Watercolor Painting - Winter Sky III

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.

Graphite Sketch - February. Already!?

Another month has passed. I learned many things in January. I think the most important thing I learned was..."Think before you Paint". Seems simple, but I know I don't do it enough. Or at least, I don't think about all the things I should. Value studies, color studies, planning composition...all get forgotten and I just jump in flinging.
So! February will be Learning to Think month.
Myrna's challenge this month is a little less structured than last month. I am to pick a subject, choose a technique to work on, pick one design element to work on, and add one more design element per painting to emphasize.
So I have purchased some lovely fruit, taken about 3 dozen pictures of it. And that is my subject for the month.
I am going to work on the same technique as Myrna - Wet in Wet. I use it in small areas, but would like to learn what it can really do in a painting. Many of the artists I admire use it to great advantage, so I'm going to give it a shot.
The design element I am going to work on is value. I don't pay nearly enough attention to value in my paintings. I never do value studies, and I do not really know how to plan the values so they enhance a painting. So that's what I'll be working on this month - The Values of Wet Fruit!

Here is the first picture I'll be painting from, along with the first sketch. I assume that as I work on seeing the varying values in a picture, I'll eventually better understand how to use them in my paintings. Any tips and critiques you can give are more than welcome!



I have some lovely pictures of these pears, plus some with wonderful dark purple plums, and a mango. But, I'll just start with the pears, and see how it goes.
Not much else going on around here. Had a house full of kids this weekend (nieces and nephews). They are great kids, and I love them all to pieces, but boy oh boy, I do enjoy the quiet when they go home!! Lovely.

Okay. Off to do some 'sketches' of fruit. See where it takes me.

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