Evening in Hudson

We’re just back from an evening with the Hudson Artists, thanks to Marie-Eve Lauzier who invited us out to give a demo for the group.

They have an active community of around 75 artists doing workshops, paintouts and group shows year round.

It was a fun night, getting to know our neighbors out west. Hudson seems like a very paintable town. You’ll find scenic views of the water, parks and old houses. They’re also conveniently situated across from Oka National Park, a short jaunt by ferry.

My demo was done from a snapshot taken on our recent trip to Florida. But honestly, as we’re just back from painting dozens of these views, it was from memory more than anything. My main goals in about an hour of talking and painting were to show the simultaneous Larger-to-Smaller, Light-to-Dark and Wet-to-Dry progress of a watercolor.

This kind of painting is something I’m calling Big Brush : Small Brush. That is, the whole sheet worked over with a #14 round, and left to dry. Then the details touched in on top with a #2 rigger. I did touch a few things in the treeline with a #6 round. But really, you could do it all with the #14, it just calls for slowing down a bit and a light touch on the point.

I start with what I call The Three Big Shapes. Sky and Ground (in this case Water), and ‘Everything Else’. The treeline, and all the boats and docks are simply left as a single negative shape at first, then in the second half of the painting, I come back into that long horizontal landscape, and create the shadows, masts, piers and other details that turn it into a marina.

Here’s an older post on the same theory of painting, that I started playing with back in Rio de Janeiro.