Art

the right road

A Piece of Advice

This week’s Discover Challenge from WordPress “brings out the positive: tell us about a piece of advice you’ve received — and would like to share with others.”

right road

The Right Road  14.7.16

When I was a young boy my beloved grandfather said to me:

” In life Andrew there are always two roads, the right road and the wrong road.
Make sure you always choose the right one.”

His advice has stayed with me all of my life and echoed in my mind over the years whenever an important decision has needed to be made or a life-changing direction to be followed.  It has been the best advice a young boy could have ever have hoped.

right road viii

To complement this week’s Discover Challenge, and particularly as this month I am working through Tony Smibert’s Painting Landscapes from your Imagination,  and also painting as part of Worldwatercolormonth, I thought I would continue the exercises of Chapter 8 in the book with imagined images that reflect the spirit of my grandfather’s advice to me.

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Tony suggests making small loose drawings and washes as notes, and not to worry about the consequences.  Some are very abstract but some became quite specific and more detailed as they developed, as you can see.  Each was intended to convey the sense of a fork in the road with a choice of direction between the light and the dark.

right road vi.     right road vb

right road vii     right road ivb

This last image is perhaps the darkest of all and reflects what might have been.

Dedicated to the memory of my wonderful grandpa from his grandson,
now a besotted grandpa himself.

down to the seas again

“I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by…”

from Sea Fever by John Masefield 1913

seascape

A revisit to this day last year on Day 9 of my journey through
Tony Smibert’s Lessons from the Great Masters,
another inspiring book of his.

Day 194 i

Worldwatercolormonth Day 13

Day 175 iii

“practice, practice, practice”

“You can learn from teachers, fellow painters, books, videos, seminars and so on. But you won’t really understand the medium until you can use it. Hence, the key to understanding is
practice, practice, practice.”

Tony Smibert, from Chapter 1: Painting Landscapes from your Imagination

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Taking this advice to heart today was just that, as I finished Chapter 8
with more of Tony’s exercises in composition, color and confidence.

loti12xii   loti12ix     loti12x

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Worldwatercolormonth Day 12

empowered by freedom

Today I’m back on my journey through Tony Smibert’s
Painting Landscapes from your Imagination, my project for July.

Chapter 8: Color Confidence.

“The decision making processes for a painting should remain with the artist,” writes Tony. “When you can rely on experience and intuition to guide you, you set yourself free to experiment.  And the truly creative person is empowered by freedom.  Your color choices are your own.”

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Definitely feeling empowered by freedom today, and what a good feeling it is too 🙂

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loti11vi     loto11vii

Worldwatercolormonth Day 11

a summer bouquet

bouquet iv

I couldn’t resist painting this summer bouquet of
lavender, margaretas, cosmos and photinia
picked from the garden today.

bouquet iii
 
bouquet ii

Worldwatercolormonth Day 9

evolved from nothing

Chapter 7 in Tony Smibert’s Painting Landscapes from your Imagination is all about composition.

“Whether drawn as a crisp outline or sketchy…the result is the same:
a landscape which you evolved from nothing; and only a beginning to the possibilities”

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This was certainly the case today particularly using the “Three Line Sketch”, which Tony describes as his “secret weapon…the ultimate planning tool for watercolour.”

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loti7vi       loti7iv

Worldwatercolormonth Day 7

there are no rules

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In Chapter 2 of Painting Landscapes from your Imagination Tony Smibert describes the Nature of Watercolor:

“The essence of painting in watercolour is to understand and work with the simple mysteries
of suspension, settling and drying, which takes place everytime we lay down a wash.”

He then adds perhaps the perfect mantra for watercolour painting:

“There are no rules in watercolour, only consequences”

Today’s exercises, which are full of “consequences”, some more successful than others, finishes Chapter 6 with more washes, dots, dabs and the addition of knife work to remove the dried paint creating white highlights from the underlying paper.

loti6x      loti6ix

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loti6i     loti6ii

Worldwatercolormonth Day 6

genie of the brush: part 2

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“When you pick up your brush it should come to life in your hands” writes Tony Smibert at the beginning of Chapter 6 in Painting Landscapes from your Imagination. He continues, “Somehow we have to free the brush so that it will dance across the page as if it were alive in our fingertips rather than trapped by them.”

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This second part of Genie of the brush is all about Making Marks, the title of the chapter, using the four simple steps of Dotting, Dabbing, Dragging and Rolling, with my brushes hopefully dancing across the page.

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The best part of this exercise was following Tony Smibert’s suggestion to “free movement to a rhythm or a beat.” I took this to heart and dotted, dabbed, dragged and rolled to one of my favourite Jazz pieces, Blue Monk by the great, late Thelonius Monk, the genius of the keys to match the genie of the brush. It was also the perfect opportunity for another “Over my shoulder” video.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it.

Over my Shoulder VI – Making Marks

monk

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One of yesterday’s landscapes that followed the exercise using a combination of dots, drags, dabs and rolls.  Definitely a good day 🙂

Worldwatercolormonth Day 5

You can find links to all of my other Over My Shoulder videos on
From Yardwork to Artwork: The Photinia Story Part Three