In Living Color 12 - Boating on the Seine

Louise was hoping to push our abilities so our next assignment was to choose a "Masters" painting and reproduce it.  After much searching on the internet and trips to the library I came up with one I liked.  I chose "Boating on the Seine" by Renoir, a French Impressionist.  See here to view his history and a few of his paintings.  Below is a copy of the painting that I pulled from a web site.


Master - Boating on the Seine

After printing a copy I made the cartoon and prepared my watercolor paper with a tracing.  It looked like a daunting task and being unsure where to start I set it aside for several months.  In doing this painting I learned some very valuable lessons that I want to share.  First when you print a picture from your home printer you can not always be sure that the colors will come out as the original shows.  So with this in mind you will see quite a difference between the above photo and my finished painting.  Also once you start painting a picture stick with the original photo you started with to complete it in case the colors change with the next printing as happened to me.  


I started painting with a very subdued palette and had most of the painting complete when I saw another picture that had a little more detail and decided to print a larger photo to work from.  The new photo was much different in color and not thinking about it I started using it to complete the painting.  The outcome was a much brighter bluer water on the right side of the painting than it should have been.  I also used cobalt blue which is a hard color to lift and correct.  Below is my finished painting.


Master - Completed Watercolor

Even though this painting didn't turn out the way I had hoped it would it holds a special place in my heart.  You see it was the last painting that I started under the direction of Louise.   She, unfortunately, became ill and before I had completed the painting had passed away.  She was a great teacher and I will forever be great-full of the lessons I learned from her.