Work In Progress:
Glade Creek Grist Mill, Update 2
Before getting into the actual
painting process I wanted to discuss some considerations that are important to
producing a good representation of snow. I like to do background research on
the subject I’m working on as well as the techniques that impact directly on
the painting. How do other artists handle the subject. What are their thoughts.
Many of them have much more experience than I do and may have painted the
subject many times. I think I could benefit from reviewing their discussions on
the subject.
Underpainting
White, even the white of snow, is a
combination of all three primaries – yellow, red and blue. If you look
carefully, hints of these colors can be seen in bright snow, especially where
sunlight is refracted off the surface. Debi Watson, in an article on painting
snow in Watercolor Artist, December 2010, states that “Most great snow
paintings have hints of color in their whites.” To paint snow Ms Watson picks
transparent washes of all three primaries and mixes them in varying ratios,
laying them down in very light washes for the snow on the ground. Thus, light
hints of gold, orange, blue and purple cover the lightest areas of snow. She
then uses darker versions of the blues to put in the shadows.
Frank LaLumia, in another article
on painting snow, this one from February, 2010 in Watercolor artist describes
snow in a similar manner. LaLumia says “Reflected light is everywhere, coloring
the snow with an infinite variety of tints”. Cathy Johnson, in the same article,
echoes the sentiments of LaLumia, when she says “snow is full of color”.
Johnson describes tightly packed snow as darker blue than freshly fallen snow,
which can seem almost a light lavender or blue gray. Snow on city streets
quickly turns gray as soot mixes in. Country roads contribute dirt to snow as
it ages, so browns can be seen mixed in on roadsides.
These effects can be expressed by
painting wet into wet, so edges are softened. Ms Johnson achieves the
reflective nature of snow by first wetting the paper and then brushing in light
tints of the three primaries, principally cadmium yellow, alizarine crimson and
phthalo blue. Care must be taken to make sure the colors are just hints of
color, enough to be detected but not enough to get your attention. The trick
seems to be that when you look at the snow you get a feeling that the colors
are there but can’t quite define where they begin and end. Sort of ephemeral. Cecy
Turner, another fine watercolorist, lays down separate washes of the three
primaries, letting the paper dry completely in between washes. She likes the
effect of looking through layers of transparent color.
I found a very nice snow scene of a
barn by Mary Ann Boysen. She, too, underpaints her primaries wet into wet. Ms
Boysen makes up three pools of primaries, a pink, a yellow and a blue. She
washed them in over the entire area where snow lay, first one primary, then the
second, then the third, while the paper was still wet. The colors were not
layed down uniformly but in a manner that resulted in more pink here, more
yellow there, more blue somewhere else. There did, to me seem to be a pattern,
though, More of the yellow was in the sunlit areas, the pink and light blue in
light shade areas. Blue was washed over all the shaded areas. The important
thing to remember was that sharp edges were avoided as they blended in
overlapping areas. Boysen suggests using liquid masking fluid to create
sparkles in the snow. She uses a toothbrush and spritzes the masking fluid here
and there to create tiny dots. The masking fluid can then be removed after all
the washes are complete, revealing sparkles.
William Hays’ snow scenes impressed
me also, but he has a different approach. Although he, too, recognizes the
reflective and refractive nature of snow crystals, producing glimpses of the
three primaries, he chooses to use a drybrush technique. Hays under paints
cobalt blue, alizarin crimson and cadmium yellow in very light tints by
dragging his brush, almost parallel to the surface, across the dry paper, going
every which way, in no particular pattern. The result is a very light tint but
with lots of dots of white where the paper shows through. This gives the
appearance of sparkles in the snow.
Shadows
Shadows on
snow are of two types. The first are cast shadows from objects standing up out
of the snow and struck by light. These shadows are darkest, and have the
sharpest edges, closest to the object casting the shadow and begin to lighten,
with softer edges, the further away from the object they are cast.
The second
type of shadow is one that results from the underlying form the snow is
covering. They define the shapes underneath, whether an old tire or rock, or
just the undulating contour of the ground. When the sun is higher in the sky, these
shadows are usually very soft and rounded, with no hard edges, especially as
the snow becomes deeper. These shadows blend out into the surrounding area,
their edges lost in the transition. Johnson paints in some of the darker blues,
such as cobalt blue or ultramarine, while the paper is still wet. Care must be
taken, Ms Johnson cautions, that the paper remains very moist, so that no hard
edges result. After these washes dry, a light glaze of lavender can be washed
over much of the area, leaving spots of the original primaries to show through.
Cecy Turner uses Antwerp
blue and brown madder for shadows. She also uses French ultramarine, cobalt
blue and cerulean blue for shadows, depending on the painting she’s working on.
Contour shadows can take on a different
appearance when the sun is low in the sky. Hays says the low angle of the sun
creates a hard and a soft edge in the rolling hillocks of the snow. The upper,
hard edge defines the contour of the shape, while the lower , soft edge defines
the volume of the shape. Hays accomplishes this shaping by painting in the
contour of the drifting snow with either a drybush technique or on damp paper,
and then softens the bottom of the brush stroke, blending it out into the
surrounding area. He then adds washes, maybe four or five, to deepen the tone
until he’s satisfied.
Sue Doucette, another watercolorist
whose snow scenes I like, suggests using both hard and soft edges to create
interest and variety. Sue uses aureolin yellow as a light tint in sunny areas
in the foreground. She then introduces rose madder genuine to the mid ground
areas. Sparkles in the snow are created by sprinkling salt on the tinted
surface when wet, soaking up some of the color. For shadows Sue uses cobalt
blue or cobalt blue mixed with a bit of rose madder genuine, allowing the
colors to run and blend together.
When
capturing heavy snowfalls, observe how the snow forms very soft, rounded domes
over objects and softens the contours of the underlying ground. Be sure to
maintain that roundness.
Hays uses
cobalt blue or cobalt blue with a bit of either alizarin crimson or yellow
ochre for his shadows. He recommends, as do other artists, that you use the
same colors for all shadows, varying only the tone. Uniformity ties the
composition together.
Sue Boysen
makes a blue gray shadow color by mixing the three primaries, going a bit
heavier on the blue, and washing this mix into all areas in shadow. Darker
shadows are the result of heavier mixes.
Reflections
on the surface of the snow, cast from the objects poking out, especially with
stronger light, add realism to the scene. Johnson suggests that the colors of
the object reflected onto the snow can energize the painting.
All of these artists have their own
special techniques which they use very successfully to create beautiful images
of snow. There are some common concepts running through each of their
techniques, however, that seem produce real looking snow. They all recommend underpainting
with the primaries in the sunny areas to give the snow an iridescent quality. Some
of the artists mix the primaries together on the paper, in separate washes but
while the paper is still wet so that the colors blend softly together. Others
lay down separate washes, allowing the paper to dry in between, but covering different areas with different primaries.The
suggestion of color is there without actually seeing it. You feel its presence
more than anything. And that’s what you want to achieve. There is more to snow
than white, and achieving interesting patterns and colors is the result of
critically analyzing that “white” and more accurately portraying it on paper.
Next week I’ll start on that
painting of Glade Creek Grist Mill. We’ll work our way through developing the
composition, to value and color sketches, to painting the scene.
The
painting shown here is Winter’s Edge by Cecy Turner.
