Trad Gear Watercolor Studies

To me, art studies are any sort of prework you might do in preparation for a final piece. It could be drawings in your sketchbook, experiments with color mixing or textures, or complete paintings to test techniques and composition. I have a couple ideas percolating related to painting climbing gear that I wanted to start testing out through a series of studies.

When I say climbing gear, I am talking about all of the things that are a part of the climbing experience. This includes quick draws, cams, belay devices, ropes, even climbing shoes and belay goggles. I’m interested in the items for their technical design and color, but also how they can be unique to the climber who owns them. Speaking for myself, I feel like my climbing gear is an extension of my personality. This includes the colors I like and the brands I prefer. Our gear is also symbolic of our adventures, including our successes and our failures. We choose gear specifically for the challenges we want to tackle. Gear can make our lives easier and lead to success. It can also be a scapegoat and cause for grief when we are not meeting expectations or accomplishing our goals. Climbing gear, by its nature, is also meant to be used. It is not meant to stay in its bag and kept shiny and immaculate. It is meant to be used and more specifically used up and eventually replaced. With all this in mind, a series of paintings focused on climbing gear is still very much in its idea stage.

To help explore some of my ideas, I have decided to start on a series of climbing studies. Questions I have include:

• What type of gear am I most interested in?

• Am I interested in gear as a static object? Or am I interested in climbing gear in situ, as a part of a climbing adventure?

• What is the best way to photograph the gear depending on what type of effect I am going for?

• What is the best way to start my painting? Do I want an outline? What kind of outline?

• What size do I want to paint?

• Where are my skills in relation to what I want to accomplish with my painting?

• Do I have the right colors? Do I have the right brushes?

To begin exploring these questions, I chose two pieces of traditional climbing gear to start with: Trango #2 Flex Cam (blue) and Black Diamond Camelot 4.5 (red), supplied by my husband. If you want to know that I am talking about when I say traditional climbing, check out this handy REI article.

I love the work of artist CJ Henry who is known for completing huge, hyperrealistic pieces using colored pencils. I wanted to try a hyperrealistic painting, but on a much smaller scale. This would help with saving on materials as well as time.

For both of these paintings I chose to use a reference photo and graphite paper to transfer an outline to my watercolor paper. This was a bit challenging, I think because of the small size of the paintings. I also love painting on cold press paper, which has a lot of texture. This sometimes makes it hard to use graphite paper depending on the reference photo.

Trango #2 Flex Cam

For this piece, I wanted my composition to be vertical and to include the entire cam attached to a carabiner. This proved to be a quite tall and narrow composition, which was a challenge to photograph and choose a paper size. In the end, I decided to use Arches 140lb cold press watercolor block in size 5.9 x 11.8 inches, which is non-standard when it comes to framing, but seemed like my best option for such a vertical shape.

The biggest challenge was capturing the different textures. You have the shininess of the metal, the stitching of the nylon, and wear on the metal from repeated use. I opted to remove any branding from the painting (in this case Trango) mainly because lettering is not something I am good at or interested in. I also assume that most climbers that use a particular piece of gear will know what they are looking at without needing it spelled out.

Black Diamond Camelot 4.5

For the second study, I decided to focus on the actual cam, so I cropped my reference photo so that this would take up the majority of the 7 by 10 inch paper I wanted to use, again Arches 140lb cold press paper. I wanted to see how challenging the different layers of the mechanism would be to paint and how to treat the shadows. I also thought the metal textures should be more pronounced on this painting. I wanted to show the wear and tear of the piece rather than a shiny new version.

Conclusions

I am happy with these two paintings. I really enjoy this type of painting. It requires a lot of layers, very specific colors, and a lot of patience.

Both projects provided different challenges and things to consider. For the way I like to paint, I think an outline is really helpful for this subject matter, but I’m not sure that graphite paper is the best way to go. I think I might have more control over the outline if I were to use tracing paper and my light table.

I cannot decide if the paintings themselves are a bit flat. I wanted the focus to be on the actual subject, but I wonder if including a slight shadow might help minimize the way they seem to float on the paper.

I’m pleased with the textures that I accomplished, but I do not think the gear appears as worn as I might like it to be.

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments.