Blog

Day 2.

Paper: Fluid (Brand) Cold Press

Pigments: Burnt Sienna, Cerulean Blue, Quinacridone Red, Ultramarine Blue, Raw Sienna (Utrecht) Lemon Yellow (Windsor Newton)

My goal today was to paint a watercolor that looked like a watercolor.  My tendency is to layer like a pastel painter but this time I wanted to play with washes.  I experimented with dropping color into the initial wash without adding extra water. This painting is a scene from one of my favorite plein air spots.  Without snow there is a stark beauty to the Michigan landscape that is bathed in ochers and violets.

Here is the start.

The sky is wet with clean color then I loaded the brush with cerulean blue and painted the sky.  While it was still wet I picked up quinacridone red and brushed it into the horizon and bottom of the clouds.  For the foreground I painted a wash of clean water and then brushed raw sienna into it with a band of burnt sienna in the front and the violet from the sky into the dark triangle on the left.  I began to add the details to the house using a dry brush to reserve the whites.

Now the lights and mid-tones are in and I can begin to see if the composition will work.  The background trees were a very wet mix of burnt sienna, with cerulean and ultramarine blue dropped in.

I add the darks to the trees and suggest the limbs.  I am tempted to stop but the painting feels flat.  To me the magic of painting lies in making a 2-d sheet of paper feel 3 dimensional.  So I take a breath and add the finishing touches.

In the final version I added a band of cerulean blue under the burnt sienna so the foreground would "talk" to the sky.  I pumped up the lemon yellow in front of the large tree.  The intensity of color in the front pushed the building into the background.  Now I am happy.

What I learned.

I need to practice brush strokes to get different types of gestural lines.  This is something I can do on a scrap of paper in my spare time.

Do not add extra water into a wash, only add pigment, trust this and watch magic happens as it dries.

If you are interested in learning more about creating dimension in painting I will be teaching a workshop in Ann Arbor, Michigan, March 23-25, called "Painting the illusion of depth and atmosphere."  It is 3 days of exercises and critique designed to take your paintings from flat to "wow!"  The information is relevant to all subject matter and mediums.  For information click here