Painting Loose: Design Principles

Eric: Painting loosely is not something I do that just comes naturally, but is backed up by several design principles:

First, I combine two visually adjacent shapes of the same value or close to the same value into one larger, better shape. (A better shape is one that has an interesting, interlocking pattern, much like a puzzle piece. Commanding, geometric shapes such as a triangle, rectangle, circle, square, etc. can be a visual discomfort.) For example, rather than separate a dark hull of a boat from its dark reflection, I will paint through the waterline and create one new shape with no separation of the hull and reflection. These big shapes allow for passages of flowing color and bold brushwork (i.e. looseness). This design theory of painting through the boundary of my objects encourages some additional benefits: an effect of reflected color and soft edges. In watercolor especially, soft edges are easy to tighten up later with a firm stroke; whereas a hard edge is difficult to soften up later.

Second, I separate out my landscape masses into their appropriate value differences in relation to each other. In assigning the ground, sky, tree, and hill planes a different and distinct value, I am able to make the plane lie where it should. This is fundamentally important, as it then allows me to, for example, have the ground plane look like it lies flat without having to detail a blade of grass on it. I find too many students are looking in the wrong place to make their ground plane look like grass: it’s not in the details but in the properly assigned value of the whole mass. Understanding this allows me to paint loosely any mass I wish.

Third, I know that the outside of a shape commands the character of the object more than the interior. For example, I am more conscientious of the outside character of a gnarly pine than the inside detail of fine branches and needles. Because I know the outside shape determines the character, I will paint the interior of the tree with bold, flat washes, giving it a loose look.

Fourth, I use a lot of water and fresh pigment. I will stack several layers of color, one on top of the other upon my brush, and with very little mixing apply a bold band of rich juxtaposed colors in one stroke. Any minor adjustments on color are made on the paper itself. This technique requires plenty of fresh color squeezed onto the palette and a decisive handling of minimal mixing and stroking; sometimes it takes a lot of encouraging to get a student to squeeze out enough color. The small bands of broken, complementary color within a single stroke certainly adds to the fresh, loose, bold color statement.

Last, we need to be careful about the shadow areas of our paintings. I have found too many students, in order to make their lights jump, use a blackish color of Thalo green, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue (or any similar combination). Such a black color, encouraged by the dead shadows in a photograph, takes away the feeling of natural light. To get the scintillating feeling of sunlight in our paintings, answers can be found in our shadows: lighten the value and bounce in colors from all parts of the color wheel: not only blues, but reds, yellows and greens.

I have found these techniques and principles to help me tremendously to loosen up. May they help you too.

We welcome your questions. Please send them to: watercolors@ericwiegardt.com