Old Trees in Winter

If you have been reading this blog awhile, you know I live where there is fire and not snow. Still, winter does come to my warm (ish) part of the world, and with it memories of tromping through the snow under spreading trees along a lake shore.

I use two software programs these days to scan my paintings – and I rather like the way they end up, similar but different. Above is the one using VueScan. Below is the one using Epson V600 and its software.

Epson software is more inclined to push colors, but in this case it does a decent job and pulls out more of the colors I put into the tree. Both scans are pretty much straight out of the scanner. Your choice as to preference!

Watercolor, Arches Rough 140#. Colors primarily burnt umber, ultramarine blue, Hooker’s green. 10×14.

Garage in Winter

I feel I somehow turned a bit of a corner when it comes to painting. Shari Blaukopf’s online classes are helping a lot. She applies color directly and doesn’t follow “the rules” – by this I mean applying all the light colors first and ending with darks. Instead, she applies color to areas and moves on, making sure in many cases to let the paint dry. (Gotta love those hair dryers!) The corner also started to turn when I decided it was time to add some of the rest of the world to my painting, meaning buildings and so on. Thus far, buildings, but I am gaining confidence with them, so why not with people and urban scenes?

The fact is, I was getting pretty tired of my limited subjects, so this is a good thing. Now, even my boring suburban neighborhood is taking on a totally different perspective – there are a lot of things to paint, even here.

10×14 Arches rough, 140# paper.