play is very important to my work. I did a quick search of my blog and was very surprised to find just how much I write about them. I plan on the play between, me, the water, the paper, and the paint to evolve into a dance. Sometimes slow and sonorous with deliberate contemplated movement. Sometimes fast and the performance filled with wild abandonment. I often call this the moment of creative frenzy. It is a peak moment for me. The time when it all comes together; The study, the practice, the subject, the environment, the mind, eye and hand.

Here are some links to some of my other posts about fun:

Drawing the gateway to what makes painting fun   

Drawing to keep it fun; playing in shapes   

Watercolor; Goofin’ and Funnin’ Roadside Jewels #2

Leaf Board Fun

Watercolor; If you ain’t enjoying stop doing it… 

Palette:

  1. Ultramarine Blue (Holbein)
  2. Burnt Sienna (RTVG)
  3. Turquoise (Cotman)
  4. Lemon Yellow (Sakura)
  5. Purple Lake (Cotman)

Watercolor; Backyard Volunteers #3


Backyard volunteers: celebrating deliberate spontaneity!

I wanted to share another of the four Backyard Volunteers and how I looked for a spontaneous kind of composition. A friend of mine once asked me as I returned from a painting session, “Well, did you capture the moment?” I answered, “No but I managed to express it.” A bright light of understanding exploded in my head at that moment. My answer may have just been an exercise in semantics but it very accurately describes what I am trying to do.

Backyard volunteers 3-watercolor-0303013002

Backyard volunteers 3
(4×6) Watercolor
©Richard Huston 2013

I quite often work on a surface larger than the intended size of the finished work. When you work in a loose and free style or want to open yourself up in this way your subject will often burst through your predefined limits. It is part of being open to what the your medium, your tools, your environment and your subject bring to each unique experience. As I did in this series, sometimes I will draw the originally envisioned limits on the work.  I think this adds a statement about the unconstrained nature of the approach. I believe when you do this you draw out the curiosity of your audience; you suggest the world beyond the frame.

The frame and how it relates to the work is a very important choice for watercolor artists in the final presentation of their work. Unlike acrylics and oils a watercolor needs to be protected by a frame and glass. The frame limits the work and places a barrier between the work and the viewer. Once in a museum I saw a beautiful large watercolor hung in the worst possible location imaginable. There was no place within the gallery to stand where the reflected glare of the lighting did not obscure a major portion of the painting.  This introduces another important consideration in presenting your work; where and how it is hung.  It is your work and you want to show it in the best possible light and we all need to do the best we can to insure it is seen by our audience in the most ideal conditions available.

 

Palette:

  1. Ultramarine Blue (Holbein)
  2. Burnt Sienna (RTVG)
  3. Turquoise (Cotman)
  4. Lemon Yellow (Sakura)
  5. Purple Lake (Cotman)

Watercolor; looking at my process


Spring and flowering trees

I has been a while since I have worked up a painting. Lately my emphasis has been on the spontaneous and fast expression of my reaction to what is to presented to me by nature. Essentially I have been sketching; seeking to a conclusion and the conclusion is a finished painting. I am still firmly committed to the concept of daily painting and gladly embrace it. However, there is another aspect that I want to explore; a more compositional or designed and more “contemplated ” work.

“The artist builds with line, shape and color. It is upon the organization of the elements that the success of any composition depends.”

Maitland Graves

Spring and flowering trees-watercolor-040413001

Spring and flowering trees
(6×9) Watercolor

The process of painting is a lone adventure and unique to each individual. You discover your process through practice. Trying new approaches to the exciting adventures that come with expeditions into nature and the medium.

“After a thousand watercolors you will find you have fallen in love with paper and paint.”

Rex Brandt

-Spring Flowering Trees 1-ink-040213001

Spring Flowering Trees 1

This painting began with a couple of plein air value studies using brush and ink. I like working up value studies this way because I can work quickly and my approach is very similar to the way watercolors are worked up going from light to dark, or more accurately from thin to saturated.

The first value study focused on the high contrast between the flowering tree and the background behind it. Compositionally the flowering tree is too centered and their is a lack of visual excitement to this kind of arrangement. However, I am beginning to establish some of the important relationships.

Spring Flowering Trees 2-ink-040213002

Spring Flowering Trees 2

The second attempt at the subject is much more interesting with more variation in the composition; as well as, movement. At this point, I am beginning to find the hook to this piece. I found the white dancing across the page in a delightful way. Once discovered, preserving the pristine whites become even more important than it usually is. The arrangement of shapes and the way the eye moves around the work is also beginning to become more interesting.

tracing-040313001

Tracing 040313001

After the second study dried, a process I hastened along with a hair dryer, I did a tracing to help solidify the shapes and improve the drawing. Sometimes this can tighten up my approach to line and lock me into an almost coloring book way of working but that is not necessarily a negative thing. Once I finished the tracing I used it to transfer the drawing to watercolor paper.

Finally, I was able to start the fun. Actually if I did not enjoy the entire process I would not bother with any of it and I wouldn’t call myself a painter. I began working this work with an intense saturated underpainting in Lemon Yellow (Sakura). Following the yellow I began with glazes of Turquoise (Cotman). Using this greenish, warm blue began to create the greens of the background. Gradually the greens were deepened by adding increasingly saturated washes of turquoise; then Ultramarine (Holbein). At this point I began to add the warmer colors Purple Lake (Cotman) and Burnt Sienna (Royal Talens).

Spring and flowering trees (uncropped) -watercolor-040413002

Spring and flowering trees (uncropped)

Once I had finished the painting and it had dried overnight, I began the part I call living with the piece. I hang it in a prominent place and see how I react to the piece. Certain things bothered me from the beginning. I was uncomfortable with the proportions and how it sat on the page. It did not take long for me to decided the work needed cropping. So I did cutting it down to the 9×6 you see at the beginning of the post.

Here are some links  on value studies and using black and White masses:

James Gurney- Cure for Middle Value Mumblings 

Peggy Stermer-Cox- Value of Value Studies

Richard Huston-Ink Sketches 021712 and Ink Sketches 021812

Watercolor with confidence in 10 minute chunks


“The Stroke doesn’t have to be accurate, but it must be sure.”

Tony Couch

Backyard volunteers 4(4x6) Watercolor

Backyard volunteers 4
(4×6) Watercolor
©Richard Huston Art 2013

If I want what I write about painting and what I want to express in my work to be of the greatest benefit to others and myself I need to get my own thinking better organized. In order to do this I turned to one of the most influential books ever written on the subject of design and color: Maitland Graves’, The Art of Color and Design.  My own well read copy is the first  edition published in 1941 by the McGraw-Hill Co. Inc., NY, NY.

I must admit that I was a bit disappointed  when I received my copy because it was a first edition and not the 2nd. The second edition contained paintings by one of my earliest teachers and heroes, Lamar Dodd. In fact, I have searched for the exact view-point from which one these paintings, View of Athens from North Avenue, was executed. However, time and some probable compositional editing has rendered this discovery impossible. I highly recommend this book to anyone serious about the study of art in any field.

This is one of my favorite passages in the book and I wanted to share it with you;

“…a line, shape, texture, or color is a concrete actuality. These elements are more real than the objects that they represent. Their effect does not depend upon an appeal to our intellect but to our primary instincts, which are deeper, more fundamental. They make a direct visual impact; they evoke an immediate, vigorous response. The elements and the principles of design that govern their relationship are, therefore, real and powerful forces.”

Maitland Graves

 I spent an hour or so on a lovely early Spring afternoon sitting in the grass next to a fire ant mound (fortunately it was just a bit too cool for the little beggars to be active) to do the four Backyard Volunteers paintings. I did all the drawing with a brush and focused on being bold and confident with the stroke as I sought to capture the richness of the color that caught my eye and drew me to these tiny jewels.  Next day they mowed the lawn and I lost my models. Hopefully, they will regrow.

Palette:

  1. Ultramarine Blue (Holbein)
  2. Burnt Sienna (RTVG)
  3. Turquoise (Cotman)
  4. Lemon Yellow (Sakura)
  5. Purple Lake (Cotman)

Watercolor by the 10 minute chunk


Have  you got 10 minutes?

It won’t take that long to read this but it is a catchy introduction

Watercolor 0302913002-Blue glass, apple and yellow ball

Blue glass, apple and yellow ball
(5×7) Watercolor

I have started a new project over the last couple of days that focuses on doing fast loose and expressive watercolor paintings in approximately 10 minutes. By necessity they are small and limited in color palette. It is also very important for me, I can’t this emphasize enough, to be prepared.

Blue glass and Apple- graphite-0302713004

Blue glass and Apple
(4×6) Graphite

Being prepared for me means many things and most importantly seeing and having seen the subject. I believe that seeing begins with drawing so an hour spent drawing turns into 10 minute paintings. This is what I meant yesterday when I wrote DRAWING THE GATEWAY TO WHAT MAKES PAINTING FUN. It opens me up and frees me to explore all the different avenues the color and water bring to the dance.

Being prepared also requires that my color palette be laid out and ready; the paper stretched and the subject ready. Preparation also requires the very important choice of what Frank Webb calls the mother color. The mother color is the color that unifies the whole work and is used as under wash to begin establishing the shapes preserving the areas to remain paper white. My mother color is usually a neutral mix that I also use for the brush drawing in this case I used an Indian Red and Ultramarine combination that granulates and settles nicely, as well as, being warm or cool depending on the proportions of the color mix.

“Art is not so much expressing oneself, as it is discovering oneself.”

(Anawanitia)

Palette:

  1. Ultramarine Blue (Holbein)
  2. Indian Red (Liquitex)
  3. Burnt Sienna (RTVG)
  4. Cadmium Yellow (WN)
  5. Lemon Yellow (Cotman)
  6. Carmine (Sakura)

Drawing the gateway to what makes painting fun


Learning to draw, before you paint, is like learning to walk before you run.

(Don Getz)

To begin I would like to thank all you folks who visit and or follow my blog.

Blue glass and Apple- graphite-0302713004

Blue glass and Apple
(8×10) Graphite on 90lb acid free paper

My main medium of expression is watercolor but I enjoy exploring many others especially graphite. I wrote yesterday about using drawing to see and compose. Today I want to write about the Freedom in painting that comes from drawing. Actually, I don’t separate the two  because they are so interconnected. Both train and refine the relationship between eye, mind and hand.

in processBlue glass and Apple

in process
Blue glass and Apple

Without this there is no form; no emotion; no content; no shape it is always about relationships and these relationships are described in contrast and how it is handled because it must be dealt with. Contrast or relationships within the piece is the elephant in the room of any work of art. In my post Contrast is the pop and sizzle  (12/04/2012) I wrote: When I was first learning to paint scenery for the Theatre Bob Moody told me, “If you really want to make it pop, put your highest highlights against your darkest darks.” That is how my understanding of contrast’s pop and sizzle began.”

Drawing allows you to begin to deal with these elements and get them clarified in your mind before you begin to paint and allows you to play and the fun begins. You have seen and from seeing your expression flows. You have the freedom to explore your subject. You have the freedom to enjoy!

Palette:

  1. H (Faber-Castell 9000 pencils)
  2. 2B (F-C)
  3. 4B (F-C)
  4. 6B (F-C)
  5. 8B (F-C)