Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2021 i Watercolor Artist

Like new buds on trees and the sweet sound of birdsong, this special springtime issue—in which we reveal the eight winners of our annual Watermedia Showcase competition—joins other much anticipated signs of the season. This year we’re thrilled to have significantly more pages devoted to the competition, including feature articles on each of the top three award-winning artists—Stephen Zhang (page 26), Alisa Shea (page 32) and Jian Wu (page 38)—who tell some compelling behind-the-scenes stories about their prizewinning watercolors. You’re also sure to get a creative lift from our 10-page celebration of the five artists who earned Honorable Mentions (page 44). With paintings that originated from, among other things, a routine neighborhood walk and a long look in the mirror, these artists provide plenty of evidence that creative inspiration can…

“I always return to watercolor,” says Australian artist and university instructor Rae Andrews. “It’s such a fascinating medium, versatile and full of surprises.” Andrews took her passion for the medium to YouTube after getting a stream of requests for technique demonstrations and has posted several dozen demo videos for viewers. Her videos include a popular 11-minute floral demo that begins with a photo of the necessary tools and the process of wetting half of a sheet of Arches cold-pressed paper with a hake brush. Her tip is to anchor the subject to three sides of the surface. By the end, we see the evolution and completion of an iris. See this video as well as others by Andrews at BIT.LY/RAEANDREWS.…

Laurin McCracken For many years, I used very small brushes—Nos. 00, 0 and 1—to paint details. Then, Ricard Escoda showed me that if you use good kolinsky brushes, the points on the larger brushes—Nos. 2, 4 and 6—can make the same fine lines. With the small brushes, I was often running out of paint before I finished my line. The larger brushes hold a lot more paint, so I can get more painting done without wasting time filling the brush. Also, when I started painting, I used a cold-pressed paper, which worked very well for florals and landscapes. When I started painting still lifes in a more realistic style, however, I found that a soft-pressed paper was better suited to my needs. Fabriano Artistico is the only paper that comes…

NEW YORK PAINTER ALISA SHEA loves what she calls “vintage patina.” As someone with sewing skills (she has made half of her wardrobe), Shea was drawn to the collection of antique spools of thread she spied at a local flea market. Although it took awhile, the discovery eventually inspired her prizewinning painting, TheCommon Thread (opposite). “The reference photos sat on my phone for years before I gained enough courage to use them,” she says. “I found the spools super-intimidating, but with each successive painting, my confidence has grown and eventually I decided to take the plunge.” Confessing that she’s obsessed with intricate detail, Shea adds that she enjoys the calm that comes from painting photorealistically. “I’m compelled to create art because the process serves as a soothing mental balm,” she…

• Paper: 300-lb. rough or cold-pressed watercolor paper. Young particularly likes the brighter white of Winsor & Newton. • Paints: The artist uses primarily MaimeriBlu, Winsor & Newton and M. Graham watercolors, as well as a few Holbein colors. On his primary palette are: Prussian blue, Antwerp blue, manganese blue, blue gray, indigo, Titian or Tiziano red, quinacridone red, maroon perylene, dragon’s blood, transparent yellow, lemon yellow, golden lake, new gamboge, permanent yellow orange, cupric green, sap green, Hooker’s green, Winsor green (blue shade) and permanent green yellowish. Depending on the landscape, he may use a few earth tones from his secondary palette, which includes: phthalo blue, cerulean blue, primary blue cyan, green blue, Winsor blue (red shade), scarlet lake, brown madder, cadmium-free scarlet, Indian red, gold ochre, yellow ochre,…

Flow Chart of Emotions IV is the latest iteration of Margolis’ color chart, used to standardize as well as encrypt her emotional experiences. Using a Pantone Color System, she assigns a reproducible color and identification code to each emotion—seen more clearly in the detail. When creating a painting, Margolis consults this chart, translating entries from her journals into encoded colored dots. In this way, Margolis plots the changing landscape of her emotions without divulging personal details.…

I’ve been a serious photographer for 45 years and a watercolorist for 40 years. For better or worse, my photography and painting styles and processes are completely intertwined. My initial ideas for paintings come almost exclusively from my own photography, and I spend many hours every year capturing and composing images in my viewfinder expressly for my paintings. I’m fortunate to live in Alaska and also enjoy traveling extensively around the world. Alaskan landscapes represent about half of my painting subjects; the other half are from my travel photography. It’s not unusual for me to return from a long trip with 5,000 photos—a large percentage of which I take specifically with paintings in mind. APPLYING THE NOTAN CONCEPT As I review a photo collection, I copy any promising images into…

The bold colors and interesting shapes attracted me to this closeup of old rusted machinery at a gold mine. This riot of color and shapes made it difficult to find a good composition. Using a two-value notan study allowed me to focus on the lower area as the painting subject, resulting in Independence Mine No. 1 (bottom).…

THE WOMAN’S EYES turn upward, squinting into the sun. Glints of silver trace the wisps of white hair around her head and brow. The reflected light contrasts with earthen undertones as well as the woman’s red scarf, rendered in unfinished strokes that drip to the bottom of the picture plane. Her pensive expression suggests more than simple discomfort from the sun’s glare. This is Jian Wu’s Tomorrow (opposite), the third-place winner of the 2020 Watermedia Showcase. The work not only shows the artist’s deft handling of the particulars of portrait painting but also convincingly imparts the deeper spirit of his subject. “This elderly Tibetan woman’s weathered face told a unique life story that could be artistically passed on via colors, brushstrokes and palette-knife scratches,“ says Wu. “It seemed to me…

What was your inspiration for the painting? I was looking at myself in the bathroom mirror. I was tired. And stressed. I could clearly see it in my face. As I began to meticulously follow every wrinkle that I have begrudgingly earned over my 75 years, I started thinking about how I might look a year from now—or five years from now. I wanted to capture “today”—to capture the lines of my life journey thus far. So, I grabbed my phone and took several “selfies.” What excites you most about how your painting turned out? When I look at this painting, it feels like me. I can look at this and know who I am and where I’ve been. I can see my whole life in this portrait. What turned…

The watercolor work of Canadian artist Tom Young (tomyoungartist. ca) has been featured in many juried exhibitions and gallery shows over the years, including venues in Waterton Lakes National Park, Banff National Park and Canmore, Alberta. Young is the first artist from Saskatchewan to become a member of the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour. A painting from his northern Saskatchewan series was one of 15 artworks selected for the Royal Collection, housed at Windsor Castle in England, accepted at the induction by His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales.…

In 2000, Margolis became a Workspace Program Resident at Dieu Donné, a nonprofit, based in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, that’s dedicated to retaining the use of handmade paper in contemporary art. While fulfilling her residency, she become enamored of abaca paper. “Abaca” is the term for hemp in the Philippines, where much of the fiber is harvested from the stalk of a particular kind of banana tree, Musa textilis. Its long fiber can be battered for up to eight hours, giving it a wet strength that allows artists to manipulate it easily. It has a high translucency but retains sufficient bite to make it satisfying for use with watercolor. Margolis regularly uses abaca paper for her paintings and has also used it for sculptures composed of paper, linen and wire.…

Yeoman likes to paint big. She began her “Crows and Ravens” series with sheets of standard, 22x30 Arches paper. Then she graduated to the oversized 25¾x40 sheets, which she prefers to pull off of rolls of hot-pressed paper. “My largest painting of crows, Resistance (below), is 43x43,” says Yeoman. “I painted it vertically, with the paper stapled to the wall. I love how impactful an oversized painting is—it’s a strong statement.”…

The Threshold tool in Photoshop allows you to specify a range of values in an image. All the pixels that are in the range of the selected values are mapped to white, and the rest are mapped to black. Threshold is a powerful tool for automatically creating masks.…

Every picture tells a story, they say, and so it is when we see groups of figures in a painting. “Our curiosity is piqued in much the same way it is when we see a group of people gathered in real life,” says artist Steve Griggs (stevegriggswatercolor.com). “We’re drawn to the story. We ask ourselves: What’s happening? Where are those people going? What are they doing? What are they looking at? What are they feeling?” Griggs often adds a few shapes to read as figures in his paintings. “I know that viewers simply can’t resist the presence of story, which contributes to a sense of community and connection.”…

8 ARTISTIC STYLES OF HENRI MATISSE Take a look at the beautiful (and numerous) artistic styles of Henri Matisse. artistsnetwork.com/go/matisse-styles 7 TOOLS FOR TEXTURE IN WATERCOLOR Jaimie Cordero shares some of her secrets, tools and materials for applying color and capturing watercolor texture. artistsnetwork.com/go/watercolor-texture MAKE EVERY BRUSHSTROKE POWERFUL Here’s how the fine art of calligraphy—making every brushstroke matter—is relevant in your art. artistsnetwork.com/go/calligraphy…

POWERFULLY EFFECTIVE, expressive and exuberant are a few of the many attributes of Stephen Zhang’s painting, Together, winner of this year’s Watermedia Showcase Best of Show. “Zhang’s painting works on every level,” says Editor-in-Chief Anne Hevener, adding, “Not only does it demonstrate great design, skillful handling of color and general confidence in the medium, it’s a piece that commands attention. With a theme that seeks to celebrate some of the very best of humanity; it practically insists on happiness.” The watercolor is one of four that Zhang created for Faces of Dallas, a multidisciplinary collaboration project presented at the Dallas Soluna International Music & Arts Festival. The collaboration included a choir, composers, poets, artists, designers and the public in the telling of four stories about residents whose voices often go…

Jian Wu (jwstudio.net) studied sculpture and mural art at the Central Art and Crafts College of China (now the Art College of Qing Hua University). Early in his career, he created sculptural and copper reliefs commissioned by five-star hotels in China. He went on to receive an MFA degree in illustration from the Academy of Art University, in San Francisco, where he subsequently taught painting and drawing before moving on to Ohlone College, in Fremont, Calif. He’s now a full-time artist. Over the course of his career, Wu has exhibited his work widely in solo and group shows and has garnered numerous national awards.…

Downstairs from Tom Young’s home-based painting studio is the other place where the artist spends significant time: his “bonsai room.” There he keeps about 20 of the potted ornamental trees, the largest being no taller than 2 feet. “I move back and forth between my Japanese gardening and working on my art,” Young says, “and I see quite a connection between the two.” A Growing Hobby Young travels a good distance from his home in Regina, Saskatchewan, to reach the more rugged scenery portrayed in his art. “It’s about a 7-hour drive,” he says, “to get to the environments that I love to paint: the northern part of our province or the Big Muddy Badlands to the south or Alberta or parts of the States.” It’s a determined effort that…

Delaware-based artist, Sarah Yeoman (sarahyeoman.com), paints in and also teaches watercolor, a medium that she intuitively understood since her first introduction to it 35 years ago. Having begun her career as a singer/songwriter, she brings a lyrical quality to her paintings. Primarily self-taught, she paints a wide range of subject matter, but is most known for her sparkling Brandywine Valley landscapes, her series featuring scenes from the Adirondacks and her Crows and Ravens series. Yeoman is a Signature Member of the American Watercolor Society. Her paintings can be found in numerous collections. She teaches workshops throughout North America and in Tuscany.…

These three notan studies of the photo reference for Rafting the Colorado (below) all have pleasing design elements individually. A simple cruciform composition with the intersection next to the raft in the lower right is enhanced with interesting diagonals in the upper half. It’s apparent in each of the notan views that, because the vertical line in the cruciform shape is intermittent and, due to shadow boundaries, the eye is drawn directly to the raft.…