1e. Water Reflections.

Last time I posted, I said I was excited because I had gotten my entire canvas covered with paint. That is a milestone in this type of project, which I started about two months ago.

But, with the time it takes to get all my photos ready, I am usually a day behind posting. So, in this post I want to show you how I covered the whole canvas.

I should begin by discussing Water Reflections in general.

You have most likely seen millions of water reflections in your lifetime, no matter how old you are. They are everywhere and they all work the same. They are just at the mercy of their own environment – their own canvas – whether that is a mirror, a ceramic vase, glass of water, puddle of water on the sidewalk or a whole body of water like a river, lake or bay. It is the surface of water that holds the reflection. And, it is moving, even if ever so slightly.

Whenever I see water reflections I think about how I would paint them. Can't help it. You can't teach that, you have to do your own looking if you want to get good at painting water.

I grew up looking at water, not only at the reflections near our coast and lake house, but also in art books read from the wonderful library of my grandmother, Josephine Henning.

I suppose I also benefitted from all the Art History classes at U.T. Austin. I loved studying the French Impressionists, but somehow the paintings by the Italian master Canaletto struck me more:

"Verona seen from the Ponte Nuovo" Canaletto, 1746

"San Giorgio Maggiore from the Bacino de San Marco" Canaletto, 1740

I love that they look so real, until you get close and see the brushstrokes and it becomes clear it is a painting. I love his use of light and drama. I can tell he loved water as much as I do. I often think of him when I paint, even though my work does not look like his.

I won't go into the mechanics of water reflections, because there has been so much written and explained about it already. I learned all this in Architecture class. But, if you want a few of the basics on how reflections work, you might check out this good article by Ron Webb on the Wet Canvas web site:

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Articles2/138/136/

I am certainly not the first artist who has painted water reflections and won't be the last. It has been a subject for painters for many years.
Some people are very good at it. I really like Roger Beckwith's work in particular:

http://www.btinternet.com/~roger.beckwith/Water/reflections.htm

Beckwith concentrates just on the water, without showing what is being reflected. From what I can tell, I paint looser than he does. My work looks very detailed, but I stop with the detail when I feel like I am getting too fussy.

I like that my brush strokes show when you get close to my canvas. Like Canaletto, there is an extra experience in seeing the paint and how it was applied. The main thing to me is that it looks right from the correct viewing distance. With this size canvas I would say that would be about 6 to 8 feet. Now to the painting:

Here I am applying reflections to the blue boats on the right side of my painting. I am working left to right. I painted the reflections up to the dark post in the middle of the photo. Now I will paint them on the right side and keep going to the right.

Now I've roughed in the right side. I'll come back and replace the reflection of the dark post in the middle with a better shape on top of the other reflections. You will see that throughout this process, I will come back and put more paint on top of paint.

You can see that I am not really following my tracing lines as much as you would think. Instead, I am using them as a rough guide. I am looking at the objects above that are being reflected as much as I am the lines. They are there to just place me in the right spot for that reflection. Its not wasted effort. They are there for a reason, and they will end up more simplified than they are in the photo. That makes for a more dramatic painting....that still looks real.

Now I am trying to get all the basic reflections in place before I start painting in the sky reflections. Above you can see a Palm Tree that I put in the background that wasn't in the original photo. I'll have to put that reflection in also. 

There are some other background objects that will come later and have to have their reflections painted in. It ain't done until its done! It will take a lot of study once I think I might be  done to make sure everything has a proper reflection. I don't want someone telling me later that I missed something.

I now have all the reflections roughed in that are going to be roughed in, and I'm ready to start putting in the sky reflections. Here is my work surface where I squeeze paint onto my palette and clean my brushes. For this stage of painting, my palette isn't going to be big enough so I am using some tin cans and plastic containers. I'll hold them up to the painting while I paint like I would the palette.

So for starters I need some light blue sky color to paint into the object reflections as I work from top down on the water. I squeeze a large glob of Winton Soft Mixing White into the little can.

On top of that, I squeeze smaller amounts of Cobalt Blue and Prussian Blue. The lower portion of the sky is mainly White with Cobalt Blue. This is a very reddish blue as compared to the greenish blue of the Prussian. 

The upper portion of the sky has a lot of Prussian in it. So, I am thinking this mixture of blues will work.

Now that I have stirred this up with my square palette knife, I move over to the canvas and compare the color I have mixed with the existing sky, just to see if I am in the right range.

 Normally, water reflections are just a tad darker than the object being reflected. Actually that one fact separates the men from the boys when painting reflections. The color on my knife looks right, so I'm ready to start putting it on.

I already know that this color is a little lighter than the sky. I do, however, want to push the envelop on its brightness. Even if I decide to make it darker later, the lighter areas will show in places and create some sparkle, which can be wonderful. This step doesn't really take all that long. I'll have it done in about twenty minutes.

So, on goes the light blue paint. I keep my brush at a horizontal position as I paint. Looking at water reflections from a distance, you will always see this horizontal shape due to perspective.

I just keep going. Quick loose strokes are needed now. I have plenty of paint on my brush as I place the light blue wherever there is raw canvas showing. Those are the areas I left for sky as I roughed in the reflections of the objects. I will come back over the object reflections later, and add to them too.

You can see at this point how the object reflections are going to work with the sky reflections. Its getting exciting......finally!

I work my way across the canvas with my number two flat brush until the paint around the object reflections is complete. Now I change to my larger flat brush to bring it on down, estimating the place where the light of the lower sky meets the darker clouds. I will have to go darker on down from there.

I was right. The sky and its reflection are too much the same brightness, so I will have to darken it later.

Now, its time to mix the darker color for the lower area of the canvas.

This blue looks too BLUE, so I will put some orange in it to tone its color down somewhat. Orange and Blue are opposite on the color wheel. Thus, in theory, equal amounts of orange and blue gives you grey. Just like red and green, yellow and violet, etc. So, I am "greying down" the blue paint.

So, on goes the blue. I'm starting from the bottom up with a relatively large brush (#12 Flat). I hope I have mixed the right amount of paint for this step. I'm getting pretty good at judging that now. In this case, I was pretty accurate. I had just a little left over. 

At this point, you just have to sorta slop it on fast. I'm in a hurry to get this done, so I can move on to more fun areas. Plus, there is no reason to take your time since so much more paint will be added over this base blue color.

There, its done. Well, not DONE, but at least the base paint is done. We are going to creep up on these water reflections. Each step will look better and better and the water will become more and more real looking. This takes patience. 

Now, I kick back and think about the next step. I need to create some wave structure. I have decided that they will be very subtle waves, not ones with high peaks. The wind in this painting is very calm, but the slighted movement of air, or a boat going by, or a bird landing on the water, can give movement. I think that type of movement is best of all. The original photo had some movement, but not enough. I need to exaggerate this aspect of the water.

I will start by using some of the lower paint and moving some blue shapes up into the lighter blue, continually making horizontal brush strokes. I do this all across the canvas. It may not stay this way, but I am starting to see the structure and how the objects and wave reflections might work together.

I just go right across what is already painted. Much of this paint is still wet, so if i do the brush stroke only once, the paint is the darkest since it is not picking up the light blue under it. A few more strokes in the same spot and the color gets lighter as it mixes with the under paint. A light touch is needed here, but I am still moving fast.

Now, I get what is left of the light blue and do the same thing as I did with the dark. Only this time I am putting light over dark in horizontal strokes and moving down from light to dark. These light areas we start the structure of the lower waves. 

Because I want the water to have perspective, I have to make the strokes get larger and less horizontal as I move down the canvas to the bottom.

So, now I have the top and bottom water reflections starting to become something. There is still lots of work to do, but I have now covered the whole canvas. Whoo Hoo! 

Next time I will start adding in green to the bottom shapes to simulate the color of the Gulf Coast harbors.