Molly Hashimoto

Heron: Watercolor Painting Demonstration

I took a photo of a green heron at Seattle's Union Bay Natural Area in June which was my reference for this painting.  It doesn't look very green--I tried to be faithful to the colors I saw.  My guess is that these herons look green in some light situations, but here I saw beautiful russets and blues.

What follows is a somewhat abbreviated step-by-step demonstration--I am allowing for the online blog medium!  I am looking forward to teaching my class this fall on Watercolor Birds and Wildlife, and I intend to use a more complete step-by-step demonstration as a teaching aid for my students. 

Step 1. I began by drawing the heron, the logs and a few major foliage areas. I used masking fluid for the white areas on the tail feathers.

 Palette: hansa yellow medium, quinacridone burnt orange, permanent alizarin crimson, phthalo blue red shade, carbazole violet.

Step 2. After painting the heron, I wet the entire paper and painted in the greens of the marsh, using a flat brush to stroke in the irises and reeds. I surround the painting with 3M Drafting Tape in order to give me freedom to glaze repeatedly without backruns developing on the outside margins of the painting.

Step 3: I once again used masking fluid on the leaf shapes at right, as well as above the heron's head. In order to  create the dappled light on the marsh surface, I also used it on the water where blue is still visible. I decided that the heron was not intense enough in hue or values contrast, so I corrected those areas.

Step 4. I decided the dark area behind the leaves on the right was too strong, so I wet it with water and gently scrubbed it out with a natural sea sponge. Once the corrected leaf area had dried, I re-painted the blue-green leaves, and when they had dried, I painted a saturated warmer yellow-green behind them. To view those corrections, see the finished painting above.

Oregon Coast Flora & Fauna

This Townsend's chipmunk busied itself early one morning just outside a clump of salal at Sitka Center for Art & Ecology last weekend. The coastal forest and headlands are full of interesting flora and fauna. 

 I saw this garter snake while hiking up to a view on Cascade Head.  

We spotted the lobster mushroom pictured below while we were painting the forest view above our studio classroom.  It isn't actually a mushroom itself, but rather it is a parasitic mold which forms on a mushroom.  I love its flashy color, surrounded  by forest browns and greens.

Painting on the Oregon Coast at Sitka Center

We painted at Neskowin Beach on the last day of our workshop.  John Tubbs had arrived early and found this marvelous view of the arch on the southeast side of Proposal Rock, a new view that I had not yet discovered.

Here is a photo of some students sketching at that location.

Below is Claudia Weybright's sketch of the arch and the beach and headlands beyond. She created a lively and vibrant painting, mixing colors wet into wet and ably captured the combination of greens one sees in the spruce, pines and ground covers on coastal headlands.

Sitka Center Students

Pictured here are Loretta Chambers, John Tubbs and Barbie Metcalf.  We painted at the Salmon River estuary and had a striking view of the river mouth and Three Rocks just beyond Cascade Head.

Carol Savonen shared some of her thumbnail sketches with us on the last day of our workshop.

More Photos from Sitka Center on the Oregon Coast

I took this photo of the ocean and headland view from the Sitka Center early one morning. We painted in the meadow and included these trees and the headland in our sketches.

In the photo to the right, Max Smith of Hillsboro, Oregon, begins a watercolor of the meadow view.

Sitka Center for Art & Ecology

I just returned from teaching a workshop for the Sitka Center: Landscape Watercolor at Cascade Head. 12 enthusiastic students and I began and ended each of the 3 days in the Smith Studio at the Sitka Center, and visited 4 different sites for painting.   To the left is a forest view (one of our sites) and features the magnificent Sitka spruce for which the Center is named.

 Below are students working in the Smith Studio on the campus.

More North Cascades Sketches & Photos

Here's a sketch of Colonial Peak done in July at the Artist Retreat. I painted several areas using a wet-into-wet method--you can see it in the middle ground ridge and in the waters of Diablo Lake.  We sat at the edge of the Lake at the North Cascades Institute's Environemental Learning Center, and spent about an hour on this subject.

Below is a photo of my friend Dave Maertz standing near Green Point above Ross Lake. In the distance you can see Colonial Peak and Pyramid Peak.

  

To the left is a photo of me and my good friend Gerry Fuller, whom I have known since we were both freshmen at the University of Minnesota.  We have had many adventures together, and the best of them have been in the mountains.  We had plans to take an anniversary hike up to Cascade Pass, but I hadn't been feeling well on our previous day up at Maple Pass, so decided to undertake a less tiring hike. We were able to hike a good distance on the West Bank Trail at Ross Lake because we opted to hitch a ride back to the trail start with Ross Lake Resort driver Justin (and his dog) who gave us a full-throttle experience on the Ross Lake boat taxi.  The ride from the Resort to the trail on the other side of the dam must have taken about 3 minutes total!  Quite fun!

North Cascades Sketches & Photos

I created this two-page spread in my journal in an attempt to convey the power of the panoramic vista of Diablo Lake seen through the screen of the salal, alders and lodgepole pines that grow at lake's edge. I deliberately flattened out the sketch, as what struck me here were the dramatic shapes and colors.

This is the view down to Rainy Lake on the Maple Pass Loop trail in North Cascades National Park. Dave and Gerry and I hiked here last Tuesday; it was still very hot and a haze from nearby forest fires obscured some of the magnificent view of Glacier Peak from the Pass. Even the meadows seemed a little less verdant than in past years, though they were still quite beautiful. 

To the left is a meadow full of asters and fireweed, and below a mass of lupines, still blooming away in spite of the heat, a refreshing sight to us during our exertions.

Diablo Lake and Ross Lake

I spent the last two days up in the North Cascades National Park with my friends Gerry Fuller and Dave Maertz. While there I marvelled at the colors of Diablo Lake and Ross Lake, and noted the differences. This is Diablo Lake from the Diablo Lake Overlook on Highway 20. I have been observing this lake's hue for years, marking the changes through the seasons and years, and finally this year decided the gemlike color of August reminded me of verdigris, the patina that is formed on copper after being exposed to air or water.  I've seen it on church domes--I was reminded of Canaletto's painting of the Frauenkirche dome in Dresden.  The color is created by rock flour deposited in the melting glacial waters, milled by the grinding action of glaciers far above.

We hiked along the West Bank Trail of Ross Lake and saw the teal blue waters of the Lake. Ross Lake is not quite as opaque as Diablo Lake and thus reflects a little more of the sky color.

I have experimented with different pigments to acheive the right hue for the lakes and I've decided the best combination for Diablo Lake is a mixture of phthalo blue, phthalo green and a bit of quinacridone burnt orange.  Daniel Smith Artist Materials makes some beautiful paints that squeeze the perfect hue right out of a single tube, but the granularity of each of them doesn't really capture the flat opacity of Diablo Lake. I'm thinking here of paints like Ultramarine Turquoise, Cobalt Teal Blue and Cobalt Turquoise.

I did this painting several years ago of the view from Thunder Knob overlooking Diablo Lake. I think if I were to do it again now, I would definitely change the color of the lake. It seems a little too green and perhaps a bit weak in saturation as well.  One of the joys of being an artist is the opportunity to try subjects many times, in different ways.  I love revisiting my favorite places. I think of it as a chance to get it right, or to see it anew.