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Day 15: 30 Watercolors in 30 Days - Hill Top

Posted on 1/15/2015 10:23:02 AM by Vianna Szabo - Comment on this

Day 15 - Halfway Through!

Paper: Moleskin Watercolor Journal, Cold Press

Pigments: Windsor Newton 12 piece half pan set.

One of the reasons I wanted to do this challenge of painting a watercolor a day was to influence my other work. I was in a rut and knew that learning a new medium would open up new possibilities in my approach to painting. Yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to see how watercolor has influenced my oils.

I was scheduled to paint an oil landscape from a photograph for the Shelby Fine Art Society. The focus was on how to interpret a photograph to give it a fresh painterly feel. I decided to do a watercolor sketch in the Moleskin Watercolor Journal as preparation for my demo. It was a beautiful blue sky sunny winter day so I parked myself in front of a large window and happily painted this scene of a white farm house. I changed the sky to blue with big fluffy clouds and tried to get the feeling of a cold day with a light snow cover on the ground.

I was excited to paint in oils, since it was a few weeks since I had picked up my brushes. I mixed my palette ahead of time. I wanted the same bright lights and luminous shadows that I am getting in watercolor. I made the sunlit sides of the house the lightest value, then mixed my blue sky and shadows the same value but with different color ranges. I also mixed a pile of orange and yellow the same value so I could "charge" the shadows with reflected light. Charging is when you drop a different color into a wash and let them mix. The hard part is to trust it and leave it alone before it dries. I did the same in oil; I laid in the shadow color and when I added the warm tones I brushed them on top and did not go back and fool with them. I like the freshness of the paint application. I did not get a chance to finish during the demo but will work on it this weekend. Here is the demo.