Before I finished yesterday’s painting, I took some time to take pictures of the painting itself, and out the window. We don’t get a lot of fog out here, so the pea souper we got was fascinating to watch as it lifted. From thick and dense, it slowly dissipated – I was cold from the damp, but the view was great.
Now to the northern part of the continent . . . somewhere in North America for winter on the a prairie farm, snow covering field stubble, early evening or morning. Cold, desolate, and heartbreakingly beautiful.
I spent the morning painting this on rough 300# natural white Kilimanjaro. I did it in stages. The sketch was light, with suggestions of shapes. Then the sky was wet and yellow, quin gold, and permanent alizarin crimson used to create the rosy golds. Once down, cobalt blue and ultramarine were placed to simulate sky being careful not to merge into the rose gold of the central cloud. As the sky dried, purple and alizarin were mixed with ultramarine to create the darker clouds.
After the clouds were laid in, I did the dark trees, blurring some green into the still damp sky, as well as waiting for the sky and soft trees to dry. This was done to create the hard edges needed for the buildings against the tree line. The buildings themselves were left white as the trees dried.
From there, the snowy field was laid in with cobalt and ultramarine in a very light wash and using a 2″ soft brush. Again, drying. At one point, the 2″ brush was dried and dipped into lightly damp burnt umber and applied to make the streaks of brown for field stubble near and far. Then the buildings were done, and once the snow dried, more thin washes as glazes applied to the foreground snow, culminating in a streak of quin gold and then permanent alizarin to the middle of the painting, hoping to show a sense of light reflected in the still dark snow from the breaking clouds above.
After that, details such as dried grasses, windows, tree trunks and whatever were added as deemed necessary.
I am pleased with this painting quite a bit! It achieves what I set out to do – a winter scene, snow, clouds, and patience to wait and think about a painting before just diving in with brush and color. The 300# rough Kilimanjaro is 11×14 and a wonderful paper to paint on. More is needed in the future for sure.
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.
I am trying to lighten up my handling of watercolor. Very often my colors are far more intense than I really want. I think part of this is the result of impatience and perhaps pre-cataract surgery days. Watercolor itself lends itself to a delicacy other media lack, I think, and to not play into the wetness and what it can do perhaps defeats watercolor’s beauty.
There is something about fog and early morning that always fascinates me. The idea that a cloud is on the ground (my father’s description of fog when I was about 5) still intrigues me. After all, clouds are UP!
So, a morning along the coast. Wet, soft, blurry, and giving way to a sunny, summer day.
Arches CP 140#, 9×12, watercolor.
Another wet, wet painting in watercolor.
Here, I wet the paper, and then began putting in areas of color, beginning with the sky in the central part of the painting, and then blobbing down the foliage in the foreground and the distance. The line of the slope was separated from the horizon beyond. As things dried, I blobbed on more colors, and continued to work wet-into-wet as the paper dried. In the end, I was able to draw the trunks of the distant trees without their blurring using diluted colors of the darker tree trunks.
It’s really hard to describe how to do a painting like this. In doing these kinds of paintings I am finding it is necessary to have a sense of the composition itself – lights, darks, soft shapes, hard edges. It is also necessary to think about negative and positive space while painting, as well as the overall effect desired. I worked light to dark, and strove to keep the earliest colors as separate as possible from others. In the end, I used glazes to unify areas with color as well as worked with thick paint and a very dry brush for some detail.
140# CP Arches, 16×20. It took about 3 hours to work on, using time in between to dry the paper with a blow dryer or let the water get absorbed into the paper so softer edges could be achieved.
Of the 3 “splish splash” paintings I have done, this one is my favorite. This technique works very well for areas with a lot of foliage, but what about ocean scenes, skies, and so on? That is next on my agenda for this method.
This was a lot of fun – I hope you like it!
Ink, Yarn & Beer 