About Barbara Fox

Barbara has achieved a tremendous following on both the national and international level as a watercolor painter with a vivid and unique style.

Her paintings have been featured in solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the United States, including the Phillips Museum of Art in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos, Mexico; the Salmagundi Club New York City; The Neville Museum in Green Bay Wisconsin; and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts

Barbara is a signature member of the National Watercolor Society, the International Guild of Realism, the Pennsylvania Watercolor Society, and the Northeast Watercolor Society, among others.

She has been published in the major watercolor publications Splash: the Best of Watercolor Painting, and  Secrets of Watercolor Masters. Barbara has been a featured artist in the leading national art magazines American Artist and Watercolor Magic.

Barbara is represented by the Oxford Gallery, 267 Oxford Street, Rochester, NY 14607

Visit Barbara’s Websites Today:

Main Website

Barbara Fox – Daily Paintings

Barbara Fox Studio

Barbara Fox Art Studio

Perfectly Pink Watercolour Painting Demonstration

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Perfectly Pink watercolor 6 x 7"

Here is the photo I used for reference; taken many years ago with my SLR camera.

Step 1 Pencil Drawing

I did a quick, pencil drawing of the rose on watercolor paper.

Step 2 Color Field

Each petal of the rose is painted separately using Permanent Rose, Opera, Winsor Violet, and Cobalt Blue. Remember to paint every other petal, so the paint washes won’t run into each other.

I paint the petals in one of two ways:

A. I wet the area of the petal with plain water, then add pure colors, letting the water do the mixing.

see below

OR

B. I painted the petal with Permanent Rose, then immediately added a little Cobalt Blue along the top edge while the paint was still wet.

see below

I painted the background using technique A., getting the paper very wet, adding the color, then tipping the paper to let the colors flow together. I don’t try to paint the whole background at once. Here you can see that I painted the background in 2 sittings. This is the big advantage to doing a splotchy, washy background.

The leaves are painted with Sap Green, Viridian, Peacock Blue, and Alizarin Crimson. Plus, I mixed Alizarin Crimson and Viridian to get a black.

Step 3 Shadows and Texture

The cast shadows are added to the flower petals, using Winsor Violet with a bit of Opera here and there. Remember to paint every area separately, so the colors don’t bleed.

Cast Shadows on the leaves are Black, Viridian, and Prussian Blue.

Suddenly the rose has dimension! I also added some detail texture to some of the petals, but that is done after the shadows are completely dry.

see below

Step 4  More Layers/ Richer Colors

I added another layer of pink color over the rose, using Opera and Permanent Rose. Again, painting each petal separately.

The last layer of pink wash was not painted in a flat manner. I tried to follow the gradations of light and dark I saw on the photograph. I also didn’t paint the edge of the petal with the second layer. This gives the flower more shape and dimension.

I added a very dark wash to the background using Viridian, Peacock Blue, Winsor Violet, and Prussian Blue, with a few dabs of Opera, and some black (Alizarin Crimson and Viridian) lines added to the wet wash to give the impression of foliage.

I washed water over each leaf. This “melted” a bit of the heavy pigment and diminished the contrast a little. Too much contrast draws attention, and I don’t want the leaves to be the center of interest in this painting.

The pinks and cool blues and greens balance each other very well in this painting. The painting as a whole is quite dark, but the vibrant pink color, and the value contrast of the rose make it the center of attention.

There are 3 simple ways to make something stand out in a painting:

Value contrast – Shadows!

Lines around the subject -you get this very subtle effect when each area is painted seperately.

Complementary colors – The pink flower against the greenish background.

If something is inclear in this demonstration, please let me know by leaving a comment or sending an email.

Happy Painting!

by Will Kemp with Will Kemp Art School

Let’s be honest, colour mixing can be frustrating.

You’ve mastered the colour wheel, you understand complementary colours and may have either dabbled with a few different colour schemes but why do you paintings still not work?

Why don’t they balance and create harmony to your eye?

What are you doing wrong?

In this series of guest posts for ArtInstructionBlog.com,  I want to address some of the common stumbling blocks of colour and analyze some master pieces to try and see how past masters have managed to balance seemingly impossible colour mixtures – so you can help to find your own unique palette

The clue staring you in the face

To understand colour you have to think like a detective, look for the clues and piece sections together. And sometimes the clues can be right under your nose, literally.

Have you looked in the mirror this morning?

Not for a self portrait, or pencil study but to try to understand your personal relationship with colours. We are often subconsciously drawn towards colours that match and compliment our skin tone.

I’m cool. You know, like the Fonz! I also have cool skin tones, pale skin and am drawn to colours that balance with that and are quite muted. I very rarely wear bright red and only use it in a minimal amount in my landscape paintings.

Now, of course, this isn’t a exact science, but have a look through the colours in your wardrobe and start to see if any of the colours that pop up in your clothes, pop up in your paintings.

The self expression of colour

Colour is such a personal thing.

Artists often go through different periods depending on their emotional state, or sometimes you’ve just tried a new colour for a change and it starts a whole new area of interest.

Colour is all about relationships, either warm and cool, harmony and contrast, balance or conflict.

Sometimes you will read a recommended palette of colours by an artist, try it yourself at home yet something just doesn’t sit right. It doesn’t ring true for you.

You have to experiment to weed out the colours you don’t like and keep the colours you have an affinity with close to hand.

Create a mood board

A mood board is often used in the design industry to develop a brand, you can use the same techniques on a voyage of self discovery to discover your own colour palette.

Step 1. Tear out pictures magazines, copy from a google search, upload photos from your camera. What you need to do is to amass a collection of images ( they don’t have to all be paintings) to start to try and see some common trends.

Step 2. layout a collection of your images to create a ‘mood board’  to start to try and see a theme. Some artists favour a sombre palette, so earth colours would be a natural choice, others prefer bright, vivid colours so maybe try some man made quinacridones.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/11/moodboard-interior-design

Step 3. Try and identify the palettes that you are drawn towards.

Palettes change

When painting things are in a state of flux, it really is a matter of personal taste.

The palette of colours that you come to use will be like your personal identity, a thumbprint that is uniquely yours, and as Picasso’s palette changed throughout his career, so will yours.

At the moment I’m slightly obsessed with Indian red, I love how much it changes when you add white, compared to using it in thin glazes. But I don’t recommend it to my students who are just starting out because the colour jumps can be too much and too unpredictable.

An emotional response

Colour is often steeped in emotion, and causes emotional responses in us. Red can be danger or passion and heightens the senses, blue can be calm to some and make others feel restless.

Often, when you start painting you are searching for a ‘style’ yet this style can seem obvious to outsiders looking in but allude you for a lot longer.

The first artist we are going to look at is Claude Monet.

“Colour is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.”

Claude Monet

Waterlilies: Green Reflections, 1914-…

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I first really fell in love with Monet on a trip to Paris when I was at art college. I’d always thought his work was ‘nice’ but I didn’t truly appreciate it until I saw it in the flesh, particularly the Water Lilies in the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris.

It was a chilly morning on the street of Paris and I’d just had my morning croissant and expresso and was ticking off the gallery list. I wandered into the next gallery on my list and wasn’t expecting much…. and then I turned the corner into the room.

The first thing that hits you is the scale.

They are huge.

I sat down and became fully immersed in the picture.

When viewing the paintings up close you notice the rapid brushstrokes and array of colours yet step back, take a seat and relax and you melt into them.

The view encompasses you and you have a real feeling of inner calm. You feel as if you are sitting next to Monet painting the scene.

But how do you create this deep connection in your own works?

Now the atmosphere of the gallery and the aura of the piece certainly helps but what about the colours he used. How did they effect my emotional reaction?

And how can you adapt his techniques to help in your own paintings.

The first thing that Monet uses is the effect of broken colour.

The broken colours are very close in tone, so there isn’t a very big visual shift for your eye.

In fact, he has created a haze of colour. There isn’t really an inch of canvas that doesn’t have a brushstroke containing all 4 of the key colours, light purple, muted blue, green and yellow

It is this technique that makes it so harmonious as a painting.

So next time you’re half way through a painting and you’ve just added a stroke of colour in the sky, try to use that exact same colour somewhere in the foreground and visa versa.

This will help the viewers eye to dance around the painting.

Monet also draws our focus to the front of the painting both by the use of contrast and the use of the strong bright blue.

Notice how he uses what I call the ‘trickle effect,’ imagine pouring some water from the top of your canvas and the water flows wherever the light falls.

Monet has used strokes of a darker blue to ‘trickle’ light towards the foreground, again creating movement.

Look carefully on the lefthand side to see a subtle triangle of darker blue.

This is another method of adding harmony by distributing the same colour, dark blue throughout the piece.

If you ever get the chance to visit Paris, I highly recommend a Monet moment and don’t forget the croissant!

Over to you.

Have you got any tips for creating the Monet effect?

What’s your colour palette at the moment?

About the Author Will Kemp can teach you how to draw & paint. He is shortly starting a new online drawing course for absolute beginners.

About Karin

Karin Wells is an artist of amazing versatility. She graduated with honors from both the New England School of Art and Design, Boston, 1965, and the Butera School of Art, Boston, 1986. Karin has enjoyed a career as an award-winning graphic designer, illustrator and sign painter. She also taught Life Drawing and Painting for many years. She has most recently studied for three years at The New England School of Classical Painting in Greenfield, New Hampshire, under the direction of Numael Pulido.

To expand her craft, Karin has traveled throughout Europe studying the Old Masters. Her art reflects the deep influence of these great works. Karin demonstrates a remarkable facility for likeness and for the use of light.

The artist is a member of The American Society of Portrait Artists, Portrait Society of America, The Portrait Society of Atlanta, and The Copley Society of Boston.

To learn more about Karin and to view more of her amazing work, be sure to visit her website and blog by following the links below:

Website: http://www.karinwells.com/

Blog: http://karinwells.blogspot.com/

If you would like to be notified when Karin updates her blog, be sure to click the “Follow” link in the upper left hand corner of her blog.

Counterintuitive Painting – or – The Problem Might Not Be What You Think It Is

Grrrrrr. It fools me every time and happens all too frequently at the easel.

I will try to keep a camera handy and make an effort to “grab” this problem as it arises so you can recognize that thorny old “the problem isn’t what you think it is….it is probably the opposite” situation.

The problem is often a light/dark thing.

Above is a 6″ x 9″ oil sketch of a cement angel by Gaudi that I recently saw in Barcelona. So far so good.

I finish the dead underpainting layer (raw umber and titanium white) and there isn’t much contrast in my reference photo…it’s made out of cement after all. However, I fail to capture the “sculptural” quality.

What to do? I glaze it and build lots of light. And then I build some more and it isn’t working.

But then I realize that it isn’t LIGHT that is the problem…it is that the darks are not dark enough.

So I stop working on the light and pay attention to the dark. . . duh . . . and then I get it right.

The light is unchanged in the last two pictures…but the dark has become much darker and thus it works now.

Although I am getting better, I’d say that I still guess wrong about once a week and think that:

1. The lights aren’t light enough
or
2. The darks aren’t dark enough

But the answer is frequently the opposite of what I think it is.

UPDATE: This is the final painting ( just couldn’t leave it alone).

I picked up the brush to add a little more dark and couldn’t resist adding a little lettering in the lower right to sort of balance the odd composition.

Here’s a detail of the lettering (above).

I was once a sign painter before I took up oil painting….and I love lettering.

This little 6″x9″ Gaudi Angel oil sketch will be part of a fundraiser for the Portrait Society of America.

About Delmus G. Phelps

Statement of purpose within the work:

I’ve been an active painter since the mid 70’s creating works in the Realist tradition. Being inspired by the nature around me and in the things we tend to collect, I produce still life and floral oil paintings in the Classical/Contemporary Realism style on canvas and panels.

With a particular interest in sharp focus realism I produce still life works of incredible detail.  My floral pieces exude a peace and serenity much needed in today’s hectic lifestyles.

Using the Flemish method of 7 layers, a 400 year old technique perfected by the Dutch Masters of the renaissance era, my paintings are meant to stand the test of time in lasting quality.

Oil Painting Technique, Rainbow Hydrangea Demonstration, flemish technique explained…

Below you will find an excellent video demonstration that will explain how Artist Delmus Phelps creates a beautiful floral oil painting using the old master Flemish Technique.  He uses a 7 layer technique that produces amazing works of art as you will see after watching the video demonstration below.

Step 1

He first creates an ink drawing.  This drawing is allowed to dry.

Step 2

After the ink has dried, he tones his canvas.

Step 3

A Burn Umber underlayer is added at this stage.  After the underlayer is completed, it is allowed to dry.

Step 4

A Layer known as the “Deadlayer” is applied.   Delmus created another video that discusses this Deadlayer application in more detail.  This video can be accessed here. At this stage, all of your half tones and shadows are developed.

Step 5

Layers of color are now added. Color is blocked in and then blended.  A large mop brush is used to soften edges and brush strokes…

Watch the video below by Delmus to see how he completes the rest of the painting!  The results are truly remarkable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX6-YB3LyMY

Highly Recommended Painting Course From Delmus Phelps!

A Real Art Lesson

Capture the joy of painting and creating things of beauty with your own gorgeous oil painting. An oil painting that you create following this step by step technique, and once learned, can be repeated over and over again so you’ll enjoy a lifetime of artistic freedom in creating many more masterpieces.

Here’s what you’ll DISCOVER within “A Real Art Lesson”

• You will learn all the technique needed to do any painting you would like.
• With over 140 pages of information and 225 photos you get a complete how-to manual.
• How you place your objects, lighting and composition.
• How to prepare the canvas step by step.
• How we transfer the drawing to the canvas.
• You will see up-close, the umber under-layer, and how it is done.
• The finished umber under-layer and all the steps to get you there!
• You will learn how to mix your paints.
• How to make the “dead layer” or Gray layer, and why.
• Closeups of brush strokes and how the paint is applied.
• All the details are taught to make your paintings stand out.
• And many more photo’s and explanations than what I can give you here.

Follow this link to learn more about this exciting course!

Artist Name: Betsy Popp

Location: Townsend, Wisconsin

Title of Artwork: Meandering Times

Dimensions of Artwork: 16″ H x 20″ W

Medium: Oils

Support: Canvas

Website: http://www.natureartists.com/poppb.htm

Describe this Piece: This is a quiet moment created from a scene in northwestern Wisconsin. I enjoy the many lakes and waterways that northern Wisconsin has to offer. This scene is one of them.

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