Carolyn Lord Discusses Five of Her Paintings
When learning how to paint, it can be helpful to see how artists think through and approach their own work.
Watercolorist Carolyn Lord (Ep.21) is a watercolor painter living and painting in California. She primarily paints in plein air but will occasionally do touch ups upon returning to her studio. Below she walks through some of her choices in these five paintings.
“Autumn at the Pacific” watercolor 11” x 15”
This was a painting demonstration done the final afternoon of a 3-day workshop, one of those rare birds where everything came together! Several of my students had been painting this vista so I was familiar with the challenges through their paintings.
Composition: How large will the mass of cliffs be, and how far across the page will they go? Where will the horizon line go, how close to the top of the page?
Because it’s so far away, the horizon has scant value contrast and negligible color. I usually say: no granulation in the distance, but I decided to use a mix of cobalt violet and aureolin to create a granulating neutral that would become richer in color as it came forward. I knew that the cadmiums and ultramarine violet and blue I planned to use in the immediate foreground would dominate the cobalt granulations.
Block-in lines in the water were my guide for the dark water reflections that describe the perspective and movement of the water.
It was October so the yellow-orange quality of light dominates.
Colors: complimentary yellow and purple, with analogous blue green for the water. The aim was to keep the values of the shadows flat and let the light describe the undulating headlands. When I returned home after the workshop, I finessed the painting in the studio.
“Golden Mendocino Headlands” watercolor 22” x 30”
Studio painting based on 11” x 15” field painting “Autumn at the Pacific”. Large painting amplifies the ideas in the smaller.
"Tuesday at the Headlands" watercolor 11” x 15”
Not much going on in this painting; just a rectangle-shaped shadow!
Color: I used the purple/green/orange concept in the shadow, only suggesting what’s going on in the shadow but not specifically describing it. Colors are the richest in the shadow. In the lit areas, the glare of the sun neutralizes the color of the beach, cliff, and water.
Hard edges include the cast shadow on the water, beach and up the cliff. Soft edges form shadow at the top of the cliff with the scruffy grasses.
At the left, the rocks have shadows but there’s so much light bouncing around that they are hardly discernible.
“Sunny Morning Rose” watercolor 15” x 11”
This painting has the full range of values from very light to very dark, but the white flowers are not raw paper nor are the darks colorless. After blocking in the composition, I painted from light to dark.
On the right side of the composition, the berry canes in the background provide the deep shadow against the sunlit side of the rose bush, and then it lightens on the left side so the dark side of the rose bush creates a dark silhouette. If you squint, note that the berry blossoms blend into the value of the background: there’s a lot going on, but it’s contained with value and neutral color.
Similar effect in the sunlit foreground: flowers and foliage close in value.
"Blooming Roses and Berries” watercolor 11” x 15”
This was painted after “Sunny Morning Roses,” and I didn’t want to have as graphic an effect. For this reason, I consciously chose to lessen the value contrasts. I wanted the value of the rose blossom to meld with the value of the background, to suggest that enveloping light, rather than a chiseled, abrupt edge.
Color composition is a split compliment of orange/pink and blue/green. Some of the dark green rose leaves reflect the blue sky and integrate into the background neutral that represents the lower, shadier part of the berry canes. Some of the rose’s leaves are individualized, others are linked together to create a flat, abstract shape that describes rose leaves but doesn’t pull the viewer’s eye to that part of the composition.
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