Happy Valentine's Day painting # 21

Here we are, I've finished 3 weeks, I'm just hoping that I don't get burnt out, that's my style (sad to say), I'm really am tired but the painting is a plus, and is making me happy. I've been really good today, I told you yesterday that I was going to work on more than my blog painting, and I did, although I may not have, but I had to work on something at Blue Moon, I know, I'm bad, I would like to accomplish the work and paint my other stuff too, I have lots of work in my bag that needs to be finished, I also have a couple of shows I'd like to have some new work ready for entry, you guys have to help me out here, give me a little push, that's what I need, I will have to let you know if I manage to get something done, the deadline for the Michigan Watercolor Society show is March 5th, not too far off. I've never gotten in that show, maybe I can soon, I hope. Well, I'm not counting the ink resist as my blog painting, it's much larger than my prerequisite size, I worked on it a couple weeks ago at Blue Moon, we worked (obviously) on ink resist, I decided to jump in and do up this picture of my friend Carol and her Sister (well, you have to understand, it's not a perfect likeness, when you do ink resist you don't have as much control), first you make the drawing, then you fill in the spaces with tempera, then when it's dry you wash on the ink and when that's dry, you wash off the ink and the tempera and you have your basic line drawing (in ink) that you then fill in with watercolor, it can be fairly flat, that's ok, it's just fun, so I'll show you what I have but this isn't the painting.

Ok, now for the blog painting, it's a landscape again, love those landscapes on that clayboard, this one isn't as controled as some of the others, I like it, it seems a bit more abstract than the others and less photographic I think. I jumped in with both feet and didn't sketch this one, I determined the bank by laying in a wash of some green and then into the raw sienna, I'm not sure if the color is the same as the luscious golden color I used the other day or not, but it looks close, this one happens to be Maimeri Blue (not sure if I spelled that right), but it seems a bit stickier than the other one, I'll figure it out and keep looking. then I washed in a thin layer of green where the tree leaves are and I used violet with both the greens and the raw sienna (to darken and gray it down), I added some burnt sienna in too and some VanDyke Brown here and there, but mostly I used the purple. The first layers were pretty thin, I kept building up the water and the tree area, then I took a damp brush and lifted some color off to indicate the highlights on the water, in the foreground I wiggled them a bit, then went back in with some color to darken and indicate the water movement, while I attempted to give the effect of reflections, the sun was really shining brightly (oh by the way, this picture was taken in the U.P. on a Nita Engle Workshop back in '89, I've looked at this picture several times and just now is the first I've painted it), doing this blog is giving me the opportunity to use some of these older photo's. So, then I darkened the trunks of the trees on the left side and indicated the branches, in the background I darkened a few, but tried not to get too dark, I lifted out a couple lights but then went in with darker green to make leaf shapes over the older ones, I just worked back and forth until I got it as good as I could, I think this one is very fresh, much less controlled than the others and I think that's good, I have about an hour and 1/2 in this one, I like it, hope you do too.