Tag: fields

Rain Is Coming

Watercolor is a challenge, but I seem to finally be able to think about what I want to focus on, and work to meet and succeed, in varying degrees, my goal. Here, it is wet-in-wet painting. In watercolor this means working with very wet paint – a lot of pigment and a lot of water. This is not easy to control because you sort of have to know your paper and your paint and how wet or damp or dry the whole thing is.

For the sky, I wet the paper first and let it settle into the paper for a few minutes. Then, using a mix of mostly ultramarine blue and burnt sienna, I created a grey by adding a lot of water to my colors. I dropped the paint onto the paper and let it bleed into the water. As the paper dried, I made a stronger mixture of the grey – meaning darker – and dropped that into the already painted surface. With a bit of toweling I blotted up some of the paint to lighten areas as well as to give a shape to the clouds.

After that, I did the middle and foregrounds. Everything was done with damp paper and watery paint. No dry brush at all, just working with different degrees of wetness and color intensity.

Goals accomplished, I don’t think of this as a good painting but a good exercise.

Watercolor, Arches Rough 140# paper, 10×14.

Summer Fields

Tomorrow is a family gathering, quite possibly the first since last year. This morning I cleaned up clutter and sorted out things, did all the first-of-the-month stuff, and so on. Meanwhile, the esposo is working from home and making both beef and chicken barbacoa in between saving database lives. I have already run around town collecting goodies, as have other family members, so we call enjoy a bit of a feast and each others’ company tomorrow with good food and good company.

Of course, a girl can only do so much and then the painting gods and goddesses beckon. Once more, lavender fields call, so here some are for your enjoyment.

Technique was primarily wet, beginning with they sky and distant mountain and trees, letting things bleed into each other. I like the misty effect and sense of distance it creates, as well as the suggestion of tree-covered hills. From there, greens and lavenders, lines and directional shapes. Final details were some dry brush lines in the foreground and in the tree shapes to create texture and vertical movement. I used a large mop brush (#6, Princeton Neptune) for the entire painting until the end. At that point, I took a small stiff brush to add some of the finer lines and dots.

Part of me thinks I could have done a bit more of a light lavender color, but overall, I am pleased with this painting.

Watercolor, Arches 140# CP paper, 9×12.

Soggy & Boggy

Today the rains are pouring down. The backyard is flooded and the pump is working to keep the water levels acceptable by shunting it out to the the street and into the storm drains. This is the second of the two Pineapple Express atmospheric rivers causing concern and evacuations throughout the county and elsewhere in California. There is charm to living up a canyon until the rains erode it all – I live on a small hill in a tract with a creek in a park a ways down the hill. I’ll settle for that! Our clay soil and poor landscaping creates a boggy lake in the backyard, held in place with our clay soil, but we are lucky overall.

And on a rainy day, oil painting is not something I want to smell throughout the house even though I did think about it. Watercolors called – because of all the water around me? Who knows – but rain brings green growth and soggy ground, and that is a delight in our dry, dry land.

Hahnemuhle CP 140#, 9×12, watercolor. 

A Touch of Morning Light

Most of my watercolors tend to have intense colors that are rather bright. With the underwater rocks and floating leaves of the other day, to get the effects I did, I used a lot of thin layers of colors – glazes – to create the desired effects. I was pretty happy with the results, so today I decided to work at creating a painting with good contrast but with many delicate ares of color.

My intention here is to create the effects of early morning with sun just beginning to brighten the landscape. This needs a delicate sky. I had drawn in my sketch first and from there began with thin washes of cobalt, quin rose, and Naples yellow. The wispy clouds were painted wet-in-wet using cobalt and umber. Pleased, I again used pale washes to create the fields in mid and foreground.

Looking at the picture, I realized that the lower 2/3 of the painting were essentially all the same value even though different in color. A scan of the painting and a desaturation of color showed my assumptions were correct.

Sooooo??

A bit of thought. In the end I applied thin glazes of quin gold along the hilltop horizon and a number of layered glazes on thew lower hills in cobalt and umber. This gave depth and distance.

Another painting done slowly and with more deliberation. And I am pleased with the results as well as even learned a few things!

Watercolor, 9×12, Fluid 100% cotton CP paper.