A friend of mine received a text photo from of friend of theirs that was visiting Ireland. "I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate." - Lord Helmet When I looked at the photo I immediately broke it down into shapes and tried to think of how I would attack it as a painting. My friends next text was "Could you paint this?". Well, my good Steemians, we will see how I do.
Here is the original photograph. I like the composition. Some nice lines of the cliff going off in a distance. Some dark masses of land in the water and the framing on both sides from the vantage point. I think this will be a great opportunity to practice staying completely loose. What does it mean to be loose in watercolor? To me, being loose means not committing to adding too much fine detail in the painting. Instead, you look at the subject in large shapes that have tones which help define them. If you do any detail, that detail is rather loose and not explicitly defined or overworked.
Using the "shapes" theme I sketched out the large shapes I saw in the photograph. I tried to mimic the shapes of the cliff off in a distance and the land on top. I laid down the large shapes of the rock on both sides of the view point. I put the more central chunk of land that's like an island in and the few juts of land on the left. And that's it! No more detail for you!
Starting at the top I dilute some Ultramarine Blue and dab in the sky leaving spaces for clouds...yes, some happy little clouds. I'm not too concerned with the form and I make sure I don't go back over what I already painted which could create too much emphasis on the sky.
After I'm done with the sky I make a mixture of Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Sienna and Payne's Gray. It looks muddy and for now I just need a highly diluted muddy color for the cliff areas. I paint this light muddy color in and double up in particular areas to give a hint of faint shadows, nooks and crannies. After this dries a tiny bit I hit the tops of the cliffs with a diluted Sap Green. I'm not worried about details here, just some green shapes that live on top of the cliffs. Feeling a little froggy I then run some of the Sap Green down the cliff face to suggest some vegetation has creeped its way down there. Again, I'm not getting too zany with details.
For the middleground shapes I use a less diluted version of my muddy mix and flesh in the stone and dirt areas on the land in the water and on the left side. Before this dries I pull a little of it off with a damp brush so it's not too overpowering for the middleground. Also before it dries I touch some areas I left white with some Sap Green to add vegetation on top. Before this part is finished but after everything dries I take some diluted Ultramarine Blue and slice out some of the water area.
To finish off the left side I go in again with my trusty muddy mix and Sap Green and paint it out.
For the right side I mix some yellow and red and....hahaha! I lied! I went back to my trusty muddy mix and Sap Green! When it was partially dry I added in some darker versions of the mud to create the shaded areas on the rocks.
To finish this bad boy off I added a mixture of Lemon Yellow and Burnt Sienna in varying amounts until I got a yellowish sand color so I can paint that little beach area. Oops! I missed the little chunk of rock in front of the beach so I lapped up some of my remaining mud and built that rock out. The only thing left for me to do was go back into the water with some diluted Ultramarine Blue and add some shadows of the cliffs and rocks. Oh! I even added a few little purple flowers on the right cliffs just for fun.
And that's really it. I kept it loose and didn't actually do anything in this painting that I regretted. I know Mr. Bob Ross said, "There's no mistakes, only happy accidents.", but sometimes my mistakes make for unhappy accidents. I like that there were no mistakes in this one though.
Anyway, thanks for following along and leave a note in the comments so I know you checked this out. Also, checkout my other paintings to be enlightened and awed by my mediocre painting skills!
Watercolors: Sennelier tubes - Sap Green, Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Sienna, Lemon Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, Payne's Gray
Brushes: Silver Brush Black Velvet Voyager #6
Paper: Strathmore Wire Bound Visual Journal - Cold Press, 300 g/m, 5.5"x8"
