BOOK | FLIP THRU | Shirley Trevena | Breaking the rules of watercolour | Review and top tips
i’m going to do a flip through of
breaking the rules of watercolor by
shirley trevina
and at the end i’ll show you some
paintings that i’ve been working on
using the methods i found
in this book it’s a hard cover it’s
absolutely
beautiful quality the photography is
absolutely fabulous
this is her contents each chapter has a
point that she makes and then its
focuses on a particular painting
so starting with paint not pencil more
paint bigger paper
that’s a really great method in itself
more paint bigger paper
leaving my options open going for green
breaking the rules of perspective she
does that all the time so she doesn’t
just paint a vase and include the
ellipses of the bars she might
just cut it off and have the top of the
vases
a single line happy accidents painting a
sunny day creating a mood abstraction
she’s totally into
abstract mark making even she’s totally
in the semi-abstract zone i reckon
never use black taking desperate
measures to save a painting
revealing white paper and visual
surprises
i’ve got masses of um
this book
which is a good sign for me that i use
this sort of book
that i have referred to this book many
many times
it’s not really a book for beginners
it’s um
i reckon a sort of book that you might
want to come to
when you already have a good idea about
what you’re doing because the
concepts are pretty advanced and she’s
not into telling you
how to start but she does have really
good concepts in there as well about
finding shapes
um and what she does masses of is
repeater shape
this one starts with her um creating um
colors using pieces of paper she
shows you how she started with a
thumbnail
and the sort of patterns that she
incorporates
her paintings have got all these
wonderful surprises in and she talks
about that a little bit later
so you can see that she’s going through
the stages and
focusing in on bits of the painting each
chapter also starts with these
um detailed pictures which
are taken from one of her paintings
really unhelpful
for an artist it looks really beautiful
on first glance but
afterwards you know it’s it’s not at all
helpful because
really what she’s extraordinary at is
i’m just going to keep turning the poi
pages as i turn what she’s extraordinary
at is
um composition she turns
these subject matters of really everyday
stuff like
lemons and sunflowers into something
quite extraordinary
and it’s her composition that is what
sets her
apart from other artists uh
this is about the chinese pears that
she’s
created a painting on chinese pears and
then she talks about the objects that
she includes so
um that’s one of the things that i did
at the end
um that i’ll talk about at the end where
i’ve gathered some of my objects and
tried to incorporate them
into a still life work this book is
focuses
on still life but she actually does a
range of subject matter
uh going for greens this is all about
her the time that she lived in france
quite unhelpful for an artist unless you
get the opportunity to go to live in
france and since we’re in the covent era
i’m unlikely to ever go to france so
it’s really unhelpful
i do love this list here of tools though
including
a comb to make really unusual marks
and a bristle brush but a long
bristle brush like that one as well and
then lots of scratching tools she’s
totally into scratching
as well um this one is full of all these
beautiful green she uses a whole range
of green and then she comes in with a
a little smattering of um red but she
doesn’t always tell you why
the red is important so for example this
could be a chapter on why
uh the opposites in on the color wheel
work brilliantly together
red is opposite green that’s why that
red is shining but she’s not into
talking about color theory at
all more about france she loved living
in france
this is a pretty good chapter on
breaking the rules of perspective
and um she does that an awful lot so she
for example when she’s incorporating um
this beautiful jug
she’s not concerned with um
the ellipse that appears at the bottom
or the ellipse that appears at the
bottom
or how accurately she draws the handle
she’s not into that at
all she’s into making a shape fit
her purposes which is why i reckon she
is completely
about um composition and really
she doesn’t have a a chapter on
composition that
i think that would have been more
helpful for any artist who’s at the
intermediate or
advanced stage she does talk about happy
accidents
in this chapter and that’s a great
piece of advice to allow the watercolor
to do
those beautiful backgrounds that you get
in watercolor and she’s suggesting that
you allow it
which i think that’s um a wonderful idea
that is so breaking the rule of
watercolor
because so many books are about how to
avoid backgrounds
rather than how to um
incorporate them into your work she’s
got so many beautiful paintings in this
book
so really this book the reason why i own
it and refer to it a lot is
for inspiration when i’m looking for
a way to do something a bit differently
oh she is talking about shapes here
so this is a photograph that she’s used
for inspiration and she’s uh
talking about um making shapes fit into
a shape so they’re
actually tulips but she’s talking about
the composition
and how important they are this one is
where she’s tearing out little bits of
paper and deciding which color to go
next
into her painting and she goes to
magazines to do that
so there’s beautiful tips in there on
that sort of thing
this one’s about abstraction and
she’s put in some you know pretty
pictures of sunsets
in france uh there’s some landscapes in
this one
some of her paintings are extremely
abstract
and but most of the time you can see
that there’s some sort of
um topic in her paintings
uh this chapter is called never use
black which really she goes on to say
do what you like if you want to put
black in your painting put black in your
painting
um that’s one of those rules of
watercolor that she’s suggesting that
you do
um break she’s got some examples here of
um different types of black lamp black
ivory black
and she’s included
burnt umber and paints gray in that mix
um as well and
more beautiful paintings and they are
just extraordinary
she often has um a bit of furniture in
the background so this one’s got like a
chair
sometimes it’s a window oh there’s a
window in the background
but this one this is so brilliant
this is actually a some sort of
tablecloth and she’s
got it right up in the top of the
painting
but she doesn’t really tell you how she
came at that idea
so you have to kind of um take what you
get in this painting
oh there’s the chair that she’s
incorporating a lot
um over and over she’s talking about
her process um but it’s not a
process that she repeats she changes her
mind all the time
and she changes her approach all the
time so she doesn’t always
compose in the same way she does talk a
lot about how she takes a really long
time
sometimes to compose the um
pictures uh this is the chapter visual
surprises i think
we’re nearly at the end of the book
um but you can see that there’s this
huge range of magnificent art
i don’t own the book to read the text i
don’t
find the text that helpful um
there’s an index there um
what i find helpful is being able to
look
at some of her beautiful works of art
and think about
what sort of colors she’s put together
um and try and work out how she’s put
them
together i think it’s pretty uh
extraordinary
the way she’s put it together so as
promised i’m
now going to show you some of the
paintings that i’ve been working on
by taking inspiration from shirley
travina
okay i’ve got three works that i’ve been
working on using
shirley trevina as inspiration this is
on a half sheet of ash
i think ignore the painting on the back
saunders waterford rough
actually there you go um and it’s
a large portrait oriented a little one
here this is um closer to an a4
sized one and i’ve been working on this
one
with banksias this one i was using
um grevilla as the source of inspiration
uh she’s not in the masking fluid at all
so i’ve avoided using
masking fluid and the third one
is still attached to a board as well
because it’s a working process
also um using the banksia um
as the source of inspiration so
um i’m going to just talk about ways
that i came to these and what i think
i’ll add
this one is nearly finished it’s the one
i’m happiest with
and i think that’s because there’s a
very clear focal point
in this one i began with a bit of
collage so
this section here the vase was from
um another painting and i chopped it up
so it’s a piece of watercolor paper
and um i’ve stuck it onto the saunders
waterford i tried very hard to
incorporate
objects in the way that she that chili
trevina does so
there’s a vas down here and a small
um this is sort of an egg cup and then a
plate
and then as i’ve painted each of the
objects i’m trying really hard
to do stuff that she does so for example
um
go outside the lines of the uh gravelia
so either my pencil line is there but
i’ve allowed the paint to
run outside of it i’m not using um
masking fluid normally for
leaving white spaces like this which
she’s into like white spaces
i would put down masking fluid because i
love how easy that makes
the painting but in this one no masking
fluid whatsoever
uh there’s a vas here and i’ve painted
it
internally and then defined the other
side of the vars by painting it
externally she does a lot of that
internal external um then over here i’ve
included a plate
and then i’ve tried to lose the pattern
so i’ve allowed the pattern to go to
here
and then lose the pattern um negatively
estate the painting the plate over there
and then switch colors so she does that
a lot she
breaks rules in that way all the time um
so this one is pretty much complete i’m
not sure whether or not i want to do
much more and when i do it will be about
incorporating these colors
more into uh the bottom half of the
painting um but i will set this aside a
little longer to decide what else i’m
going to do about it uh
this is one that i worked on with the
class i’m just trying to stick this
masking tape back down this is staples
nicely
not it loses its grip
after a week anyway so it’s still got
the
tape on it what i think she does a lot
of is um
take the subject matter define it into a
shape
and then repeat that shape so if this
graviglia is
kind of like a rectangle then repeat
repeat and then find other
ways in which to repeat the rectangle so
that’s what i’ve done there
so there’s a suggestion of a cup there’s
a suggestion of a
i don’t know what that is could be a jug
i should make that more into a jug
i’m trying to do a bit more mixed media
um
by introducing some black watercolor
pencil there
these were some water-soluble
wax crayons that i used over here i’m
quite like the black watercolor pencil
down there
i’ve i thought to add to it
i would use these uh
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derwent graphy tint because i never used
or i might
um just look at my window and
incorporate so my window has
a bit of a blind above it so i’m
thinking the whole time about how to
incorporate um
the uh rectangle because she does a lot
of repeating
shapes and then it comes down
here and it’s got a division
and a division quite low down
there so now brush and just play with
that
and see if that’s i’ll just soften some
of the marks
and try to think of ways to do it
differently so don’t just paint
internally paint
externally it’s softening very nicely
there
and softening that the word that i’m
after the
complimentary grace that’s what she’s
into anyway i’m going to
wet and add paint
and try and do it in
an unusual way or a way in which i
wouldn’t normally
work just add some
paint up there kind of how she works
that she
works intuitively and she makes a mark
decides if it’s um working for her
and if it is she continues it
uh she certainly does a lot of i’m gonna
grab that same pencil
and into the um
the wet paint so this is a graphy tint
ah this one
is cloud gray in case anyone’s
wondering dark indigo
how beautiful is that um and i think it
needs some sort of
darkening within the bars
so i’m going to just put in some
darks and then i’ll come in with a bit
of paint
i might i don’t want to darken the
completely inside of the
painting but i’m thinking
the whole time that i
reckon what she does is um
repeat a shape so i’m trying to include
rectangles when i’m
adding some
marks and i’m just going to use a
smallish
object i’m just going to draw it
straight in
in there and then it’s got
a smaller section and a smaller section
and a smaller section and then a cap
i’ll make it go up behind there i know
that’s not logical but
it’s irrelevant i reckon it’s about
i’m changing that completely now so that
makes more sense and then
maybe it’s got a spray
that goes out like that and this
goes i’m gonna spray it
and go past that mark
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that’s good
all right i’ve turned something that had
a little bit of potential into
something very abstract and at the
moment it’s
you know kind of a bit crap
but uh what i’ve learned is
that it’s better to just set it aside at
this time
i’ve had a really great time enjoying
myself from
scratching in and playing with the
painting but take my time to
work on it and i’m going to finish the
video here because this video is not so
much about me finishing my paintings
it’s about shirley trevina
and what would she do so my biggest tip
to you is
that i think shirley trevina is doing is
taking a shape
and repeat it and repeat it and repeat
it and repeat it and repeat it but in
interesting ways and every time you
repeat it you change it a little bit
i’m marianne chapman i really appreciate
you tuning in especially if you made it
this far in the video
i so appreciate it please give me a
thumbs up please subscribe
write a comment about a book you’d like
a review of i’ve got lots of watercolor
books
and there’s a chance i could review one
that you like thank you so much guys
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bye
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you
