Blog of the Back Run

Watercolor Class

2012-01-16T11:02:00.005-05:00

Watercolor class is switching over to Wednesdays for all concerned. You can either paint from your own existing reference or take advantage of our terrific still life opportunities. We have well lit, simple still lifes set up every week, with a good view guaranteed for everyone.

Class is held at the Pat Catans store in Strongsville, from 6:00 to 8:30 at night. Call (440) 238-7318 for more information.

Billy

2012-01-04T08:54:00.002-05:00

Billy did an incredible job posing for us! He had an incredible face, with lots of wrinkles. You can't include them all or it gets really distracting.

The Minister of Culture

2011-12-11T13:07:00.004-05:00

Michael posed this past Friday and did a great job. He said that his father, Chuck Heaton, worked at the Plain Dealer for 51 years!

A Guy named Guy

2011-11-23T09:11:00.003-05:00

Guy did a great job posing for us last Friday. If you're interested in seeing what other artists are doing, visit Tim Herron's facebook page. On his wall he posts all of the art created at these portrait sessions.

Alphonso

2011-11-11T11:24:00.003-05:00

This is Alphonso from last Friday night in Tremont. He thought he was going to model for only about twenty minutes, but was a trooper and stayed the night for us. He did a great job!

Melissa

2011-11-03T09:13:00.002-04:00

Another portrait in the sketchbook from Friday nights in Tremont.

Watercolor Class

2011-10-22T15:52:00.005-04:00

The class is going strong on Monday nights 6 to 8:30 at Pat Catan's in Strongsville.

We usually set up one or two (or three, depending on the amount of students) still life arrangements and we paint from life. Students also have the option of bringing in their own reference material to paint from. Sometimes I do a demonstration painting, sometimes the students paint the whole time with me giving tips as needed. The arrangements are lit with a spot light, so everyone gets good subject matter to paint.

Photos are taken of the still life so students can continue their work at home, as the arrangement is unique to that night.

The store is loaded with artificial flowers, fruit, vases, baskets, etc. It's quite a setup and is unique as far as I know in the Cleveland area. When you sign up, there's only a commitment for two classes, so feel free to call or stop in. (440) 238-7318

John

2011-10-09T09:50:00.004-04:00

This was another sketch done at the Literary Cafe.

Medina Town Square Again

2011-09-22T20:29:00.002-04:00

This is the second sketch from that same day last year. The gazebo in the town square with some of the tents of the farmer's market. The current gazebo was built in 1975, patterned after another in Bellville, OH (according to the Medina Community Band's web page).

More Medina

2011-09-21T21:13:00.003-04:00

This is from last year. I did two other watercolor sketches of the town square that day in my moleskine. I'm always vacillating between tight and loose, and this one was sort of tight. I wanted to see how accurate I could capture the architecture and still be loose.

Medina Town Square

2011-09-17T15:10:00.003-04:00

After shopping at the farmer's market in Medina this morning, I painted this sketch of some of the buildings along the south portion of the town square. Toned paper was chosen because I thought the white of the old red firehouse would pop off. I usually carry a tube of Permanent White, Naples Yellow and Brilliant Yellow Winsor Newton gouache in my sketch bag for when opaques are needed (sometimes in portraits I use opaques to even out the skin tones). Here it was part of the plan all along.

The tree was a real inspiration. It was about a third dead and gave hints of the upcoming fall season.

David

2011-09-13T09:51:00.004-04:00

Here's another watercolor in the moleskine sketchbook from portrait night at the Literary Cafe. David may well have been the best model ever. He never wavered or chatted, which is always a good thing in someone posing for a portrait.

Berea Arts Fest

2011-09-03T21:45:00.006-04:00

The Berea Arts Fest is this upcoming Sunday, Sept. 11, from 10 am to 5 pm. I'll be demonstrating there as well as having a tent displaying my watercolors. The painting above was painted on site and is the civil war cannon at the Berea Triangle. I'm not sure what time the demonstration will be, but I hope to see a lot of friends and family up there!

Strong House

2011-08-30T22:33:00.003-04:00

This is the house of the founder of Strongsville, John Strong.. I don't think there's another Strongsville in the entire country.

"The weak need not apply" is my motto for anyone thinking of moving into our fair city!

The red pencil line is a loose gestural line put in lightly with watercolor pencil. It results in a line that gets fuzzed out in spots once it becomes wet. Sometimes interesting, sometimes fussy, I'm still trying to figure out if I like it or not.

Classes at Pat Catans

2011-08-24T09:34:00.005-04:00

We will be starting new classes at the Pat Catans store in Strongsville on Monday nights. There is a back classroom that is perfect for this sort of thing. Call up the store at 440 238 7318 for more details.

This was a demo I did to start generating interest in the class. Classes start second Monday of September, are reasonably priced and you aren't necessarily locked in for a long number of weeks. Nothing beats on site demos for helping your brain absorb the process of watercoloring.

Hope to see you there!

Downtown Cleveland

2011-08-21T22:52:00.004-04:00

I went downtown to check out the filming of the upcoming Avengers movie, and having forgotten my little stool, decided to hunker down on the sidewalk and paint a view of Euclid Avenue looking west toward our beloved Terminal Tower.

The concrete planters that I f hint at in the left foreground of the sketch are actually very, very cool and I have to do them justice in a future sketch.

I also posted this on the Urban Sketchers Cleveland blog.

Alex

2011-08-09T21:19:00.003-04:00

Here's another portrait from Friday nights in Tremont at the Literary Cafe.

On Site Painting

2011-07-25T16:25:00.004-04:00

Painting on site without any pencil drawing produces the most spontaneous paintings. Here's a painting from last week.

After letting a painting rest for a while (sometimes weeks), I return to it in the studio and refine it. Sometimes it takes just a little touch up, sometimes a lot. I often take a photo of it and bring it into photoshop and paint in layers on top to plan the next steps. I'll have a photo I took of the subject matter on one screen, and the photoshop version of the painting on another.

But it's hard to match the loose attitude that one had when it was originally created. I'll often wait until I have several paintings sitting around and touch them all up at the same time, once I've reentered the loose painting attitude that I was in while painting on site.

Hanging basket

2011-07-19T12:16:00.002-04:00

Here's a sketch from the moleskine.

Rachel

2011-07-13T13:38:00.004-04:00

This was done at a Friday night session at the Literary Cafe. I had to use a little opaque gouache to touch it up. I have a tube of Permanent White, a tube of Naples Yellow and a tube of Brilliant Yellow (all Winsor Newton brand) so I can make some bright very light corrections if need be. I'm not a purist when it comes to these things. I prefer to get it right without opaques, but if need be I'll use em.

Brilliant White is the most opaque of the whites, and Naples Yellow helps get those creamy opaque skin tones. If I need to opaque any other color, I just mix the white with the brightest version of the watercolor color that I'm interested in and I can usually get a good match.

You'll notice I let the underlying pencil be. The search is the most interesting thing! If there's an inaccurate pencil line, that's what gives it energy.

Gardenview Sketch

2011-07-07T08:57:00.003-04:00

This was a loose sketch done at Gardenview. It's always a battle between how loose to make a sketch or painting or how tight. I prefer loose. I think this is just about right. It didn't take all that long, (about a half hour I think) and it has a satisfactory light and dark pattern. While the Moleskine sketchbook isn't the most forgiving paper to work on, if you start wet on wet, letting the colors bleed together, you can start establishing hard edges once it starts to dry. This leaves some of the fused wet in wet colors alone so that there is a bit of "mystery" to it all.

Literary Cafe

2011-06-30T07:10:00.003-04:00

Friday night is portrait night at the Literary Cafe in Tremont. There is a sign up sheet for models, and the artists graciously donate their drawings to the model. It's free and a fun way to spend your Friday!

The Berea Triangle

2011-06-28T08:58:00.006-04:00

The Berea Art Walk was held in May at the historic Berea Triangle. It was a beautiful day, so I set up my easel and proceeded to paint this while I was set up next to the sponsor's tent.

It's from a large 18" x 24" rough textured Arches watercolor block.

The Rosander Event Kitchen (the restaurant and cooking school behind the blue green awning on the right) now owns this painting. Chef Brian Rosander came out to check out what I was painting and purchased it. I think it's hanging in the restaurant now.

Strongsville Watercolors

2011-06-23T14:31:00.003-04:00

These are some recent sketches of the local scenery.

Friday Night Portraits

2011-06-17T15:12:00.004-04:00

Friday nights are Portrait nights at the Literary Cafe in Tremont. Sign up to pose and get your portrait drawn for free.

Sketchbook work

2011-06-11T22:51:00.003-04:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Here's two pages from my moleskine watercolor sketchbook.

More Gardenview

2008-09-09T08:33:00.004-04:00

Here are more sketches made at Gardenview.

Gardenview 2

2008-08-02T21:53:00.007-04:00

Here are some photos of Henry Ross and the entrance of Gardenview, his English cottage garden sanctuary. It's located in Strongsville on Pearl Rd., one of the busiest strip mall filled roads around. Just across the street from him they cleared land for yet another little miserable strip mall with its own separate little miserable driveway. The traffic is (you guessed it) miserable. When cars pass Henry's place, they don't think twice about stopping in. All they care about is making the next light. Soon they'll be widening the road, so cars will be able to zip past Henry even faster. Somehow I don't think it was like that when Henry bought the place in 1949. Back then it was a blue clay swamp that he transformed through the miracle of drainage and horse dung into an oasis of calm. Lots of little walkways with perrenials and annuals situated just so, along with little benches and statues. Little "moments" that make perfect watercolor material. Farther back he has two large ponds, one with water lilies.

Following the photos are some sketches from my moleskine sketchbook. I'll be posting more moleskine sketches soon.

Gardenview

2008-07-21T08:47:00.003-04:00

Near my home is one man's dream of a nature sanctuary. The man is Henry Ross and the sanctuary is called Gardenview. Early last winter, I snapped some pictures of the winter cabbage he had growing next to the side of the road. Here's a digital painting (just want to mix things up here a little) created in Painter, using the Wacom art pen and the palette knife tool.

I'll have more posts about Gardenview with some watercolor sketches soon.

Hot Pressed Paper

2008-02-19T09:31:00.003-05:00

This is from a photo supplied to me by a friend. Once again it's on hot pressed paper. A little more pencil sketching than normal.

Ohio City

2008-01-21T17:53:00.001-05:00

This was done on Arches 140 lb. hot pressed paper. There was a little more drawing than usual to start with, then at the end, more drawing to touch it up. The paper is super receptive to the pencil line, even after the washes have been laid down.

Two More

2007-11-27T12:45:00.000-05:00

Recent Demo

2007-11-23T20:53:00.000-05:00

Here is yet another painting done for class. It's a result of some photos taken on the day of the Sketch Crawl.

2 demos

2007-11-12T14:21:00.000-05:00

Here are two demos from watercolor class. The object was to show the traditional method of painting a wet into wet sky and then adding a blurred treeline behind the houses. After the blurred tree line dried the crisper parts of the trees were added for variety's sake.

Cleveland

2007-11-03T20:15:00.001-04:00

There was a sketch crawl downtown today. I got there a little late and didn't see anyone. Here is my effort.

2 More

2007-10-28T14:40:00.001-04:00

It was a nice moody and cloudy day yesterday.

Paris

2007-10-24T20:05:00.001-04:00

Two More

2007-10-20T18:56:00.001-04:00

We've had some fantastic weather this fall. Tomorrow's supposed to be sunny and in the 80's. Today it was in the low 70's but very windy. I tried out the Moleskine for the first one. The second is in the Arches sketchbook. I have a hard time with the Moleskine. The paper just doesn't accept the water like I want it to. I guess I have to adjust my approach when I use it.

Bob the Cyclist

2007-10-16T10:25:00.000-04:00

While painting the farm scene in the previous post, Bob stopped by on his bike. He stayed and chatted for a while. He is a lover of life, having cycled from Florida to Michigan while in his 70's. I guess this was a smaller trip for him... Elyria to Valley City. Pretty amazing if you ask me. I told him I was going to paint his picture and gave him my web address. Hopefully he'll see this. Hi Bob!

Sunday Sketches

2007-10-14T20:27:00.000-04:00

These were done today while my middle son was golfing. While I was sketching the farm scene, I met Bob the cyclist. More on that on the next post. These were done in a 7" x 9 1/4" Arches cold press wirebound sketchbook.

Paris

2007-09-17T13:51:00.000-04:00

I had the good fortune to visit my friend Nicolas in Paris in August. Here are the small (4 x 6 inch) sketches I made while I was there. They're done on small d'Arches blank postcards.

Nicolas is a fellow illustrator, so it was easy to stop and spend an hour or so sketching without irritating him. He provided all of the titles for these as I wasn't sure where we were when they were painted.

Ashtabula

2007-07-03T17:50:00.000-04:00

It's the Fourth of July Holiday. Time to head up to the sunny beaches of Ashtabula.

Golf

2007-06-19T11:11:00.001-04:00

My middle son Wyatt spends a lot of time on the golf course.

Denison Avenue

2007-06-19T11:08:00.001-04:00

This is a good chunk of what Cleveland looks like.

From the Sketchbook

2007-06-14T09:25:00.001-04:00

This was during the wintertime with clumps of snow in the parking lots.

Venice Once More

2007-06-14T09:16:00.001-04:00

Venice

2007-05-06T19:33:00.000-04:00

Here's the finished painting. I tried not to do too much to it, as the goal is not to overwork it. Could it have used more finishing touches? Maybe.

Venice

2007-04-11T14:51:00.000-04:00

My friend Larry recently went to Venice and graciously gave me a bunch of photos on a cd. I asked him if he wouldn't mind my painting a watercolor or two from the photos. Here's the photo and different stages of the painting. It's not quite done yet.

You can see that certain things had to be left out. I'm not sure if I left out the right ones, but you can't go and put everything that's in the photo in the painting. It won't be "read" by the viewer's mind as quickly and succinctly as you want it to if you stick every little thing in.

Tropical Boats

2007-04-09T15:26:00.000-04:00

Lorain Lighthouse

2007-04-06T08:41:00.000-04:00

This was for a Christmas gift. There's some scraping in the rocks on the lower right. If you watch the wash as it's drying, JUST as the glisten goes away and the wash is ALMOST dry, you can go in with the edge of a knife or a razor blade and scrape the pigment away. Some watercolorist excel at this technique. I'm not one of them. If I practiced it more my skill level would increase. The first post of the blog had a brutal scraping attempt in the left branch of the far left tree. It dug into the paper far more than it should have (it was still a little too wet). If you use d'Arches paper (140 lb. weight or more) , it'll be thick enough withstand the knife's injuries.

Presti's

2007-04-06T08:22:00.000-04:00

This was an attempt at just painting away with no drawing whatsoever at first. You can see that the man on the right had a false start at the placement of his shoulder and arm. If you get over worrying about things like that, you get a spontaneity that's hard to achieve otherwise. You also get a lot of bad drawing! But when it turns out well, it's that more special.

Sunfish

2007-04-01T19:49:00.000-04:00

The Naturalist

2007-03-30T20:21:00.000-04:00

These were demos from class. Here's the source material. I pieced the two together in Photoshop.

Medina

2007-03-28T10:31:00.000-04:00

A page from the sketchbook. Fred Graff, my high school art teacher lives in Medina. He introduced me to the wonders of the medium 30 years ago. Not that I understood any of it at the time. He would always talk about the wonders of warm and cool colors. I kind of knew what he meant, but not really.

Camp

2007-03-27T20:14:00.000-04:00

This was a Christmas present for my brother's in laws who were very nice to us and let us stay in this cabin in southern Ohio a couple times and were very gracious hosts. In most cases you want to change things around before you paint them to make a better composition. In this case I wanted it to be accurate so they could look at the painting and immediately say "that's camp!" instead of "that kind of looks like camp, but different!", so the relative size and position of things were kept the way things actually are, but certain objects were omitted. You can see that behind the central tree I started to indicate a wood pile, but the idea was discarded, thinking it would make the painting too busy. I really like the idea of spontaneously deciding what to include and what to omit while painting. It keeps the mind sharp and alert.

Welcome

2007-03-27T14:22:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my feeble attempt at blogging.

The above image was a demonstration painting created at my Monday night watercolor class at the Westlake Rec Center. In the posts to come I will share with you the thought processes and techniques associated with painting watercolors.