#30×30, 2025, Day 05: Opaque Watercolors!
Ok! Finally some painting in the studio with my new home-made Gouache set!
This is one of a series of 4×4″ on 140lb cold press paper, with my gouaches, using this ‘comber’ brush from Rosemary and Co. As you can see, the brush is a kind of ‘rake’ that does a really great job creating texture.
Here; some close-up’s of the mark-making. I intended to do more mixing of opaque and transparent watercolor, but I ended up just painting directly with the gouache. I’m to impatient to do layering!
When I paint this kind of subject in oils, I mix the oil with calcium carbonate to enhance the impasto. This is similar to adding the kaolin to watercolor to make gouache, but not anywhere near as stiff.
Of course, I’m pushing the oil around with an actual knife, and I’m using a sable brush here. Still – the feeling is very reminiscent of my oil painting, but with all of the simplicity of a watercolor kit, and of course – the fast drying. With my limited experience, the gouache seems to dry much faster than watercolor, because you’re not soaking the paper. (Unless you wanted to! No reason not to pre-wet, except that I like to paint wet-on-dry to control my edges).
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Here’s a second study, trying to keep up the impasto. And push the scale of the marks.
At this scale (4×4″) the texture of the paper is very noticeable, and the relative dryness of the gouache (as compared to watercolor) give you really terrific dragging effects.
Actually the whole nature of gouache is so much dryer, there is the added benefit of not needing to use top quality paper. It doesn’t really matter how good the sizing is or how well the cotton fibers absorb – because it’s not really wet-in-wet.
So, that’s one thing – you’re spending more on paint, but you can save on paper :) I’m glad to be able to use up a lot of 140lb paper that I have on my shelves, and keep my good 200 and 300lb for watercolors.
Detail shots! This kind of texture is hard to get in a full-sized work. On a wall sized panel, you might need an intentionally roughened surface, like a textured primer. I have had a few accidental successes in oils where I painted over top of an old painting – even after power-sanding, its an *extremely* coarse surface and can look a bit like this at 24 or 30 inches.
Perhaps with this gouache, it’s time to try out a really rough paper! I don’t usually use rough-surface paper – but I might have a few sheets in storage.
Hmmmmmm.
#30×30, 2025, Day 04: Notan!
Trying something different today!
‘Notan’ is a Japanese term that might be be translated as ‘Dark/Light Balance’. It’s a principle, more than a specific kind of artwork, in which the dark and the light elements in an image are in harmonious balance. So it applies to drawing and painting, but it can also be a guiding principle in film or photography or anything really – even architecture or garden design.
I’m still doing miniatures watercolors (+ white gouache) – but what I actually did first was a few pages of 2×2″ thumbnails, and enlarged my six favorites to a *gigantic* 5×5″. Hah! It actually feels spacious after 4×4″
I want to do a few more and choose a few to work up as ‘wall sizes’. Maybe I’ll get one done before the end of the month!
My thumbnails are, of course, just pencil doodles. What I *should* have done, if I really wanted to be doing Notan, is black and white watercolor / gouache. Ideally you want to be visualizing entirely in ‘optical weight’ rather than in line.
But to be honest, I could see what I wanted so I skipped ahead to save time.
So yes, this is a 180 from my colorful watercolors – but I do like to switch it up :) Doing something completely different is a way to reset your thinking.
Sometimes when working plein-air or from a photo, I feel like an organic camera. I don’t need to think when I’m painting on location; it can be a completely automatic eye-to-hand translation. I can listen to a podcast, or hold a (casual) conversation, I don’t need 100% of my brain to paint. (Good thing hey? Nyuk nyuk!)
What I wanted to do with these is INTENTIONALLY DESIGN the image. PLAN the thing as an abstract shape, rather than a reactive kind of ‘paint what you see’ study.
Because really, you need to be re-designing what what you see in every painting.
So yes! For my fellow attention deficit folks – you don’t have to finish a series before you start the next thing :) You can have multiple series going in parallel :)
That’s what I love about the #30×30 marathon. It’s kind of my ‘laboratory’ where I try things out.
I have done this Notan>to>Painting approach before; back in 2019 I did the whole marathon this way.
My prep was done digitally back then – I used a little 8″ iPad mini to make the sketches in ProCreate, just using my finger becuase the original mini doesn’t support the apple pencil. A really fun way to sketch! Digital is the ultimate in flexibility really. Talk about the perfect mix of opaque and transparent.
Ok! So that’s Day Four. Things are taking off! Stuff is happening!
I hope your own marathons are off to a big start.
If you haven’t checked out our co-founder Uma’s new ‘sharing space’, please head over to the Vivify Pod; #30×30 Direct Watercolor 2025 and start posting and sharing! We will all benefit from the community building!
~m
Flashback to my warmup day – taking out my new kit of gouache. This was from before the official start – I’m kind of just wandering around the city, testing my new paints, and thinking about what I want to do #30×30.
These ones are from Square St-Louis, just off the Sherbrooke Metro.
Sorry this first one is a bit of a disaster :)
One of my goals this year is learning to mix the opaque and transparent watercolor in one painting, and use the strengths of both.
This is not that! Hah!
A bit of a disaster – but I did enjoy the day :) We are getting a lot of rain this spring so you need to get out whenever you’re offered a chance!
Clearly; these sketches have very little to do with what’s actually in front of me :)
I’ve never really been any good at perspective and I’m getting more and more impatient with drawing accurately as I get older. Nothing wrong with that! We get good at what we like. Drawing takes energy and attention, and there’s no point spending it on something you aren’t engaged with.
I was mostly just chatting with a friend, and playing with the color – just being outside on a beautiful spring day. So these are kind of cartoons, or caricatures I suppose.
I can feel the potential of adding opaque paints to the toolkit – but I’m also just flailing around right now. But that’s how it goes if you’re painting every day; sometimes you’re not sure if you accomplished anything. You need to just keep showing up for the work and see where it takes you!
#30×30, 2025, Day 02: More 4″ Mini’s!
You can see how working small is the ultimate trick :)
You could probably do all thirty in a day if you felt like it. Now of course – I’m not going to JUST do miniatures. But I’m having fun and feeling the annual rust flaking off :)
I am using photos (mostly videos) for inspiration, but I’m doing a lot of interpretation; just as you would in real life of course. That’s the beauty of these landscapes; they’re really abstractions.
In no particular order here’s some random thoughts about painting from found images online:
I’ve had the great fortune to do a lot of travelling and painting, but I’ll never have the time and money to go everywhere I’d like to. Plus we’re getting older. This is a way I can travel the world.
When I look at my paintings on the wall, I honestly feel like I’ve been to that place. (Even if I haven’t).
These paintings are not *just* copies of someone’s photographs. I don’t have any artistic embarrassment about using found photos. After I’m done, it’s a transformative work, created in my own style from a spark of inspiration.
Transformative work is completely fair game under copyright laws. Nobody wholly owns the earth, and nobody can say an artist cannot use their eyes to look, and their skills to create. Frankly (and you might not like this) the AI companies are about to radically expand the legal precedent for transformative work – I bet it happens this year. Certainly with in the next five.
Plus; my paintings don’t reduce the value of a found photo or video. To be brutally honest – I’m not exactly selling a lot of landscape painting. So I’m not taking anyone’s lunch money. And even if I was (or will be someday?) my paintings are not diverting sales that would otherwise go to the travel ‘grammers. They’re not, by and large, in the business of selling art.
If anything, I could theoretically send them *more* traffic if I were winning prizes or publishing books, and that is what they really want.
We’ll cross that bridge when and if we come to it.
And finally – I don’t look for great photographers. (Anymore. There was I time I did) I’ve come to feel; if you use a professional shot, they’ve already made all the decisions about color and composition. More often I’m screenshotting blurry videos with pretty young travel influencer in the foreground, and I’m just using the little bit you can see over their shoulder :)
I feel like If you started with Ansel Adams, you might be tempted to be less transformational :)
I admit: working from found reference *can* get a little boring, so you should still paint from real life as often as you possible. Your eyes have a greater range of color than a screen. I think you need a fair bit of real-world experience to get the most out of reference material.
Plus, it’s just more fun to be outside. The natural time limit of moving light and weather make things more exciting. Painting outdoors is a sport. Painting inside is a craft.
Random note: Sometimes the one you hate at the time grows on you.
Initially I felt this cliff was a dud – mostly because it doesn’t have the ‘far horizon’ that I love. But something about the massive cliff right in your face is growing on me.
It’s more abstract! This could become a great painting if executed with plenty of texture.
But I definitely don’t like this one! I don’t want to look at my paintings and see a wall of identical images – (that would be boring) but I *do* love a high horizon, and converging lines moving inward into the space. Whenever I break my own compositional habits I’m less happy with the whole thing. Maybe this one will also grow on me later.
A neat exercise would be to take one photo and do three, five, twelve versions of the same concept. To show yourself how many different ways you can paint the same thing – starting palette, the design, accidents of direct painting – every time you did it, it could be a different painting.
When you work from photos, do whatever you can to be *actually* working from imagination.
Use bad photos; look at them small on your phone; edit the color balance or temperature; change the season in your mind; work fast; work tiny; work huge; paint from black and white; do a line drawing from the photo and paint from your thumbnail – use any tricks you can think of to decrease the domination of the reference and foreground your personal choices.
OK! thanks for listening to all my rambling. I think this mental meandering is half of the reason I do #30x30DirectWatercolor :)
~m
#30×30, 2025, Day 01: Out of the Gates!
Hey hey! So it begins again! Thirty days of Watercolor! (or whatever :) The annual challenge; can I do anything besides eating and sleeping for thirty days in a row? I don’t know! Lets find out!
So: #30x30DirectWatercolor > Why did we start this thing in the first place?
I am VERY easily distracted, and VERY easily addicted to pointless things; doom scrolling, video games, you know – distractions.
I’m always looking for ways to trick my brain to stay on track; to be temporarily addicted to painting, instead of something less productive. (?) Whatever that means :) Winter always does me in – I think I have seasonal affective disorder. My productivity plummets every Nov/Dec and doesn’t pick up again till March/April.
So this is my annual fresh start for the upcoming summer :)
Here are some tips I’m going to be employing this year:
- Work small: These studies are 4×4″. I love the speed of working small, and the ease of working on more than one piece at a time. (I drew three-up at the same time using some offcuts I had lying around). Watercolor is very suited to working fast (faster you go, the more the color mixes on the paper) and multi-tasking (switch paintings while one dries).
Also; a small footprint allows you to; - Leave your workstation set up: You need a space, anywhere you can leave your stuff laying out, so you can walk up to your desk, blast down a painting, and just get up and walk away. This is how you do one before work, and three before bed, and not be blocked by the friction of getting your paints out or the time-debt of cleaning up at the end of the night.
In the past I’ve put a tiny desk in a closet, used a workbench in a garage, moved a bookshelf shelf three out from the a wall to make a hidden room. These days we just don’t have a dining room. That’s my studio instead.
- Work in series: If you can stick to a theme you can just keep rolling; instead of having to think of a new idea. Again – less friction – less thinking in between you and the next piece.
- Always be looking, Always be archiving: I do a lot of phone scrolling (don’t we all?) These landscapes are mostly based on travel influencers videos. (I take a lot of random screenshots). When you’re going around your city you can be continually snapping compositions. The real trick is: Don’t just save to your camera roll. Actively sort things into folders. Stay on top of your reference. Don’t ever be searching for inspiration. It should be patiently waiting for you.
- Have big plans: Part of the motivation here is just warming up with watercolor, and part is just showing off online (hey its motivation!) but also; I’m doing these 4×4″s now, with the hopes of enlarging the best ones later. Look at them small, and imagine them wall sized!
One of my medium term goals is developing a way to keep my mark making consistent in scale from 4 inches, up to 4 feet.
OK! Starting this thing off with a bang! I hope to see you guys over on Vivify – I’ll head over there now and cross post this stuff :)
Hey everyone!
So: #30×30 begins in two weeks! 30 paintings in 30 days in the month of June!
I’ve been setting up a new plein-air kit, in anticipation for the spring weather in Montreal. We’ve already had our first great days of the season.
This is my first crack at *home made gouache!*
Apologies to everyone who will ask, but these colors here are somewhat random:) I don’t expect to stick with this palette. Right now, it’s just whatever pigments I had in stock.
Two years back, I first tried making my own watercolor, and I’ve been meaning to try the opaque variation for a while now.
I start with my own hand-mixed watercolor; made with powdered pigment, water, some glycerin, and gum arabic as the binder. [ Recipe Here ] The new step is cutting the finished honey-like watercolor between 1:1 and 1:2 with Kaolin (or aluminum silicate) Powder. You are aiming for a final mix somewhat like cake icing or toothpaste. Kaolin is the ‘colorless’ additive that makes the watercolor opaque. It’s somewhat amazing that it doesn’t change the color of the pigments, only the opacity, and giving it a noticeable matte finish.
Now you have gouache!
It’s worth noting: gouache is somewhat fragile, much like a pastel painting. Many people will spray a varnish, or even use cold wax as a final finish.
This stuff can be used just like watercolor (diluted in washes), or picked up like an impasto and painted directly, or blended on the palette into new colors. You can work over top immediately, and alter what has gone down already. It dries fast, like an acrylic, but unlike acrylic is NOT waterproof – so it can be blended with water (or more paint) later, which can make a soft edge; or a mess! Depending!
So many new possibilities for trial by error :) My favorite way to learn!
Anyway what I’m really saying is; I hope some of you will be coming back for the eight year of #30x30DirectWatercolor!
Here’s the rest of my ‘warmup’ day in Parc LaFontaine :)
This one was ‘normal’ watercolor. My first outdoor sketch of the season – I’m very rusty! I don’t know why but I give up on watercolor over the winter. This upcoming year I’m going to do something different so this doesn’t keep happening :)
Obliterating some pretty washes with some ugly gouache :) I hope I get the hang of this soon :) :) A little embarrassing! I wish I could be at Pozan to take Uma’s watercolor class :)
The best I can say is: I’m trying to be fearless :)
At the bottom there, by the way, is the kind of ‘drawing’ I’m doing lately – if you can call that a drawing. I feel some what of a faker every time I say Direct Watercolor because I’ve slid back from the bleeding edge of brush-on-pure-white-paper.
I’m hoping that by learning to effectively blend Gouache and Watercolor I can get back to the purity of complete directness.
Ok, – that’s it for tonight – see you soon!
Hey everyone! I expect some of you have been thinking about #30x30DirectWatercolor – and YES! It’s absolutely on for 2025!
This is will be the eighth year and I definitely want to keep it going. I feel, more than ever that the first-hand experience of a thirty-day marathon is valuable. This is the artist’s retreat, the travel workshop, or the mentorship that you’ve always wanted, but it’s free! and full of people who are here for the love of art! What could be better!
The big news this year is: we’re making a long anticipated move to Uma’s new social media site, Vivify.ai.
Some of you might not know, in addition to being an amazing artist and the co-founder of #30×30, Uma is also the founder of a tech platform for artists and art-instructors, Vivify.ai.
Vivify is perfect for our little art project. It allows sharing and commenting of images in a private online space, free of any ads, or algorithms controlling what you see. It’s perfect for the kind of community we are building. Global social networks are not created as tools for you to use. They exist to monopolize our time and our attention. In our Vivify Pod, there’s nothing in the way of the art, and the interaction.
You’ll be able to easily see everyone’s work in one place, and exchange comments and inspiration with everyone doing the marathon – everything we used to do in Facebook – but now it’s Uma’s own creation!
So please head over to the Vivify Pod; #30×30 Direct Watercolor 2025 whenever you have a chance. (A ‘pod’ is what they call a shared space on Vivify:) You can use your existing google profile with ‘one click’, or create a new Vivify account and password. Just hit the yellow button in the lower right corner to get started.
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Of course, I’ll still be blogging here, and we still encourage you to share on your personal socials. None of this is required to do the marathon. But we are very excited about this move to our own little slice of the internet!
Thanks everyone! The painting begins soon!
~Marc
#OneWeek100People, Day 05, 2025
Thanks everyone who participated! I hope y’all had a great time, I hope y’all did some drawings you’re excited about, and I hope you spent some time sketching with friends!
Next year will be the TENTH YEAR of #OneWeek100People! I’m really shocked to think about that :)
I’m going to have to think of something significant to do to mark that milestone.
Sometime before I die; I’m going to do 500 in a week; 100 a day for my self imposed five day week. That’s my crazy promise :) Maybe Year Ten will be the year! Keep in touch and let’s keep inspired for next year :)
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But wait! We’ll see you sooner than that!
Because it’s 30×30 in June! which is coming up sooner than you think! Mark your calendar if you want to run a REAL marathon with me!
Are you ready for One Painting a Day? Thirty Paintings in the Month of June?
I have done a lot of wandering in my time :) because that is how my brain works :) but this year it’s absolutely a watercolor year! I’m excited about some new ideas for watermedia – so we’ll see you then? Hope you’ll join us!
Bonus Day! #OneWeek100People 2025 : Day 04
It’s always great when you finish your 100 and you can goof around for the rest of the marathon :)
I was looking around for fun things to draw, and found this exhibition Dressing up History at the McCord Stewart museum. It’s a collection of historic costumes, made in the late 1800’s, and worn at lavish costume balls held in Montreal.
I couldn’t help but think of Ophelia, looking at the dress laid out on the table.
I suppose this isn’t really ‘people drawing’ – as they’re just garments hanging on frames. A true urban Sketcher wouldn’t be allowed to take liberties with all these headless dressmakers dummies! They believe you must report what you see faithfully. (And I respect them for their dedication! But today I’m just having fun :)
I always find museum lighting so dramatic. Even the museum thinks it’s a little spooky. Every few minutes the lights would go out in the main hall, and they’d play music and project dancing ghosts on the walls.
Both these dresses reminded me of famous headless ladies. Maybe Anne Boleyn, and a girlish Marie Antoinette :)
Just as a side note for the artists out there; these were done on a cheap art-store house-brand sketchbook paper (unlike my real 100, which I did on small offcuts of cotton rag, in an effort to reduce the pile of paper scraps I have in the back room :)
As a result, I had to punch up the faded, washy colors, and tweak the contrast in photoshop – and even go back and do accents in India ink.
Back in the old days, I used to be plagued by watercolors being too pale. This can happen for a lot of reasons. Being too cheap to put out fresh paint each day. Using too much water. But also, it’s just the nature of sketchbook paper.
When cellulose paper has a lot of sizing, the color floats on top, rather than absorbing into the paper. This stops your sketchbook from getting soggy, and cuts down wrinkling (somewhat), but it can cause aggressive bleeding and/or hard edged puddles. Both of which you can see in these sketches today.
Back when I did a lot of sketchbooking, I was tuned up for this kind of sized-cellulose paper. I actually preferred it for many years. Today, I was really struggling! I’ve lost the instinct for it! Though, it’s already coming back. Ophelia was the last sketch of the day, and it mostly came out the way I wanted it.
But I did have three total failures which I had to tear up! I always rip up a truly bad painting :) It’s very gratifying :)
So for what it’s worth – that’s why some people choose a paper, and a brand of paints, and never never change what they use! For sure you should never go back to student grade :)
OneWeek100People, 2025 Day 03
Come on right? The light on that bike rack was like being in a Christopher Nolan movie. I do this marathon every year to remind myself what I love about street sketching.
Keep moving and make your own luck.
Only time and patience will give you the gems.
So ok – I painted this one from a phone snap. (I’m way to honest for my own good! But I have to tell it like it is). Does that put the lie to what I’m saying? If I stood in the snowbank and painted it, would it be any different? It might have been MORE spontaneous :) It’s true. But I feel, in this case, I’m no different from a street photographer – except I develop my pictures in watercolor instead of lightroom.
Less is more! Some of my personal favorites are the simple silhouettes. There’s almost no technique to it. Just let the puddles merge in the shape, and wait just long enough to touch in some shadow.
If you stay with the same pigments year after year you’ll learn how far they float, and when is the right amount of dampness to try charging into a shape.
That one smiling fella was getting some great news on his phone. It’s a lot of fun trying to find good poses when nobody is doing anything. I snapped his pic because he was too good to pass up.
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So I’m not going to show you the rest of the 100; I don’t want to bore you or embarrass myself with the bad ones. Let’s say it was very easy cut it down to the best third. Keep that in mind! if you do 100 drawings, your best 10, or your best 36 in this case, are going to look a LOT better than the whole pile.
It’s good for your morale to tear up half of what you do! When you look back on it later you’re much happier :)
Hope you’ve been doing the marathon too hey? Feel free to drop me a comment with your links! Maybe I’ll see you on Instagram? I’m off Facebook for Lent this year. Please keep using the hashtag so we can find each other!
Citizen Sketcher 