Wonderful World of Watercolor

Ron & Sandy Ridley are showing 29 of the watercolor paintings at the West Sacramento Community Center Gallery at 1074 West Capitol Ave., West Sacramento, CA 95691 from Monday through Saturday starting June 25th, 2012 and ending August 5th, 2012.

Composition - Making Your Own World

I have studied many books, DVD's and gone to workshops on How to paint Landscapes, Seascapes, Cityscape, Flowers, Still Life and more. I have come to the conclusion that they all have a central them. What you see with your eye in real life or what you see in a photo change to changed to look better to you in your painting. One common practice is to use three different photos instead of just one. Pick different objects that get your interest. Decide on which one will play the leading role in your story. Make it either larger or brighter or in some way stand out more. Have a support character that will lead your eye to the main object. Then, you can have the smallest object that gives your painting balance and support. For example, a Rose can be a leading character with two other roses of decreasing size. The stem and leaves can be supporting characters that leads your eye to the rose bud. A fallen paddle on a table top is small and can give your painting balance with a slight contrast. Try to make your subjects look three dimensional. In other words, use shading on the edges and shadows underneath and on the sides. This is one of the reasons some people do black and white tonal sketches to plan out a painting. They look for shapes and differences in dark and light. Some times they point and arrow down at a 45 degree angle from the upper left and corner or right hand corner to keep themselves focused on the direction of light (SUN) and where the dark sides should be (like on a tree) and where the shadows should fall (away from the SUN). A good exercise is to find paintings you like in books, in magazines, on the interest, in museums and ask yourself what you like about them. Is it the shapes, the colors, the subject ? Take notes and sketches telling yourself what you like and how you might do it in a different media like from oil to watercolor. Make notes on how you would do them different. Let these great works of art give you ideas on what series of paintings you can work on. Make objects in ceramics, wood or stone sculpture (like soap stone or alabaster). Use your 3D objects with photos of the living objects for reference. I did this for a watercolor workshop I taught on "How to Paint Koi fish in Watercolor" and "How to Paint Sea Turtles in Watercolor". The possibilities are endless.
Fraternally,
Ron Ridley
Ridley Art Studio
Elk Grove, CA

Ron Ridley Watercolors

Hello fellow Watercolor Artists,

You can see this watercolor tip video by searching through Google for You Tube and then search for Ron Ridley Watercolors.

Sincerely,

Ron Ridley
Ridley Art Studio
Elk Grove, CA