Tag: landscape

Above the Treeline – Mountain Peak & Snow

As always, I can never fail to but enthusiastically recommend the short watercolor courses by Shari Blaukopf! Her most recent one is called “Peaks and Valleys.” It is inspired by her trip into the Alps while teaching a class. Having lived near the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and driven through them many times, I found this course especially fun to do. Shari’s instruction is clear and to the point, but her lovely personality shows through to make the lessons personable and friendly.

I am not going to show you the subject matter I have done so far in the course. Instead, I am going to show you what I learned to put into my own painting. My reference for this watercolor was a mountain peak photo found on Pixabay – the best resource for public domain, royalty free photos (and other things, too!).

Mont Blanc was the first mountain top study in this course. At 14,000 feet, it is way above the timberline, covered in snow, and nothing else than barren rock and clouds. At this elevation, the view across the Alps must have been amazing with ridges of more and more mountains before and beyond Mont Blanc itself. To paint it, essentially blues and browns were used in the class – cobalt, ultramarine, burnt sienna – with the addition of Payne’s grey, some organic viridian, and yellow ochre to neutralize of brighten the colors. Myself, for this painting, I stayed pretty much with these colors, but threw in some dioxazine purple as well.

It seems that the one most important lesson I fail to really retain when I watercolor is to be patient and think ahead on what I want to do. Taking a class such as this make me remember to plan ahead.

On the other hand much of my color mixing is automatic because I am familiar with how my colors look and blend, but my natural impatience is sorely tested. This is where 99% of my mishaps occur – rushing. With this painting, not so much because I started playing a game with myself – how will I plot my next step? I didn’t do a value study, but I want to try to do that more often. Here, the strong contrasts of light and dark, warm and cold, made the values and contrast easy to perceive.

I am rather pleased with this painting. It is cold and starkly beautiful, and that was the whole point of this painting.

Watercolor, Arches 140# CP, 9 x 12.

Rio Chama

The Rio Chama is a branch of the Rio Grande River in New Mexico. It flows through the Chama River Canyon Wilderness and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Country like this is public land, subject to the rules and regulations to help preserve it, but also vulnerable to the whims and politics of the times. It is host to a variety of wild life and the beauty of the American Southwest.

Oil, 11×14, cotton canvas panel.

Morning Walk

I don’t know if I have published this image before . . . . I have a feeling I did, but cannot find it. Of course, with all the stuff I have here on IY&B, it makes sense.

I painted this a few years ago. I worked really hard to get soft tones and paints. I had been working mostly in acrylics when I picked up the oils and was used to the hardness I seem to produce with acrylics. So, with the blendability of oils, that was my focus of the exercise.

The results here have been sitting around for ages with the thought the painting could use a bit of work. Looking at it now, it seems finished enough. I am pleased with the moodiness and sense of a damp woodland as well as how you can tell it is a misty day by the colors of the sky through the trees.

Oils, 10×14 canvas panel.

Late Summer

A hot, humid day with rain coming or going. Summer is leaving, time soon to bring in the harvest. Late afternoon.

I am totally into lavender fields! The bright colors just make you happy, and when in contrast to the warm yellows and golds of other plants, how can you not but rejoice in nature?

Yeah, it sounds corny, but landscapes and the countryside, no matter where, just make me happy. It can be in gentle countryside like here, in the desert, in the mountains – all just touches me and brings a bit of peace.

Oils, 10×14, cotton canvas panel.

Poplars

I don’t know why, but I always thought these were called “plane trees,” but it turns out they are poplars. We don’t have them here in SoCal. The ones we do have that look similar – in the sense they are narrow trees that grow tall – can be a type of juniper or eucalyptus. I am really drawn to these trees because of their fine branches and leaves which change in the fall.

If you read my blitherings, you know that I am enrolled in an oil / acrylic painting class which meets weekly, and have been in it for several months. I chose oils as they can be worked on over several days with the paint remaining wet over a period of time. What I like about oils is they blend easily and a softness can be achieved (by me, at least) that I can never get when I use acrylics. In this painting, I worked on both simplification and abstraction of various elements of the painting as well as atmospheric perspective. I only considered this painting “finished” when I added some squiggles in the water to suggest movement.

Overall, I am pleased with my results. I have spent several months gazing at it. It never seemed done until those little squiggles showed up. Crazy, huh?

Oils, 12×16, cotton canvas panel