Watercolor painting: imaginative designs with Alex Ross

[Music] [Music] here is Mr Alex Ross whose work has won numerous Awards throughout the world and whose paintings hang in many of our foremost museums and galleries here in his Studio Mr Ross will tell us about his philosophy and approach to art as he demonstrates some of the techniques he uses in the watercolor medium my work has changed greatly over the years I've heard it from many people and uh one of the uh the things that I've become quite enamored of in recent years is watercolor I'm known as one of the big brush users uh I like big brushes I think they're great for putting down a statement quickly and uh uh you get a chance to work Broad and quickly and uh these days I I feel like I have to work quickly I've got a lot of things to say and this is the quickest way for me to say it one of my favorite AIDS is uh a little hair blower that I keep handy it just adds to my uh own particular technique I do occasional portraits which uh require a little more attention to detail uh I don't do as many of them as I used to um I tried even in those days to to make my things as full of uh the abstract uh give it a great deal of abstract design as much as possible people often ask me uh how do you begin a painting well you know this is one of the most difficult things for an artist to answer I find that um looking through art books gives me a great deal of inspiration I particularly love matis I think he's a great colorist of course I'm particularly interested in color and uh I begin Often by looking into the works of some of our more famous painters and picking up a favorite color scheme and uh from that get some inspiration to begin a painting of my own uh this is not an easy thing to do all the time to find inspiration for your work but what I do is is borrow inspiration from the color blocking off a a picture to work for composition is important and the and the color sketches are tremendously important I know pretty well what I'm going to do uh before I uh start my painting one of the uh things that I find helpful to me in in working is not to overload my palette with paint by that I mean I don't have a formal color Arrangement I'm not particularly interested in in careful blending I find that uh rather dull I've been all through that and I'm more interested in the powerful statement I find that isolating color and letting it Stand Out by itself means more to me than technical blending and Technical tricks my pallet is uh rather undisciplined at times I might say if it just happens that I want a a big dab of ultramarine on my pallet I I quickly put it down and Tred to eliminate all disturbing color from the area I think that I work rather quickly and I think it's good uh putting uh your watercolor statements down fast is the proper way to do it and that's the real beauty of watercolor to get the real character of it to work for you I find that uh important when I'm doing a picture to occasionally introduce a very bright spot of color this appeals to me I like to use color as in intelligently as as I know how I think color is so so beautiful it has to be treated almost like a symphony but it must be a symphony of of Harmony chaotic color is extremely disturbing to me and I I try to watch that carefully that this doesn't happen I also find kind of important to U keep changing water and uh I usually keep two or three clean pallets uh nearby so that in case I want to quickly change color I can uh use it to the best Advantage so that it doesn't become involved with other colors of course when I'm mixing colors uh like a blue and a yellow or a blue and a red naturally we we have to have more than the one color on there smaller brushes of course are also necessary in certain areas and but I find most of the time that I'm working with a big brush there's a great um satisfaction in in uh in seeing your color come to the point where it's just right very quickly without uh mixing too long as in oil painting uh in a very short space of time you have arrived at your exact uh intensity of color I believe in painting watercolor with with a great deal of Vitality I uh my shapes have to be forceful and uh I have to find that in my work and I keep searching for it and it's tremendous L important to me composition of abstract is somewhat difficult to explain it's a a sense a feeling you have for for the dramatic for the play of one strong area against another but of course I try to emphasize the abstract qualities of the picture but I work very high key uh in most areas um uh light values I still want my wall up of color in there I'm not interested in anymore in in precise drawing I think that's incidental that I'm trying to make color really dramatic by giving it a stage in which to work see and I feel the stage is better if it's uh light instead of dark see maybe that's what I'm trying to do I get a lot of inspiration from old photographs this is a very easy way I would would say to to do a painting by maybe taking an obvious subject and try to make it maybe unobvious by eliminating the obvious or at least deemphasizing the obvious and uh placing great emphasis on unimportant detail such as Shadows sometimes or or Reflections even you know and uh to me this kind of does something that uh takes it away from the ordinary we're so used to seeing objects that are very familiar to us and uh uh one way to make your painting kind of Stand Out is is to uh uh introduce this idea of deemphasizing the important I spend a great deal of time on preliminary work doing pencils first of all and uh when I'm satisfied with my general composition in line I begin to uh follow that up by introducing areas of Mass uh after which uh when I'm satisfied with that I make some color sketches of the whole composition they again are quite rough uh very little detail in them but enough to give me a a general idea as to uh what I want to see in my finished painting now color sketches are very important to me after making U one color sketch and then another and then another it becomes increasingly difficult to uh make your final selection but the reason for all these color sketches is to uh be constantly searching for something that that's new hasn't been done before and uh is pleasing to your eye to your color sense then I draw on my finished surface very lightly I don't like the pencil or drawing Implement to interfere too strongly with my work in fact I put it on just light enough to be able to see it and uh from that point on it just f Fades into the background with my color over it uh one of the important things about watercolor painting is is predetermining your actions before you don't have to worry too much about that in oil painting but in watercolor you really do you have to think it out acrylic paints unlike uh traditional watercolor paints uh have qualities about them that are very interesting and uh for most of us they offer very distinct advantages acrylic paint is tremendously exciting to work with uh there's uh qualities about acrylics that traditional waterolor paint does not have such as you could place a very bright color of deep value you could start painting with that and I often do this but uh the point is that you can get some of your very strong passages in first rather than the way I work when I'm working in traditional watercolor where you're like to paint on a heavy passage and then if you were to go over it with water it would disturb it but acrylics have dry almost immediately and this is the the great Advantage I'm talking about the reason I um sometimes draw with my brush instead of uh painting you might say I'll begin to draw small areas with acrylic and when that dries I have that the outline of this particular passage nailed down and that allows me then uh to sweep large washes without disturbing this acrylic which has dried I don't always use large brushes I occasionally use a small brush and uh there's reasons for this too but as I said before uh that's not as important is getting your large areas in quickly and uh with purpose making a strong statement I like to work uh Broad and freely I feel little need to uh be preoccupied with blending of color I think that most of my the excitement I'm after comes in in bold statements that uh uh have little to do with pretty blending I like to use uh the corner of a brush sometimes because uh I can quickly from that corner go into a a large slice you know I can just put down a huge stroke uh and this is important sometimes so the very uh intensity with which you paint sometimes almost demands a uh this kind of an application ordinarily I find it much more advantageous to get down as quickly as possible a feeling of the picture and that means I work maybe all over it I I rarely just do one small bit and and try to finish that that off in fact I don't even Rec call it having done it that way uh it's important to me to to try to capture the dramatic qualities of the picture as quickly as possible and of course this is one of the beautiful things about watercolor you can do it that way I like to work my color cleanly as possible I keep playing with the darks against whites and uh I study my work from time to time and I don't think any artist feels that he can uh completely uh tackle every part of his painting with complete Assurance at every moment he has to stop and think about it I find that a hard surface is difficult to work on with watercolor because it won't dry immediately it doesn't have that absorbent surface that uh say paper does but uh I make up for that I bring out my trusty little hair dryer and uh go to work on it generally when I'm beginning of painting these days I I like to feel that um what I'm doing is not the obvious in fact I rather like to deemphasize the obvious and emphasize the the Lesser important details I I think in this way I defeat the expectation that everyone has of of seeing a very familiar object dramatized and made rather Ordinary by this treatment I feel that what I'm searching for in my work is a a kind of a u a poetic uh lyricism you might say where I operate somewhere between uh a dreamlike feeling and reality uh somewhere between realism and abstraction a clean pallet is um really quite important I feel that uh acrylics especially do a pretty messy job on your palette and uh if you don't keep it clean the little um particles of paint dry and get in your brush and uh and more or less file up your washes so you really have to keep a very clean palette using acrylics a knife is important uh for mixing I often use that and uh and of course my big brushes are of prime importance to me I I find that when I'm putting in a big juicy wash I just have to have a big brush and it would uh inhibit me to use anything uh as small as a say a number seven brush a/ inch brush or something using large brushes would have scared me at one time now I really enjoy them I feel that uh a good sized paintbrush is a absolutely essential to doing a a strong watercolor the resist surface is marvelous for accidental effects knowing when to uh stop is one of the important things about using the resist surface you can U put in a large wash uh and uh the resulting effect is uh always interesting it's completely different than if you're using paper when I'm painting I I kind of keep generally trying to think in an abstract manner in spite of the fact that my subject matter is representational I love the feeling that uh there's abstract forces at work and uh I lean very strongly in that direction generally speaking I don't recommend going over a watercolor but in this case it's almost necessary to occasionally uh repeat a stroke but there's no question about you get some marvelous watercolor effects on this particular board I like to work on a load table and uh on a flat surface and if there's anything uh important like I want to color or wash or run in a certain direction I just tip my board hold it up in an angle and uh let the water do the work this is very important in a watercolor to allow your liquid medium that's what it really is to to do a lot of your work for you I have no desire to make a a minimal statement where very little is being said I still like a lot of uh content in my picture but I'm very uh interested in keeping it uh on the light side while the paper's still wet I often introduce some perhaps delicate passages that uh that create interest and variety to the picture I'd like to take a common or ordinary subject like boats or any familiar object and try to lose them in what you might call unimportant detail taking the obvious and making it unobvious you might say or take a shadow for instance of an object and make the uh the object itself very unimportant and perhaps make the shadow far more important in that way you lead yourself into abstraction where ordinarily you would find it difficult uh it's not the easiest thing to to try to abstract eyes if that's a proper word to use there uh realistic objects without becoming involved in in trickery in this particular painting I felt that it was important to choose a a couple of small areas and really wall up them with color give them a powerful shot in the arm so to speak and um this becomes important by isolating these very bright uh color spots um if I were to use for instance uh orange as I'm doing here uh spread that color all over it would lose the dramatic effect that uh I've attained by isolating it and keeping it in the company of very strong deep values such as the uh dark greens and dark Blues around it I generally Reserve any small detail as a kind of the last stage of my painting because once I see what the the general overall dramatic effect is I feel that I've won my game so to speak so any additional small detail is uh is just icing on the cake I like to work uh when I'm feeling good and that wouldn't matter whether it's 5:00 in the morning or 6:00 at night I don't like for me to work under artificial light and I avoid that as much as possible I find that uh having spent so many years at painting that I have less desire now to to do the very obvious realistic pieces uh there's lots of people who are involved in realism and and I think there's another world beyond that I think there's a world of uh well you might almost call it mysticism it's a dreamlike world where we have our dreams you know and after all they're important and I think that catching some of that is important to me you know and uh there's more to it than that you know there there is realism and we have to realize there is but there's also this dreamlike thing there's this other world uh that I think that we we can uh Wander about and think about and and even try to [Music] paint [Music] for