Watch Me Paint TWO Kauai Watercolors in my Sketchbook
Want to see TWO watercolors today?? In this video, I’m approaching the same subject in both Horizontal and Vertical versions…and you can tell me what you think turned out to be the Best. I’d love to hear in the comments below…I know that I have my favorite that I’ll share at the end of the video.
So…while I was in Waikiki, my goal was to paint every single day in one of two sketchbooks. There were several days where I painted multiple times.
This is my Arches Travel Journal. Each watercolor study took 40 minutes to 1 hour.
This particular beach scene I had planned to paint twice…but the thing is I didn’t plan to paint it twice in the same day.
The sky is painted with two blues and I’m keeping the white of the paper for clouds. I’ll be doing the Same for the ocean below. The paper is drying quickly but I’m able to drop a bit of color in without getting watermarks.
When I’m beginning to add the ocean, I’m using a flat brush and I’m choosing more than one blue hue from my travel watercolor palette. I’m using the White of the paper as waves. So to do this, keep your brush up and use just the tip to lay down color horizontally. And then as I’m coming forward in the water, I’m adjusting my brush strokes to have more flow with the waves…as opposed to horizontal lines broken with white of the paper further out in the sea.
As I paint the ocean in the distant beach in front of the buildings, I return to a horizontal brush stroke format. So…the closer you are to the front, you can make your brush strokes Looser and more Expressive…towards the back, you want to just suggest waves with simplicity.
I’m choosing to paint the ocean so that the sky can dry enough before I begin to paint background greenery and the architecture. This is usually my favorite part in a painting. Colors are Fresh and Vibrant and I’m full of hope that this will be an ok painting. I’m also starting to incorporate some Sea foam Green hues where the water is most shallow towards the beach.
This should be a really fun part to paint (if you’re painting along). I’m adding water to thin out my watercolors.
Watercolors were meant to paint Oceans. For those of you who paint in watercolor, don’t you agree???
I paint in both oils and in watercolor…so I don’t feel frustration in oils at all but one time I heard a watercolor artist online express frustration in trying oils. She said, “ you put the paint on the canvas and it just sits there” and the workshop host chuckled. And I could sympathize with her because I painted exclusively in watercolor until my late 20s. My first hundred + sold paintings were all in watercolor.
In my 20s, artist friend had encouraged me to try oils and I could see benefits of taking them to art festivals and also galleries prefer oils. They just do! So I threw myself into oils and didn’t look back much…and 20 years go by. Here we are!!
Half Way into the Painting
I was So into this painting, focusing so hard that I didn’t remember to check my phone at the 30 minute mark to see if I was still filming. And so at about 45 minutes in I took a quick peek, it seemed like everything was a-ok…but my video had frozen and I wouldn’t figure this out until I finished the painting. I should have hit the Stop button and re-started..
…so HALF of the 1st watercolor wasn’t captured. I set-up to paint the same seascape in Vertical format…and just got to it.
I think I was at the end of my phone’s video capability even though I had plenty of space for video and recording later wasn’t a problem either. It was also a really sunny day, I’m working outside in full sun and…so is my phone and at the 1 hour mark, it was HOT. Oops! I’ll be cutting through a LOT of this video after this fun sky section AND start where my last painting STOPPED RECORDING.
I’ve always found that each painting has a lesson to teach. When you are painting small, every brush stroke counts. Too many might be saying too much…or even, not enough.
The reason I felt that this scene could be painted both Horizontal (or Landscape) or Vertical (or what artists would call Portrait) is because of the strong lines where the beach intersects with the ocean and the architecture. Having dynamic clouds also greatly helps keep the composition interesting. Your eye can move around the painting even in a small space.
The size here is 6×9.5 inches.
One BIG reason to paint a scene smaller first is to see if that subject really is worth going large with.
My beach slopes down to the ocean…so my brush strokes slope down as will my shadows. Beaches often need to reflect a bit of wetness as the ocean washes up the shore…and they also often need to have shadows.
My Hawaiian Island beaches almost always have black and brown lava rocks as well.
If I’m being really honest with myself, I’ve struggled to bring these two watercolor painting videos to a finish. I know that the the paintings are Good for small works done in less than an hour each. One piece I really Love as a small sketchbook watercolor.
The other also has it’s strong points.
I guess what’s been holding me back from finishing this video and publishing it for all of you to watch is that I’m now showing longer subjects. I want to show how the painting was done without leaving out lots of steps…and yet I’d like to add more vlog style elements to my painting videos…and I think I’m doing that here and there. I just didn’t do it well on this trip.
The speed here is near double time and yet I’m still cutting/trimming video to get two hours of footage down to about 20 minutes.
If I could do this again, I would have taken the time to have my mom (who I traveled with) film me painting and talking about the piece live…but she was working in her OWN watercolor sketchbook.
And on this trip I didn’t have my trusty plein aire camera guy…my son. He’s a very, smart 10 year old. And I don’t ask my husband to hold the camera but I know he’d do a good job if I asked! Usually when we travel as a family, I’m working less…to just be with the family.
Here’s a fun part of my painting process, adding mossy green to the lava rocks, adding shadows and fine details. My watercolor is going to emerge from the dreaded Blah phase that every artist knows…and I’m going to try to not overwork it. I’m using my flat brush for a lot in this video. Shadows are done with thinner washes. Details are mixed with my darkest blues + reds to get black and dark browns. Which painting do you like more? The first or the 2nd?
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Till we meet again!