Winter Sky III watercolor on Arches 21x30
Crop of Winter Sky III
Hi all.
I absolutely love painting these poplar trees. Sorry, to all you birch lovers, but these are poplars, not birches. The weather has finally warmed up - freakishly warm actually, not that I'm complaining! - so I hope to get out to take some more pics. Need some new trees to paint.
The color was incredibely hard to adjust on these...I think because there are so many different hues and weird mixes... each time I got one right, another was wrong. So I decided to just STOP, and here they are. One cropped for that fascinating close up view.
In trying to make the colors work together and create a unified whole, I remembered Myrna's 'mothercolor', and mixed the colors making sure that each contained a bit of the 'mothercolor'...in this case, W&N Indian Red.
I also tried to keep in mind Edgar Whitney's rule about variety - variety in shape (white spaces), in direction (branches), value (which doesn't show up too well, but it's there), in size (branches), and texture (smooth vs rough). I may not have accomplished all that as well as I could, but at least I kept it in mind while painting, which is a big step forward on my part.
Has anyone read his book Complete Guide to Watercolor Painting? It's fantastic, and I just love the way he expresses himself. I love his passion, and he's definitely not shy about giving his opinions about art, and artists, and what he thinks they should be. Brilliant stuff.
Okay. That's about it. Not much goin' on. Work is...well...it pays the bills. I have about 12 precut mats to fill up. So I'm gonna get painting...
Tell me a story. You know I love the company.
