By Norman Kolpas
In 1979, the summer after Ellen Jean Diederich’s sophomore year studying fine art at Minnesota State University, Moorhead, she attended a workshop led by renowned California watercolorist Robert E. Wood. “I made the most horrible paintings,” she says. “But Wood taught me to just put the shapes together like bricks. I loved the challenge and the transparency and the layering.”
Ellen Jean Diederich in her studio, which includes separate areas devoted to painting, framing, and computer work.
Fast forward four decades to the present: Diederich, who’s been painting professionally since 1985, is a signature member of the Transparent Watercolor Society of America and a founder of the Red River Watercolor Society, based in Fargo, ND, where she lives, and nearby Moorhead. She is also a respected teacher and the author of Progressive Painting: Your Creative Journey.
Her well-disciplined process captures the medium’s joy. “It’s like playing in a puddle. You can’t control the water, but you can splash around in it,” she enthuses. “I love how the color mixes itself on the paper. And when it does, it glows so beautifully.”
Based on her reference photos and journal notes, Diederich roughs out composition ideas for a painting of geese by “just dragging around” a ballpoint pen, “thinking about how the animals overlap as shapes,” before going on to value sketches done with marker.
That’s not to say she hasn’t developed her own detailed methods for bringing order to tranquil watercolors of rural and small-town life in her loosely rendered, “neoimpressionist” style. She’ll work out compositions in flowing, ballpoint-pen drawings in a wirebound sketchbook before progressing to value sketches done with markers or watercolors. “I’ll also do a warm-up painting of just part of the subject,” she says, as well as jotting down her thoughts about the scene. Next, she executes a pencil composition on 300 lb. Winsor & Newton or Arches watercolor paper.
Diederich uses a large, lightweight Robert E. Wood Palette, which has 24 deep pigment wells—she fills it fresh for each new painting—and two large mixing wells.
Her favorite tool for applying watercolors is a flat 1-inch Winsor & Newton Sceptre brush with a mix of sable and synthetic bristles. “It holds a lot of paint, and I can twist and turn it like a calligraphy pen,” she says, producing distinctively contoured brush strokes. In the later stages of the process, she also does a lot of paint removal. “On one big painting of white peonies,” she recalls, “I erased three-quarters of it to get the layers I wanted. Sometimes, you have to overdo it to know how far you can go.”
To learn more about Ellen Diederich’s artwork and creative process, visit www.ellenjeandiederich.com.
Diederich painted NEXT IN LINE during a summer artist residency in Medora, in western North Dakota. She added dynamic interest to the composition by “creating eye contact between the two horses and the girl.”
STARRY FIELDS “is probably a Van Gogh tribute if I’ve ever done one,” says Diederich. A “study in red” that also incorporates all kinds of other colors, the composition is balanced by a moon in the upper left that Diederich “scrubbed out” in a swirling pattern reminiscent of Vincent’s THE STARRY NIGHT.