Tag: weather

Along the Colorado

Two different scans, and neither is truly exact. That was planned. I decided to change the mood of the scans – one in Epson Scan and the other in VueScan. Don’t remember which is which. The moods were to be bright and sunny, breaking through rain clouds perhaps, and the other just rather cold and gloomy when the sun has vanished behind heavy clouds.

Above, the warm colors are being pushed – yellow, orange. A bit of glow to try to express that sudden brightness you see when the light changes rapidly because of the weather.

And now the light has changed – potential rain and bad weather. I expect there is a bit of wind, too!

Technically, I drew in the landscape with a waterproof pen, painted, and then drew some more. The mesas’ slopes are a bit steeper than reality as these are about 45 degrees, and in real life, I think they are more shallow, about 30 degrees. Artistic license?

Watercolors, ink, Hahnemuhle 300gsm CP paper, about 9×12.

The Hill

I’ve spent the last two afternoons following along with an online class in gouache. It’s been fun. The main focus has been skies and their moods as shown by clouds and color and time of day and weather. For some reason the dark and stormy sky stayed in my mind’s eye, and visual memories of days of yore came back.

I don’t know about where you live, but here in California where I am, the clouds are seldom domineering and frightening like they can be in the tropics or midwest. I remember one day when I was about 9 coming home from school and the sky was nearly black with clouds. It was still daylight, but it was in the fall of the year and cold. It was eerie and scary and beautiful. All the colors in the surrounding fields and meadows and trees were brighter than usual, almost to the point of being unreal.

That is what I have tried to catch here – intense light, strange light and colors, a wildness waiting to happen.

Gouache, 9×12, CP cotton 140# paper.