The video is 72 minutes long, all shot in HD video on location.
I did this study of a taxidermy Galápagos tortoise while sitting in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. I'll show how the combination of watercolor and water-soluble colored pencils is a fast way to capture such a textural subject.
There are six subjects in all: a greenhouse, a miniature horse, the tortoise, an old carriage house, a Civil War re-enactor, and my wife Jeanette painting in a churchyard—plus an introductory segment on materials and methods. The emphasis is on portability and on working outdoors "in the wild" in sketchbooks.
The segments range between 5 and 18 minutes. Each segment follows a painting all the way through, from the first pencil lines, to the big washes, to the final touches.
I enjoyed the challenge of painting the pictures while documenting them on video at the same time. I did not use an outside film crew, because I felt I could capture the experience and the decision-making better if I did it myself. I got coverage from a lot of different angles, and made sure to show you the subject I was looking at.
I feel that audio is really important in art videos, too. I accompanied each segment with a clear voiceover that I recorded later, reconstructing the specific thinking I brought to each stage. That voiceover is heard over the background sound of the actual environment, which is very immersive, so you'll feel like you're right there. I kept the music very minimal, just at the beginning and end of each segment, and not running throughout the entire video.
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| Miniature horse filly "Rosebud" posed for me during a 12 minute nap, captured in real time. |
My goal was to make a video that's practical and specific enough to clearly show you all the steps, but that is tightly edited enough to make it and hopefully entertaining and inspiring, so that it's watchable again and again.
If you remember my previous post "Video in the Works," I solicited your input about what you like and dislike about art videos. I read those 81 comments very carefully and tried to learn from them.
To mark the release, all next week will be "Watercolor Week," with a free sample video clip each day of the week. Don't miss the launch on Monday.
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Update:
To purchase the 72-minute video "Watercolor in the Wild":HD download: (Credit Card)
HD download: (Paypal)
BONUS FEATURES (a half hour of additional bite-size inspiration)
DVD: (NTSC, Region 1-North America)
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