I did not paint this!

I did not paint this!   It is the first response to my bluebonnet challenge, by my niece, Meredith Henke, from her own photo.  Nice, hey?   Meredith's medium of choice is mod-podge, so this was quite a leap for her.  Thanks Meredith!

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

How to paint a bluebonnet

No excuses. No "I failed art in 3rd grade." If you can see a bluebonnet, you can paint it. The question is, have you ever REALLY looked at one. Just one. For several minutes.
Grab your kid's watercolor set, maybe some colored pencils and a piece of thick, absorbant paper and we will walk through this creative endeavor together:

1. Stare at the photo of the bluebonnet.

2. Ask yourself questions about it and answer out loud. What shapes do I see? What do those shapes remind me of? What colors do I see? What variations in darkness and lightness of those colors? If you can wrap any words at all around what you see, you can wrap paint around it. If you don't see what I see in this photo, don't paint what I paint, OK? Paint the bluebonnet that is on its way from YOUR eyes to your tongue, your hand, and your brain.

3. Here's what I see: a pointy white tip, light green where new flowers are just barely pulling away from the main bud, blue and white half circles where they are pulling even farther away, then full pea flower shapes in a strong cobalt blue the rest of the way down the stem. They are crowded near the top, but get sparser as they go down. Each one is like a little chair with a back and a seat, but the seat is shaped more like an almond on its side.

4. Now you do it. Look at the photo and talk to yourself. Look some more. What did I forget to mention?

5. Start with a pencil, colored pencils or if you have them, or watercolor pencils (they melt into the paint later.) Lightly draw the shapes you see: maybe a diamond to create the tip, then ovals and half circles for the tight top of the flower. Don't forget the stem and branches. I chose to add one leaf from the background to give the flower some grounding. Note that the leaf has light edges so I drew it with yellow, even though I plan to paint it green.

6. Now put some water and paint on your brush and start painting: a little green in parts of the top shapes, a little blue in the half circles. You don't have to be too precise - it will actually add to the individuality and charm if you are not. Try not to paint next to something that you just painted. Give it time to dry first. Go empty the dishwasher. Then come back and paint the parts you skipped. I like to do the "bottoms of the chairs" first on the flowers. Then I come back later and do the tops, carefully leaving the white window in the middle of each. In the photo, only the higher flowers seem to have "windows" but if you look closely, the windows on the lower flowers just turned pinkish purple as they aged.

7. When the flowers are dry, the stem and branches can be painted: start with a reddish brown, then clean your brush, load it with lots of green and not much water. Touch it to the wet brown paint in several places and you will get a nice random blend.

8. Look carefully at the photo again and compare it to the painting so far. The leaf of a bluebonnet always has 5 leaflets on tiny stems coming out of the middle of the leaf. My drawing has 6! Shoot! The photograph really looks like there is a leaf with 6 leaflets, but that would be botanically inaccurate, so we will add a second leaf to the left and make #6 attach to that. OK we fixed that, what still looks wildly different from the photo? We should not be able to see through the top 1/3 of the bluebonnet - the flowers around the back side should obstruct our view of the white paper, so we will suggest them with some blobs of blue to fill in any large open spaces.

9. Now you are done. Photograph it and send it to me, post it on your face book page, put the original on your refrigerator, or use it as a bookmark, or send it to your mother, or frame it in a 16x20 ornate gold frame and put it where you see it first thing every morning!

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

The Most Important Step of All

The final step is the most important. After adding more color to the hill on the left and smoothing out some color on the mountains to the right, I did the most difficult thing in the entire painting process: I asked a trusted artist frien...d what she saw when she looked at the picture.

Her response suprised me. "Is it supposed to be raining?" she said. I looked at the painting again. Sure enough, my fog covered ocean had the verticals streaks of a rainstorm at sea. Using a top secret technique (it involves the kitchen sink and a big sturdy brush named "Mike" after Crocodile Dundee's knife) I gently scrubbed away the rain and left a smooth transition from sea to fog and clouds.

I don't always follow my trusted artist friend's recommendations, but that is why she is trusted. It is OK with both of us when we disagree.

I hope that you have a friend like that.

Stay tuned for my next painting. I have taken thousands of wildflower photos in the last month, so I suspect that the topic may lie there!

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Making Fine Lines in Watercolor

When there are very dark lines in a photo, like the rock outcroppings on the hill to the left or in the half circles surrounding the tiny waterfalls, I will sometimes use a sharpie. But for this painting, I wanted to be 100% watercolor, so... I took the time to learn to use an old fashioned ink pen dipped in concentrated watercolor that comes in an ink bottle. As usual, I had trouble with the standard process and made up my own: using an eyedropper to put a drop of ink on hole in the pen nib before scratching it across the paper.
The pen gave me lots of nice dark squiggly rock lines and branches but it also made me wonder about the patience of the generations of folks who wrote with these cussed tools! They drag and skip and go dry and then dump all of their ink at once...

 

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexashIllCountryArt.etsy.com

Glazing

Glazing is a watercolor term that means adding a layer of paint over one that has already dried.  It is tricky, because if you have too much water and not enough pigment on your brush, you will wash away the first layer instead of adding to it.  I have done that a lot!  In this photo, you can see that darker greens have been added in many places to create shape and add depth.  Some browns were also added to draw your eye to the ridges in the valley, shadows and the branchy bits of brush. 
I use the black and white photographs that I showed you in the beginning of this process to decide where to do more glazing.  It is hard for me to see all of the variations in the color photo of this beautiful valley, but when I look at the enhanced black and white versions of the photo, I can easily see what are the lightest and darkest bits.  And of course, some places I glaze on more color just because my head tells me to!  Or maybe it is my artist's eye talking,  I am never sure!!!
Nan Henke
Texas Hill Country Art
www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Adding the greens

I'm still painting!  I just have not had much internet access lately...  
Here I have added the greens: different ones for the distant ridge, the ravines running down to the tiny waterfalls, the hill on the left and the bushes that drop away behind the ones in the foreground.   Then the dabbled green leaves on the bushes are all sorts of different greens because they look different depending on how much light or shade each one gets.   A little green grass and red-ochre (classic Kauai!) dirt in the foreground and it is time to let it dry a bit! 
Some people think that, since the paper now has paint all over it, I must be close to done.  Not true!  The next steps are the difficult ones, adding depth and detail without overdoing it.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com

Start with the lightest colors

In watercolor, you can always darken things that don't turn out right the first time,  but it is next to impossible to make them lighter.  That is why I am starting with the whites and yellows. 
First I applied a tiny bit of masque (like rubber cement) to protect the white of the paper in the tiny bits of surf and two waterfalls.  Next a lemon yellow on the ridges coming down from the right edge of the painting, then a more golden yellow on the tips of the bushes in the foreground.  But right now they just look like dots, floating in space!
The next step is a misty cobalt blue sea that drifts into a cerulean blue sky.  It was painted with a lot of water and a lot of dabbing away where there was either too much blue or too much water. 
Finally, some browns and greens in the valley and the foreground and it is time to let this stage thoroughly dry.

Nan Henke

Texas Hill Country Art

www.TexasHillCountryArt.etsy.com