The Pond          Watercolor & Casein, 15" x 22"       This is a scene we came upon last year while hiking through the woods of Maine near Reid State Park. The water was clear and the air was still.

 

 

 

 

       

 

Mackerel Cove Buoys Watercolor & Casein, 15" x 22"  On Bailey Island, Maine at the mouth of Mackerel Cove sits a small, well-recognized old fishing shack that is covered with discarded lobster buoys. The building and buoys have provided great reference material for several paintings.

Rockport, Mass              Watercolor & Casein, 15" x 22"  This is referred to as "Motif #1" because it is the most often-painted building in America. The composition has all the elements one would expect in a Northeast harbor scene ... lobster pots and buoys, a fishing shack and wharf, a skiff and lobster boat, New England architecture, and an historic small town in thick woods approaching fall colors.

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bill Hudson will join artists Charlie Ciali, Diana McLaughlin, Lisa McDill and r. mike nichols at the annual Evening with the Artists hosted by the Redlands Community Hospital Foundation from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Friday evening, April 24. The event will be held in Redlands Community Hospital's Stan and Ellen Weisser Education Pavilion. Proceeds benefit the Hospital Foundation's art fund. Wine and hors d'oeuvres will be served during the event. Tickets are $20. 

 

The Redlands Community Hospital Foundation art program began in 1978. Today, the hospital exhibits a collection of more than 800 works of original art and historic photographs.

 

         ___________________________________________________________

 

Composition Checklist

                                                                                  by Peter Woolley (Watercolour Artist)

 

If you are a professional artist and are wondering what more you could or should do, then check out artist Peter Woolley, www.peterwoolley.co.uk . You would also benefit by subscribing to his Newsletter.

 

Peter Woolley is an incredibly involved, busy, full-time watercolor artist who lives, as he says, "across the pond" in the United Kingdom where he has painted professionally since 1986. Peter is the author of several instructional books and videos. He has a strong following for his workshops which he conducts landside, aboard cruise ships, and online. He appears regularly on TV on The Painting and Drawing Channel and has his own line of watercolor brushes.

 

In a recent Newsletter, Peter published a concise "Composition Checklist" which he granted permission for me to include here:

 

"All paintings consist of shapes, lines, tones and colours (and nothing more - sometimes we have to remind ourselves of that, when things start going pear-shaped). How those items are arranged upon the paper is what we call Composition. The art of good composition is to understand the how, and why, and the ability to implement rules that have been established over many thousands of years. Of course; being controversial can be exhilarating, but you ignore those rules at your peril!

 

This is a shortlist of what I consider to be the most important points; there are many others, but these are the ones that seem to create the most common issues. It's a list that may help you when planning a new painting, or it could also be used as a troubleshooting guide; sometimes, when a painting isn't looking right - you know there's something wrong with it, but you can't quite put your finger on what... the answer might be here...

 

Focal Point
This is by far the most important element of any painting. Every painting should have only one Focal Point, which could be an object, a group of several objects, or even a space between objects. Essentially, this is where the eye should finish up, whether by direct or meandering paths. The rest of the composition should support that focal point, help to draw the eye towards it, and not compete or distract the eye away from it. More than one focal point, vying for the viewer's attention, will almost certainly undermine and weaken the overall composition.

 

Tonal Contrasts
This is the strategic positioning of light values against dark values. A painting can be created using just one or two colours; if we have a light tone set against a similar light tone, then we lose definition. So, we should always be on the lookout for contrasting tones - capitalize upon them, exaggerate them, and where necessary, engineer them.

 

Variation and Alternation
One of the hardest things we have to do in watercolour landscape painting is to generate the 'random' element. Avoiding the pattern-like repetition of shapes and spacing is paramount when it comes to painting natural subjects. If your scene has a line of trees, all the same size and shape, and all spaced equally apart, for instance, you might want to consider altering, or alternating, those shapes (or changing your viewpoint entirely), in order to make the composition a little more visually interesting.

 

Coincidences
Magical alignments, visual coincidences, can happen any time to anybody. It's the painting equivalent of taking a photograph of somebody, and when you look at the photo, they have a tree growing out the top of their head. The worse thing is; it can happen and you not even realize it - until it's too late, or until someone else rather embarrassingly points it out to you.

 

Linking the Elements

A painting can be generally by broken down into regions, some more clearly defined than others, which should be linked together somehow. The worse possible scenario would be one in which lots of objects bear no relation to each other at all. Look for ways to link areas together (puddles are a great way to disperse colour from the top half of a painting, down into the bottom half, for example). Objects that overlap and partially obscure each other in a visually interesting way is one solution. Avoid breaking the painting up into geometrically-shaped areas wherever possible."

Paintings by Peter Woolley

        Yew Crag Farm, Eskdale                     Turbulent Coastline                          Last Light, Kentmere
 

           _____________________________________________________________________