Getting close to finishing the mini ebook tutorial, thanks for your patience! Here is a recent value study for a stormy cliff composition. Perhaps a French sailing barge grounded with crew looking on, dwarfed by the scale of the crumbling precipice above.

Gouache on gray canson paper, dip pen loaded with diluted watercolor and gouache, touches of pastel pencil. 6x10 inches.

This is an invented high mountain scene starting with light transparent washes and smaller opaque passages in the center rock area. Winsor & Newton extra large full pan watercolors with M.Graham Chinese white was used. 9x12 Montval watercolor block paper and small amounts of sepia pen & ink work added at the end as well.

As promised a few shots from my demo lecture on a recent gouache/watercolor painting.

I am writing a twenty page plus breakdown of the process and it should be informative for those interested in learning more about gouache painting and how to start simply when developing more complex imagery.

I will keep you posted when that is ready in the near future. The tutorial will be available as a PDF for viewing. I am considering a small fee for the time I am putting into it.

Some casual sketches from the back yard and dinner table today. The plate of artichoke petals dissolved away in the evening light. I love springtime. Pencil on smooth moleskin style sketchbook. I will post the previous work in progress photos this Sunday!

Thanks to everyone attending this last weekend's workshop at Kevin Chen's Concept Design Academy in Pasadena, California. What a wonderful group of students and Kevin and his wife Estelle were terrific hosts. I enjoyed the Eaton Canyon location on Sunday's portion of the landscape painting/sketching workshop. Springtime near the base of the mountains provided us with babbling streams and shimmering leaves of sycamore to inspire us in our artwork. I will post some demos and quick sketches from the class soon. Here is the full picture of the painting I promised last week. This was also part of my slide lecture on the process of starting and completing a painting in gouache and watercolor. Later in the week I will show a collection of in-progress stills on this painting.

A small detail from an imaginative gouache and watercolor painting called 'Turner's Valley'. I captured the process with digital photos showing various stages in creating the image. I will go over these in my upcoming workshop next weekend... looking forward to sharing! 9x12 inches - Fabriano Hotpress watercolor block. Small additions of pastel added.

A few spots still open for April 17-18th 2010 Painting workshop!

Upcoming Workshops in beautiful Pasadena, California. At the Concept Design Academy -


Gouache & Watercolor Painting with Erik Tiemens - April 17 -indoor lecture/demo only

Gouache & watercolor Painting with Erik Tiemens- April 17+18 with outdoor painting. Limited spaces.


If you are interested in enrolling contact the Academy at - contact@conceptdesignacad.com


http://www.conceptdesignacad.com 818-669-4657

Rapid watercolor/gouache sketch at the bay's edge. Boatyard with repair cranes and good low tide muck at the waterline to study. Grayish clouds building to a weak storm front. Additions of brush pen marker, dip pen with sepia ink and Caran D'ache water-soluble gray pencil on a Daler-Rowney sketchbook page - 65lb paper.

Pine trees near the Palace of Fine Arts museum in San Francisco. A cold breeze out, but wonderful atmospheric layering of tree groups in the distance. Sepia ink with gouache burnt umber and freshly prepared sumi ink. Exploring metal dip pens and reed pens today.

Rapid limited palette study of a river bank with active water. Hot press paper (not from a block) with an ink sketch painted out on the upper left. 5.5 x 7 inches. My daughter was painting next to me using post-it notes and watercolor.

Greetings Virtual Gouache Land followers, I wanted to let everyone know that I have redesigned my website - Watersketch.com. I will be posting info regarding prints for purchase and upcoming workshops soon. It is still a work in progress but much easier to navigate.

Happy New Year

Link: http://www.watersketch.com/

Tree trunk study from imagination. Ink, gouache, watercolor and small additions of chalk and crayon. 4x8 inches on fabriano cold press paper.

Imaginative landscape study with hunters approaching a lake side castle. Pen and wash with additions of transparent watercolors. I am trying out Winsor & Newton's large pan professional watercolors. Original on cold press Sennelier paper, 4 x 9.5 inches. This ratio is similar to a widescreen movie format like Panavision's 2:35.

Eroded cliff with exposed eucalyptus roots. 10x14", Canson -Montval watercolor paper. Limited palette with additions of red/brown ink, gouache white, light gray and transparent watercolors.

Small ink, watercolor & gouache sketch from life. A grouping of eucalyptus trees with various sapling undergrowth. Fabriano paper.

Large 24"x18" warm up sketch 20mins over abstract transparent doodles. This was a class demo while everyone was warming up. Starting very transparent then mix gouache into the wet washes.

Part III. Color Warm ups and example of sketch to larger color painting.

Gouache & Watercolor class Part II. (two images are from last year's class, the stormy cliff sketches and wide format gouache/wc image.

What a fantastic workshop last weekend up in Mendocino, California. There was 21 students who signed up and I tried to do as many demos as I could muster. We also had several hour sessions to sketch outside and take in nature. The focus of the class was to take these sketches and work on variation from memory in small warm up sketch paintings. Everyone was a good sport when some sprinkles rolled in. Wonderful work by everyone! Various sketches, photos of the area and workshop pictures to share.

Experimental composition with Prussian blue under painting and additions of India ink - pen work. Zinc white gouache was used to build up opaques. This is a hybrid of English and Dutch landscape influences from the 1600's to 1800's. (6x9 inches on Cold press W/C paper)

I will be going over techniques in my class this weekend on how to improve usability of outdoor rapid sketches and employing them in the studio for more elaborate small format paintings that capture complex lighting situations.

To mix things up a bit I wanted to share an oil study I made this summer on the east coast. Pretty small, 5x9 inches or so, linen mounted on wood panel with a middle warm gray ground. Rapid painting on location. I love the lush greens in Connecticut and all of New England for that matter. There was so much rain in June, that this was a rare moment to brave the elements and capture a small slice of nature.

Some recent sketchbook entries.... some of these are master studies for warm ups. Pen & ink work as well.


On another note I wanted to give folks interested a heads up for a Fall workshop:

Greetings Art Enthusiasts!
I wanted to let you all know about a special fall workshop I'm teaching at the Mendocino Art Center.
Their website: http://www.mendocinoartcenter.org/PSS_Cart.54.LassoApp?category=189&feature2=Fall
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September 12 - 13, 2009
INTERMEDIATE - ADVANCED GOUACHE AND WATERCOLOR PAINTING WORKSHOP
Erik Tiemens

Class begins Saturday, September 12th. Two day weekend workshop meets Saturday and Sunday, 9:30 am to 4:30 pm. Tuition: $180 (members may take a $25 discount on one workshop per year).

From the smallest thumbnail sketch to more finished works in the field, discover the importance of planning and seeing more options in your compositions, color palettes and tonal combinations before committing time on larger studio paintings. The workshop will go over techniques to previsualize your final idea and truly see the many options a location can inspire in a final painting. By combining the best of gouaches opaque-change friendly qualities with watercolors transparent subtlety, you can work more efficiently in capturing lighting, atmosphere and tonal information.

Material List Here: www.virtualgouacheland.blogspot.com

It's going to be inspiring to paint in Mendocino- I hope some of you can come!
Best, Erik

Today a stiff wind danced across a nearby coastal valley with rolling fog dissolving edges of this tree study. Sepia & burnt sienna watercolor washes with pen & ink on hot press Sennelier calligraphy paper - a nice lush vellum like surface.

Recent figure study in watercolor and gouache, with small additions of pen. 4"x6" hot press block.

This is inspired by Thomas Gainsborough's sketches that show his interest in Poussin, Hobbema, Ruisdael, Wijnants and others. Gainsborough primarily used Dutch principles of design (with a touch of Fragonard), to create a unique vision all his own. I find it wonderful that he would compulsively find bits of coal, lichen and even broccoli plants for trees and then add mud/dirt to create invented landscapes as a model to work from. This he would set up on a small wooden table in his studio under candle light.

-Erik

Developing compositions loosely with watercolor, gouache - Zinc white, with small additions of pastel and pen and ink on some of the drawings/paintings. Very rapid studies in the 4" - 6" range. Most of the work on Fabriano Ingres paper with a laid style of paper, along with Arches hot press 90lb paper.

Recent finished commissioned landscape painting. 45x60 inches - oils on linen support. I apologize for some of the glare in the photo.

Sketch book detail of a grove study. Experiments with higgins sepia ink with fountain black ink as well. Dip pen with tinted washes on Ingres paper (Fabriano Classic Artist's Journal). I was taking a look at some of Ruben's pen and ink and wash studies, sometimes with chalk, beyond mind blowing!

Limited palette Frisian landscape with gray gouache (Daler Rowney brand), in addition Rembrandt pastels mostly in the clouds and transparent sepia, umber watercolors for the foreground.... gray primed panel as the foundation.

Today I saw some work by Salomon van Ruysdael (1602-1670, Haarlem) and was struck how thin and translucent the large water themed landscape was painted. He was the uncle of Jacob van Ruisdael considered one of the greatest landscape painters and a huge influence on Turner.

Small experimental riverbank study from imagination (4"x4") in gouache & watercolor. Chinese white was used from a watercolor line, rather than gouache. This was painted on a clay based primed panel that has an absorbent watercolor paper quality to the surface. Gum arabic used in the darker passages to increase depth.