Tag: California

A decidedly more fussy painting than I usually do, but is also a fairly chromatic painting. The primary colors are yellowish greens and grays. More color planes with a few more details.

In a lot of ways this was a more “serious” painting than my trees of yesterday. I plotted more. I did a sketch, a value study, and carefully placed my lines and considered the composition. Steps were thought out on how to approach the painting process itself since there is a lot of plain, white paper left in varying spots.

First step was to lay down a light wash of a neutral color, painting around the white areas at the tops of the plants and a few areas of the rocks. Then, light colors of the plants were added to remind me where they were. In general, I worked light to dark – standard watercolor – but then more intuitively I moved into dark areas while other areas were still covered with the first wash. I needed to establish values and found this worked out fairly well.

Another thing I took into consideration was the paper. This is the 100% cotton student paper I have, and I know it cannot handle a lot of water. Consequently, my washes were not wet and sopping. The light washes I applied were watery, but before picking up the watery wash from the palette, I squeezed or blotted the extra water from the brush, picked up the wash, and then applied it to the paper. It worked as the paper did not get really wet.

The rocks were hard to do. Part of me wanted to be fussy and detailed – hence the dots on the rocks and boulders closer to the viewer – and other parts just wanted to use planes and strokes of color to express their dimensionality. That is something I will try on another version of this painting and on paper that can handle a lot of water.

So, the planes of color continue, even in a more complex painting. I rather like this one as the backlit plants are so pretty, whether painted or in real life, and the pathway itself is alluring. Nothing like a hike in the desert . . .