Tag: storm

Incoming Storm – Mt. Tamalpais

I do love the views and hills of Mt. Tamalpais year round! The views are amazing, the ocean not too far away, and the sky and weather always different throughout the seasons.

The sky in this painting was sort of an area to play with. Sky in watercolor is done with as soon as you lay it down. For the most part, that is!

Painting a sky is usually thought about and then laid in with a fair amount of water and color, avoiding areas for clouds, letting colors bleed, and all sorts of tricks such as blotting up color with cotton or tissue to make clouds. It’s a lot of fun! Here, I did go back in and lift some paint in the right side of the sky, re-wet it, and then laid in more color. It is okay but did not really work. Still, I did salvage it more to my liking.

Next, the foreground. I like my tree and grasses and rocks. The mid-ground with the trees is also to my liking. The land between the mid-ground and the horizon is too colorful and too bright – it should be a bit lighter and perhaps a bit more neutral.

Overall, I am fairly pleased with the results here. I tried to work as directly with color and water as possible. I used a bit of frisket in the rocks and in the foreground to maintain a bit of white.

As I said above, I try to paint with my colors very directly. This means mixing up large puddles of color and painting from that puddle, adding other colors as I move along with my wash to create variety. It requires a bit of thought as well as knowing what colors work together and so on. I mix these colors on my palette often before applying any to the paper.

Many people lay down glazes and work with layers in their watercolors, but I find that, while pretty, those methods of painting create a rather tame look. A lack of freshness is the only way I can describe it. On the other hand, my approach is quite challenging as I don’t build up colors but try to work with thick, rich colors and pray a lot. As a result, my watercolors tend to by quite gaudy, I think!!

Watercolor, Arches 140# Rough, 11×14.

Track

Sometimes things just catch my eye or interest and, as someone who paints, makes me want to practice doing them – not just with a sketch, but with a painting. Some people practice but my practice wants a result. Not perhaps the best way to learn, but my little Puritan heart always wants my time to be productive and the productive part falls into a “finished” painting. Maybe a bit sinful for a Puritan, but . . .

So, roads and tracks. Straight lines through a woods, a track over uneven back country here. Also, a suggestion of a water puddle or two reflecting a bit of the stormy sky above. Wet, green, verdant land. Sea or mountains in the distance. I want to walk that road.

Watercolor, 11×14 Arches CP paper.

Winter Creek

First, I am not at all sure where I found the photograph upon which this painting is based – public domain? If not, and it is yours, I am sorry I cannot give you credit. Let me know, ok?

Oil paints on Canson Oil/Acrylic paper.

Initially I started out with a brush and soon realized that whatever I tried to paint was just not working. The grasses were not clear and sharp and the clouds were blobby. In the end, and out of frustration, I took a palette knife and used it to smear color into the painting – and all of a sudden I found out what painting in oils with a palette knife is capable of doing.

I am prejudiced against heavy impasto just because I don’t find it interesting to look at. First in my mind is how much dust it could collect and what a pain heavy impasto paintings could be to clean. Much impasto is done with a knife – though brushes also do the job, as seen in the work of van Gogh. So, I have avoided it to date.

Smearing paint around with a knife gives some dimension (3D) on a flat surface, but the way the paint moves is so interesting! I also used the knife tip to scratch away in the colors for the grasses, and that was both doing what I wanted to do, as well as somehow felt deliciously rebellious against my conformist self.

The snow, though, and the river, are done with brush. Brushwork was laid down first pretty much throughout the painting, and my aggravation then brought out the knife. Learning experience. And, I don’t think I could have rendered either sky or grasses anywhere to my liking with a brush of any size.

Live and learn.

11×14, knife and brush, on paper.

Storm Break

Heavy rains and foreboding skies give way to ragged clouds and brilliant blues as the storms recede. No snow here, but memories will do! I tried to express this sky in the distance, beneath the blue and white with the dark clouds moving away. Not so sure how it reads, but you can decide that. Could be trees, could be clouds, could be space ships. And there is a river behind the trees and the snow across the way.

Kilimanjaro Natural White Rough, 300#, Rough, 12×16.

The Strange Edges of the Sea

I got a few painterly goodies for Christmas, and one was a new tablet of watercolor paper, one which I have never heard of before. Of course, it needs checking out. How does it handle wet paper and washes? Dry brush? Bleeding? Etc. It is not an expensive paper – $20 for 32 pages of 9×12 pure cotton paper – but it is actually a decent one. I can lift colors from it pretty easily, too! It is a rather nice bit of paper overall, and while not Arches or Fabriano, I think it will do quite well for studies, and probably gouache as well.

Besides playing with new paper, I have also attempted to lead the eye in the composition to a small area of white. Rocks, waves, clouds, land masses, sand, whatever are all designed to catch your eye. I think it worked out pretty good. I also am rather pleased with the movement of the sand in the lower right hand corner.

9×12, CP 140# paper, watercolor.