Home of Midwest Artist H Wells Walfoort

An Introduction to Individualized Art Instruction by H Wells Walfoort

I'd like to pass on painting information that I have gathered over the years to painters of all ages and experience.

The concept here is to come up with a wash for watercolor work that can be replenished with a consistent concentration of colorant when replacement is needed.

Items needed are a weighing scale, measuring in grams or ounces, with a capacity of about 500 grams or so and an eye dropper to dilute the solution accurately. Pre-weigh or measure the water needed so a small amount can be added to the jar before weighing in the pigment, to prevent the pigment from sticking to the bottom of the jar. Tiny amounts of the pigment can be "doctored" off the tube with a toothpick or spatula to get just the right amount in. When using Cobalt Blue, (as I do in my Cathedral paintings below), for a background wash, you would use about 34 grams (about 2 ounces) of pigment per 500 grams (about 8 fluid ounces of water).

Add in the rest of the pre-weighed or measured water, cap the jar and shake it until the pigment is thoroughly dissolved. Prior to subsequent use, shake the jar until the pigment is completely brought up off the bottom of the jar.

It should be noted here, that from a standpoint of durability and light-fastness, pigments are the best choice for watercolors over dyes. The flipside is that the dyes, although less durable are more highly soluble and more transparent than the pigments.

The pigments will quickly settle out of solution and will have to be shaken from time to time to maintain a consistent concentration.

In my Cathedral paintings, I spray the entire picture with water, then quickly brush on the colorant wash here and there over the entire painting.

Prior to brushing the wash on, be sure the brush is kept wet with water. Dip the brush into the water, then bleed off the excess water by touching the tip of the brush on some paper towelling. Work very fast and bring up a small amount of solution onto the tip of the brush. By the way, a little colorant on the brush goes a very long way, as I have painfully found. Leave desired hard edges on the painting at the edges of the wash, but quickly rub out those edges that need to be soft with another slightly wet brush. For those not familiar with the term, "hard edges" are sharp delineations of color at the edges of an object, such as the edge of a building, whereas soft edges are vague such as between cloud edges and the sky. These two effects are very important in realistic painting, including the edge of a wash next to the white paper. These edges are generally "feathered" or made into diffuse edges.

Repeat the above procedure for the other washes to be used and keep in mind the effects of two or more washes overlapping each other.. For example, Magenta over a wet blue wash gives a lavender hue, red over yellow an orange color, etc. For mostly all other washes in my paintings, shown in this site, I just use Cadmium Orange, about 0.3 grams pigment per 100 water, Rose Madder Genuine at5.4 grams per 100 water and Windsor Green at 0.4 grams per 100 water. You can see the coloring strength, or tinctorial power , of the Cadmium Orange is the highest followed by green as evidenced by the small amounts needed to keep a constant coloring strength across the colors

Preparation for the Pencil Rendering. 

In preparation for the pencil rendering, I have drawn the composition free hand from life fairly successfully on occasion, but have resorted to cameras and optical projection for efficacy in a commercial environment, especially where realism plays a key role. Notice I use the term "rendering", rather than "sketching", to describe this type of basic drawing.

My process involves four stages. (1) composing the scene with a photograph (2) rendering the initial image that I have optically derived from my photograph by mechanical means. (3) conversion either by photo-lithography or computerized digitizing (4) printing on watercolor paper using black ink only.(5) hand coloring each individual print

The alternative process, most frequently used by most watercolorists, is to "sketch" the composition free hand, as a "cartoon" (a term used historically in fine art, not to be confused with "the funnies"), water coloring the cartoon,  then printing it in using some multi-color process.

 Photographic equipment  for the Pencil Rendering.

During the period of  1975 through 2003, I used a Canon AT-1 with Minolta Auto Electro-flash 32, Canon 56mm lens, Vivitar 28mm wide angle lens for pan shots, Vivitar 20 to 200mm zoom lens, a 2x Auto Tele-converter, Hoya 55mm light shield and  a Vivitar 55mm ultra-violet haze filter for the lens protection. I apologize for throwing all this in, but there still may be some non-digital people out there. 

So, the last year or so, I've been using a Canon digital Powershot S45 that interfaces with Adobe Photo Elements on a Dell Dimension XPS-T550MHz Pentium III. Windows was upgraded from 98 to XP and the microprocessor from 550MHz to 1.2GHz. My printer is an Epson Stylus CX5200 with a built in scanner. I selected Epson because they estimate, if I understand this correctly, a 25 year durability of their inks under normal, indoor exposure of the finished digital print. 

Optical Imaging of the Photographs: I have been using three methods of optical imaging. An opaque image  projector, Seerite, model TLP66 from Testrite Instrument Co, Inc, with a 6"x6" top loading stage. This is an old "Dinosaur" that requires tracing the image in a darkened room. The Kodak Carousel 650H projector works nicely for transparencies if you aren't using a digital camera. Now days, I find my Apollo Model Series 15,000, suits my needs the best for enlarging and tracing images from a 7-1/2"x8-1/2 stage under moderate lighting conditions. Other options are Kinko's services or if you are going to do a traditional print run, use a photo-lithographic service. Please e-mail for more information.  

 Creating the Artwork.

If you're painting "Plein Air", (that is French for painting on location), you might want to wait for further instruction. otherwise produce your photographic image and trace it onto your substrate (canvas, matboard, illustration board, etc.). This tracing works for large, paintings that will be one of a kind originals, but, they can, of course, be printed later. If I'm going simply reproduce, 8 x 10" copies, I'll do it digitally and this is another topic in itself. 

Otherwise, trace the image from a transparency or negative onto the substrate while projecting from either a carousel projector or an overhead projector as described  earlier. If you are tracing a very tall building photographed close up and want to get rid of the effect of vertical perspective (where the sides of the building slant inward from bottom to top), you can remove some of this perspective by tilting the projector, less than 90 degrees to the plane of the substrate you are tracing on. Removing too much, though can result in excessive distortion of the building.

To be continued soon, hopefully  June/2008.

For more information, inquire at 

hwellswalfoort@sallymariegallery.com