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| Rick Mock |
Our demonstrator
today was Rick Mock, a Signature member of Ohio Watercolor society. Rick’s expertise is in painting classic cars
and shiny surfaces.
Rick first
went through his materials for us.
Formerly he used Maimeri Blu watercolors but has switched to Holbein. His color palette is inspired by Chris
Leeper. He likes the John Pike Watercolor
Palette for its large mixing area and the fact that it will not stain, which
allows him to truly see the colors he is mixing.
His brushes were
suggested by Bill Vrscak and are Princeton
watercolor brushes. He particularly
likes the ¼ in. flat and ½ in. flat which he calls his “workhorses”. He can easily make long horizontal or
vertical strokes with the side of the brushes, and because they are longer than
most flats, they hold a good amount of water.
His paper of
choice is Fabriano 300# CP. He likes the
heavier paper because it holds moisture for a long time and he is able to move
paint over a longer time period.
His water “container”
consists of two Tupperware containers, one placed inside the other, rather than
two separate containers.
Because of
the subject matter he likes, Rick paints very tight, but he sometimes likes to loosen
up by doing what he calls “freestyle” painting – small abstracts which he
begins by doodling with the brush and paint with no plan in mind. He considers these a fun way to relax with
his painting. Two examples of his loose paintings below.
Rick began by wetting the
starting area and continued to add color for some time.
This was the “fin” of a classic Chevrolet, a
brilliant red in the photo.
Rick began
by adding reds to the top of the area and then some orange to the bottom, which
was a reflection of something below the car.
He then let
that area begin to dry and moved to another area of the painting. This was the chrome above the tail light
which he began with gray mixed from red and dark green. Part of this was softened away, later some
defined shapes were added. Rick calls
this “building edges”.
He
frequently paints upside down, or sideways, whatever helps his hand get into
the tight spaces he needs to work on. He
commented that this is something he constantly reminds his students about – the
fact that you can rotate your painting!
Rick paints
dark to light – the opposite of our usual watercolor technique. He says this allows him to visualize the
completed painting sooner and it “pumps him up” so he stays excited to see the
project to completion.
His calls
his grays “colored grays” because he uses blends of color to create them and he
thinks this helps his paintings to glow.
He explained
how he takes several photos of the car and will use Photo Shop to help him
create just the image he wants. This may
mean leaving out part of the photo, such as his own reflection as he was taking
the photo.
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| Completed demonstration |
His demonstration
allowed us to see how the shapes he creates make the curves on a painted
surface and reflections in chrome look shiny, hard and real.
Below are photos of some of the paintings Rick brought for display. (Sorry about the glare).
Submitted photos and text by Deb Ward and Mary Fleischmann.
