Molly Hashimoto

Watercolor Travel Journal, continued

 Janet Takahashi created this page after she got home, and had time to time ponder ideas we discussed about journals and the use of watercolor and other media.

She traveled to Seattle and stayed in a hotel near the Mariner's Safeco Field so one of her pages was a record of that experience.

Bob Horsley also sketched and painted with me last weekend at the workshop I taught at Daniel Smith and like Janet, generously shared some images of his work. I admire the convincing architectural perspective combined with the loose watercolor method.

 

Watercolor Portraits

I'm currently teaching a class on portraits in watercolor, and as a preliminary exercise we painted from sculpture to practice modeling form with mostly monochromatic wash. This is a Roman copy of the Praxiteles Venus and is in the Vatican Museum in Rome. I mixed a gray using French ultramarine blue and burnt umber and it gave some interesting granularity. I used the same mixture for the dark background.

 I painted another study of the unhappy
Thimo, one of the founder figures in the Naumberg Cathedral in Germany. Each of the founder figures sculpted by the anonymous Naumberg Meister is fully human, each invested with intense emotional realism. To see them in person is a powerful experience.

Watercolor portraits can be meticulously sculpted with numerous washes, or rather more informally and quickly sketched.  In the Travel Journal workshop last weekend, I demonstrated the looser approach with this sketch of a young man, casually posing with hands in pockets.

Watercolor Travel Journal, continued

 
At Sunday's Watercolor Travel Journal workshop at Daniel Smith Artist Materials we did some figure work, learning how saving whites in watercolor sketches really helps to carve out the forms. This is the work of Elva Francis.

 
 We also learned about architecture and perspective. Patricia Hall used a watersoluble pen on this sketch of a dome and keyhole windows.

Watercolor Travel Journal, continued

 I was honored to have two authors join me at Daniel Smith this past Sunday at the Watercolor Travel Journal workshop.  To the left is the work of Janet Takahashi, author of Artful Journals.  She is an accomplished calligrapher and illustrator. She used a photo of a doorway in Leipzig, and employed a monochromatic pen with additions of neutral watercolors. The penwork, lettering and engaging spontaneity of style really makes this journal entry stand out.

Darsie Beck, Vashon Island author of Your Essential Nature, a guide to creating thoughtful journals, paused during our lunch break over these elegant marine landscape sketches.  Thanks to both of you for attending and inspiring all of us. I am looking forward to receiving more of your work to share. I'm also hoping other students will send me their work in order that I can share it here in the coming days.

Watercolor Travel Journal Workshop, Continued

 Today I want to share more of the watercolor sketches done with the watersoluble pen in this past Sunday's Daniel Smith Artist Materials Watercolor Travel Journal workshop. Some students continued to work with just the pen and others began to add color for very dramatic effects.  To the left are a couple of beach scene sketches, where bold forms of seastacks and shore pines are rendered very effectively with pen.

One of the workshop participants had a fun collection of wildlife photos from various trips and safaris.  In this sketch, she's added animals to landscape pages for great interest and variation.

To the left is a very strong page of landscapes which were begun with the watersoluble pen and finished with full color.  

Below is another sketch done in the same way, where careful draftsmanship created a powerful anchor for the color. Many thanks to the generous participants for sharing their work with my readers!

Daniel Smith Travel Journal Workshop

Yesterday 14 painters joined me at the Seattle Daniel Smith Artist Materials store for a workshop on watercolor travel journals. We began by using water soluble pens for quick sketching, and the students came up with some wonderful results.

I asked them to bring some of their favorite travel photos, and several people brought great ones that lent themselves readily to a monochromatic interpretation.

Sandhill Crane, Yellowstone: Egg Tempera

 This is the third artwork I created from Glen Dreger's beautiful photo, taken at the Blacktail Creek plateau at Yellowstone. The first was a watercolor, the second a drypoint etching, and now here is an egg tempera painting. The dimensions are 8" X 10". I learned how to paint egg tempera from a master teacher and artist, Koo Schadler. This painting is very much inspired by Koo's work and is an homage to her worldview, and inspired teaching.  The medium is very demanding, and this painting, small as it is, probably took about 25 hours to paint. There are countless layers of paint; techniques included sponging, spattering, glazing, sgraffito with a razor blade and sanding.  I purchased my gesso panel from True Gesso, and these are the best ready-made gesso panels available.  They come in standard sizes, but can be cut and gessoed to your specifications. These are panels made with the classic ingredients--panels that would take you weeks to make yourself.  Though I have painted about 10 egg tempera panels in the 2 years since first studying with Koo, I have much still to learn.  

Why I Keep a Watercolor Journal: 3. A Chronicle of Visual Experience

Diaries and written journals are chronicles of lived experience, but what about our visual experiences?  Photos and digital media do that for most people in the modern world and they do it well and easily,  but the fact that you can take hundreds of photos in a minute means that those images are often invested with much less care and feeling. The hour that I spent with this trillium one spring day imbued it with a meaning for me, as I sketched it first in pencil, then painted it in watercolor. It is weighted with the memory of my delight in that specific individual plant as well as the memory of many forest excursions over the years in earliest spring, when the coniferous forest floor is aglow with dozens of trilliums. Perhaps I wouldn't have chosen to take the hour to paint it without the earlier experiences.  Past, present and future merge in the act of keeping a journal.

Why I Keep a Watercolor Journal: 2. The Fresher Vision of a Sketch

I painted this view of a lupine meadow just off Highway 20 in the North Cascades. I was teaching a class for the North Cascades Institute and we were driving back from Washington Pass.  We stopped and sketched for about half an hour. I like the freshness of this sketch, done so quickly.  If I tried to do a larger studio painting of this, I think the flowers would become labored and much of the energy of this sketch would be lost.

Eugene Delacroix, 19th century French master painter (and artist of the wonderful Moroccan Sketchbooks) wrote: Perhaps the sketch of a work is so pleasing because everyone can finish it as he chooses. The artist does not spoil the picture by finishing it; only in abandoning the vagueness of the sketch he shows more of his personality by revealing all the range but also the limitations of his talent.

Why I Keep a Watercolor Journal: 1. Practicing the Craft of Drawing & Painting

On Saturday at the demonstration I gave at Daniel Smith, I had many interesting conversations with the people who attended, and we talked about the  purposes of journals. I think the primary one for me is that it is a way to daily practice the craft of drawing and painting. I can spend as little as 5 minutes at it, or an hour, which is probably how long it took for me to do these studies of a piece of pumice and a withered twig.  Albrecht Durer, the Northern Renaissance master, wrote that the artist should fill his spirit with much copying of things seen.  This is not an end in itself but is converted into artistic skill, which germinates, grows and bears fruit...the secret store gathered in the heart is made manifest in the work, which the artist fashions in his heart in the form of a specific object. That is the reason why an experienced artist does not need models for every painting, for he can draw on the store he has gathered over a long period.