Tag: watercolor painting

Paintings and a Park

Before we left for our trip, I managed to complete two assignments for my negative painting class with Rick Surowitz.

Although I don’t hate either one, I’d like to give them another try once I get back home.

Maumee Bay State Park

Yesterday was a weird day. One of my medications, either the Propranolol or the Viibryd (or I guess it could have been the lack of caffeine in the morning), made me extremely tired. I finally dragged myself out of bed around 3:00 p.m., but even then I felt like a zombie.

In a desire to not completely waste the day, Greg and I headed off to Maumee Bay State Park to see if we could do a little hiking.

The marina

This is a cute little park right on Lake Erie. It has a fancy lodge, a marina, a golf course, a small inland lake, two beaches, a campground, and a couple of hiking trails.

Greg and I managed to get our steps in, but I felt like my body was still asleep the entire walk. I was glad when we finally headed back to our campsite.

The trail along the lake
Some lucky home owner has his own personal lighthouse!
A prettier view of the marina looking toward the lodge

On to Indiana!

Not done after all

Apparently I lied when I said that I was giving up on this painting.

After staring at it on my painting table for a week, I broke down and decided to finish it. I was feeling guilty at wasting a perfectly good sheet of watercolor paper (that stuff isn’t cheap!)

Plus, the pumpkin painting was keeping me from tackling any new painting projects…or that’s what I told myself. (I suspect I was using it as an excuse not to start any new projects. My creative resistance is as strong as ever.)

I decided that I would not try to make this painting a masterpiece. Instead, I’d use it as an opportunity to try some new techniques. I failed at practicing new techniques, but I succeeded at not taking the painting too seriously. And I like the way it turned out.

I learned that creating attractive-looking shadows on orange objects is difficult. Consequently, I’ve decided that learning about shadows and how to paint them needs to be added to my “topics to study in depth” list.

Once I finished my pumpkin painting, I decided to focus on negative painting. Negative painting is when you paint around the outside of a subject in order to define it. It’s a particularly useful skill for watercolor painting because of watercolor’s transparency. (You can’t paint light-colored objects on top of a dark-colored background in watercolor. Instead, you have to paint around the light-colored object.)

Practicing negative painting can be a lot of fun. It takes a certain way of thinking and seeing that doesn’t come naturally to me.

This is the first negative painting I ever did, back in 2020, and it is still my favorite.

To practice my negative painting skills, I am using a course by Rick Surowicz called, not surprisingly, Negative Painting. Here is one of the exercises from the course.

I am currently working on my first official painting in the course and will post it once it’s done.

Creative ennui

I am in a creative slump.

I’ve reached the point where my painting skills have developed enough that I can fairly accurately recreate any photograph in watercolor. For a long time, that has been enough to satisfy me.

But now it seems pointless. Making exact copies of beautiful photographs is not making art. It’s a useful practice for building skills, but I think I’ve outgrown it.

It’s time to figure out how to make the transition from copying to creating.

This painting is not quite half done, and I became bored with it before I had even put the first stroke of color on the paper. After struggling to make progress on it for nearly a week, I’ve decided to abandon it. I paint for pleasure, and this painting was creating more pain than pleasure.

So what now?

I’m not entirely sure. I’ve been struggling with how to become more creative with my painting for at least a year, and I haven’t figure it out yet. It’s so freaking frustrating!

Here are some of the things I’m considering trying while I wait for a breakthrough:

  1. Practice specific skills, such as painting shadows or different textures.
  2. Work on improving my color choices and combinations.
  3. Combine elements from various reference photos to create my own compositions. This would make it impossible for me to rely too heavily on a reference photo’s composition and color scheme.
  4. Play with a new style, such as abstract.
  5. Practice painting specific subjects, such as florals, rocks, or water (e.g. 30 mushrooms in 30 days).
  6. Complete some of the online painting classes that I have already purchased.
  7. Try a new medium, such as gouache.

Have you ever been in a creative slump, and if so, how have you broken out of it?