I am not really sure what I am doing these days. I don’t really like what I am painting. Moving into abstraction to some degree, trying to loosen up, trying to be more suggestive than representational. Like anything new, or different, it can be very uncomfortable. A part of me wants to work with less intense colors, and for me, that seems like an impossibility! So, I keep trying. Let’s see where it all goes.
Watercolor, Arches 140# CP, 16×20.
I always love a walk in the local botanical garden, but I haven’t been for awhile with one of our dogs. I fell down a hillside because one of them pulled me off balance – squirrel! – and am rather uneasy, but today I went. Luckily, nothing happened except beautiful weather, spring scents, new leaves, narcissus, and bulbs. I didn’t plan on taking pictures, but my trusty phone came in hand. Smudge brought her nose and one helluva good time.
The people who care for the garden do a wonderful job, and spring cleaning, or new year cleaning, came as the underbrush and detritus of last year has largely been cleared away. Only fallen leaves and new plantings – even my favorite old oak tree that usually has a pile of leaves in its center where branches grow was clean. Maybe the wind, maybe the fairies in the wood.
Because of my fall down the hill with Smudge, I decided to take the easiest paths I could find in the climb to the top of the hill. Switchbacks with low degrees of ascent and descent worked, and we had a wonderful walk.
We spent a few hours wandering around, sitting on benches, observing people and plants, listening to squirrels and crows, seeing lizards climb trees and play hide and seek in the ground cover. Smudge sniffed and climbed up on the benches to keep me company.
This is a beautiful pine, and though I have no idea what it is (and no label to be found), it is at a corner of the garden, like an old and dear friend welcoming you back.
These bulbs are always so cheerful. They bloom for months and are a bright splash along the trail.
These caught my eye – last year’s foliage, or this years tinged by frost? (We have had some below 32F nights!)
This is my beloved oak tree. It must be 500 or more years old – young when the Spanish first came to the area? Who knows . . . .
I love looking for the narcissus planted throughout the gardens, and the daffodils, and the iris. They all bloom at different times.
The pine tree from a distance. The rocks lining the pathway are new this year!
This is a native plant, and it’s rather a fun one. When the bladder pod to spread its seeds, the bladders explode and send the seeds flying in all directions.
Initially, I didn’t plan on ending up at the botanical garden; rather, the goal was the dog park. However, it turns out that on the third Thursday of the month, the dog park is closed for cleaning and maintenance. So, how lucky were we to be able to enjoy this wonderful day?
I have been trying to work with thin washes to lay in color, moving into negative painting – such as around the birch trees – and building the painting from there. I used different color mixtures to suggest the birch’s black areas on the trunk, and then used the darkest color I could mix to create some outlines for the trunks.
Watercolor is such an unpredictable, but somewhat predictable, medium that it can drive you crazy and fill you with delight.
11×15 CP Kilimanjaro 300# paper.
Nothing like a line of trees with a grassy lawn between – wonderful in summer’s heat, to watch shadows, and just watch a day move by with a good book to read.
The same painting, scanned with an Epson V600 and merged. However, two different software were used to merge. One was Microsoft Ice. The other was the photo merge bit of Lightroom. It’s hard to really tell which software impacted the final image more as both were manipulated a bit in post. However, the difference was that the LR version had dark paper around the edge and was rather muddy. The MS Ice was lighter and more clean in overall appearance.
This is the image merged in Lightroom. .
This is the one merged in MS Ice.
It’s hard to see the difference in some ways, but I think either is fine to my eye.
Anyway, I am rather pleased with the result here. I think I got the depth of field properly done for once. Perspective doesn’t seem off. The sandy berm really pleases me because sand is hard to do! I mixed together ochre, alizarin, and cobalt blue and then added a gallon of water to make the wash. The shadows are ultramarine with a bit of carbazole violet.
Another thing I like is the murky, seaweed filled foreground on the right that fills the shallow water. And, too, I did some justice to the reflections of the island in the right background. In the end, I applied a light glaze to the foreground water on the right and to the grasses to the left of the sandy shore in the middle left background. Painted on 300# Kilimanjaro from Cheap Joe’s.
I have few other WIPs, but they need a bit more consideration at present.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 