Tag: snow

Winter Hill

I am working really hard to simplify my paintings. Winter scenes are perfect for this as I have to keep large swaths of paper white and untouched. Contours of the land are suggested by some blues and such for shadows. Additionally, I am trying to keep my brushwork fairly direct and using the brush’s qualities to dictate the result. A bit of a challenge!

This scan seems to be decent, too, as far as matching the painting’s colors.

I added some new colors to my palette for this painting. In addition to ultramarine blue, burnt sienna and Payne’s grey, I added some Winsor Newton brown madder and olive green, and McCracken black by Daniel Smith. I also used some white gouache for the snow on the right hand tree and in the viney-like things in the foreground along the fence. Altogether I am working toward getting comfortable with a limited palette. Winter lends itself well to this.

The wire fence was drawn in with colored pencil – a warm and cool grey.

St. Cuthberts Mill, Bockingford paper, 140# CP, watercolor.

A Bit Later

Now, a bit later, I wondered if that tree on the right was okay. I wondered if it was needed. I don’t think so. Here is the painting without the tree!

Thoughts?

Trees in Snow

This was an exceedingly hard painting to scan simply because of the very soft usage of blue in the foreground snow. While this scan does not represent the painting very well, the overall image is good enough unless I decided to really play with my scanner’s software. I am not so sure I want to do that.

There are a few “points” to this painting. Using a very limited palette was one point – colors here are ultramarine blue, burnt umber, burnt sienna. There is a touch of a few other colors here but nothing of any significance.

Another point is to keep as much of the paper as white as possible. I managed to do this, but the scan does not do justice to the pale blue of the foreground snow; to compensate for this I used a very light blue graduated filter overlay in my post production software.

And the final point was to work in layers – light to dark – for the trees. Yes, I used titanium white artist’s gouache for the snow on the branches.

St. Cuthberts Mill, Bockingford archival watercolor paper, 12×16, CP 140#.

Snowfall

Christmas Day! Nothing like a snowfall and the cold and the quiet of the woods for remembering the magic of the season. New and old traditions overlap, memories and hopes for the future all seem to be rolled into the end of the year and depth of winter. The stillness of the winter woods gives pause to our crazy lives. Holidays of any sort at this time of the year make us look backward as well as forward.

Here I worked from very light to dark. The colors I used for the greenish-blue sky were cobalt teal, a bit of ultramarine, and a touch of Hooker’s green, neutralized by a bit of alizarin. The leaves and autumnal foliage were various siennas and orange with a touch of Indian yellow. Trunks, from light to dark, were essentially ultramarine with burnt sienna and raw umber with a bit of Payne’s grey. Snow shadows were ultramarine and Payne’s grey. Finally, I watered down some titanium white gouache and tapped my brush across my forefinger to look like falling snow after applying a few lines and dots in white here and there.

This is another watercolor which pleases me. Perhaps I should stick to Arches Rough paper instead of my usual cold press . . . ?

Have a wonderful Christmas Day – or whatever it is you celebrate!

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

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.

Winter Water

Having used a lot of gouache colors in my palette, this is a deliberate effort to see how I can make a primarily white painting. Snow, of course, is the best subject.

The two whites available for gouache are zinc white and titanium white. Zinc white is more transparent and works very well with colors to lighten them. It is not as bright as titanium white. Titanium white is more dense and opaque, and works very well for areas you want to be very white – such as white caps on waves and here very bright areas of snow.

Besides the two whites, I kept my palette limited to most ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, yellow ochre. A touch here and there included some orange, yellow, and umber to mix colors I needed.

Strathmore Vision CP 140# watercolor paper; gouache; 9×12.