5 days and 6 paintings later

Ok, now you are probably wondering why I have 6, isn't 5 enough in 5 days, well, yes it is but, tomorrow is Sunday and I do need to spend some time with my husband, he works long hours and we don't get much time together so I decided I would probably be painting 2 on Saturday, one for Sunday too.  I am going to try to do something other than landscapes, maybe I'll start that on Monday, we'll see.  But, for now I have 2 very cute little landscapes, one I've done before a little larger (and not square either), I started working with these opaques and I have enjoyed them, I usually use transparent watercolors, but I was introduced to the opaques in a workshop with Donna Zagotta, she works very opaque, very fun. 

Now, the first painting, the marsh, this is a little painting of a marsh at the Pierce Cedar Creek Preserve near Dowling (probably didn't spell that corectly, sorry), my friend and I went there to retrieve our paintings from a show that the South West Michigan Watercolor Society had there last year, then we went out and took lots of photo's around the place and this one was when we were on our way out.  I started it out wet in wet, as per, then went in and worked my way down the page, first the distant trees and then the water, I put the greens in the foreground in and after it was dry went back in and painted some opaque light blue over the water dry in the distance and wet in the foreground, I layered the darks over the mid-tone greens and then went back in with some opaque white for the highlight on the lily pads in the foreground, the last to go in was the little tree in the foreground and the weeds.

Now, the next painting, this one is very opaque, more so than the other 2, like the others, I started out wet in wet and then proceeded to kinda paint opaquely behind the tree shapes and once I got the tree shapes where I wanted them, then I put some mid value washes for the tree trunks, with opaques the paint dries darker, with the transparent it dries lighter.  I had to really layer and layer with this one, then in order to warm it up I put a thin transparent yellow wash over the grass in the sunlight, the tree trunks had to get darker too and so did the shadows of the foliage, I worked these back and forth not staying in one area long, I paint like that quite frequently, making dark and light adjustments as I work.  The foreground grass in the shade and the branches laying in the foreground were put in last, using some darks and then some opaques over that and finally some grass shapes, looks good to me.  Hope you enjoy them both.