Painting # 73, still painting

Finished 2 today, and started a 3rd, but, I'm going away in June for 4 days and I'll need a couple extra, so, you are only gong to get one today.

This is one that I started Sunday (remember, I started 4), it really went well and I believe my Thursday group are waiting to see it on the blogspot (I didn't have it quite done when they left today), had to finish it when I got home. This painting looks really cold to me, most of the group only want me to paint spring or summer scenes now, they are tired of winter, I am to, but, I really enjoy painting winter scenes.

I started by laying a bunch of gray for the tree trunks then wiped in a bunch of dark green for the pines in the background, the gray was a bit purple gray and I laid it over the pine tree color to make certain that it looked like the pines were in the far background, I put in a cool very light blue gray color for the snow on the bank and then laid in the rusty color on the bank, I then mixed up a darker gray/blue color for the water area and added some turquoise blue into it in places to indicate the open water. The open water at the bottom was put in, medium blue for the water, and some purple for the tree reflections, while it was still wet. Then when this was dry, I started to put in some negative spaces in the upper right corner to indicate some lighter sky behind the naked tree branches. I just kept adding the gray/purple color, some lighter and some darker, for the tree trunks, then I moved on to the snow on the bank and when I had that in, I added some trunks pulled down into it so make it look like there were more than one layer of trees. The snow and frozen water were next, I used some purple with lots of white and some blue in spots to indicate that the water was open, and swirled it around then added more white to show that some of it was sticking up a bit and the light was hitting it more. The bottom water was really laid in thickly and charged in with more than one color, darker blue on the left and getting much lighter toward the right, the trees were put in while it was still wet, then I wiggled the brush to make it look like it was shimmery. The really close up skim of ice was just a small hunk of white and very pale blue at the bottom right, this is a wonderful little winter scene, hope you like it, I do.

Painting #72, transparent watercolor

This little painting was done a bit earlier, I painted today but the painting isn't up to my standards, I tried to finish it but I'm really tired, stayed up to late yesterday and up way too early this morning (spring break, the grandson was pounding on my door at 7:00 a.m. and I didn't get to bed until 2:30 a.m., not enough sleep for this chicken, I knew I wasn't up to getting it done tonight, it's late now, I had to work on some computer stuff earlier this morning and then this afternoon we had a Blue Moon meeting, just not enough time in the day lately, need about 4 more hours each day, but, given the way I work, that probably wouldn't be enough soon enough.

Anyway, this little painting is done with transparent watercolors, wet in wet, love the feel of this painting, I've done this composition before, it's one I painted with opaques on gray gesso, that painting was larger, a 1/4 sheet, so I tried this painting in the square format and really liked it, since this painting is transparent, you know I started with the background and that usually means the sky, then the far trees, as I move forward you just see so much more detail, the detail is done last.

When you paint transparently, you have to paint the light colors first and then add the dark colors at the end, and that's how this one was done, I like this painting and sure hope you do too.

Painting #71, busy day again today

I should have painted one of the paintings I started Sunday, oh no, can't do that, had to start a whole new one, then, it is a very complicated scene, and takes me over 4 hours of my day to finish it, 2 hours of class time and 2 hours plus, at home, to complete it. Just finished it and it's technically Wednesday (12:30 a.m.), at least in Michigan it is. I'm not getting anything else done, I should be able to whip these 6" paintings out in an hour and a half, but I really get involved with them and can't let it be until it looks as close to perfect as I can get it, I've shifted things, eliminated stuff, cropped it the photo, to make the composition work, I just get so wrapped up in the thing that I just can't let it go, don't know what I can do about that either, guess that's just the way it is.

Well, again, there is no sky, so I sketched the rock shapes and the falls and water shape with the light wash before I jumped into the green for the trees at the top, I didn't really see any yellow or orange in those far trees up on the high bank in this one, but with all the warmth of the rocks I decided to put a bit of it in, if you can tell, this was late October in Minnesota, and there was a skim of ice on the river and bits of frozen ice on the rocks at the falls, I hope you can tell that. I usually lay a thin wash of the local colors over the whole thing, pretty much so you don't see any of the white of the board, and that's what I did this time too, why change the procedure if it works, then I start at the top and add a bit more definition to the trees on the top, the second layer is more defined than the first but still needs fine tuning, and the same with the rocks and moving on down through the falls and the trees on the left and the right, I really didn't work much on the foreground until I did the 3rd and 4th layers and had the whole thing pretty much done except for that, I altered the trees shapes on the right side, they were just big lumps of trees hanging over the rocks, it looked static and I decided to let some of it hang over but decided to put some tree trunks on the upper part, there were none in the actual photo, so how this works is pretty much how I want to do it, it is my painting after all, and if any one has seen this particular river and falls and says that it wasn't like that, oh well, I like it this way better. Love this one too, hope you do too.

Pretty Cool, painting #70

This painting is one that I started yesterday, it was a busy day today, lots of things to get done, and then I had SWMWS (watercolor meeting), I had to transcribe the notes from last months minutes, and then I finished the painting, well, not exactly finished, I had about 20 min. of fine tuning to do when I got home, I had to put in the tree trunks and put in the foam on the water.

I started this one with the sky, a bit more purple than my usual sky. Then the trees and rocks that bring the water forward. The water is a mixture of blue, very light gray, a bit of green and lots of white, this gives me a nice greenish water base that I will enhance with bits of darker and lighter at a later time. I then worked up the trees a bit more, when they were so my satisfaction, I then worked up the rocks, I know what you are going to say, black, so dark, but that was the feel of this landscape, I get the impression that these rocks were from some volcanic era in the past, at any rate, they were dark, much darker than I even put them in, I started with purple/gray mixture, then added some blue for the highlights, then jumped right into the black to make the rocks dark enough. I started to work up the water then, of course it's the focal point, so I really enjoy this part, it's the part that makes me smile, love painting the water. I did bring it up to a point, not quite white where the water splashes, so that when I got home I could put the finishing touches on it. I really like this painting, sure hope you do too.

69 days, I was tempted today

It was a very close call, I wasn't sure I would be able to get this painting done, I actually started 4 (so much easier to start them than finish them), I was kind of lazy today, then the grand kids came, then dinner, then shopping (and ice cream), so, I was pretty wiped out, very tempted to not paint (or rather finish) one today, and then catch up tomorrow, but, I was good, I got out there and painted, this little scene caught my eye, love the oddness of it, just everyday stuff, I've painted this one once before, I did it in pastel (that's all I used to paint), then watercolor grabbed me, and so I'm hooked. I decided to use my regular opaque watercolors today, the liquid ones are ok, but I'm so used to the others that it seems easier, and it's on the clayboard (I did start one today on regular paper).

I started out with the sky and background trees, I laid the purple/blue/gray mixture in for the sky and then jumped right in with the darker gray/brown color for the background trees, I did make a very light blue wash for the far snow and then started to lay in the grassy color and some blue for shadows, the trailer was kind of neat, it is a color by Holbine and is very unique almost yellow but with a touch of reddish cast to it with lots of white, it's called Juan Brilliant (I am very bad about the spelling of some of these colors, I can't even begin to remember how to spell it, you can find in in the list of colors though), then the rusty oil tank, very cool, and the fence posts, then I attacked the small building on the left, I really meant for it to just be a dark color but I put it in too far from the edge so I had to give it a side and a roof edge, but it's ok, I think it works, the foreground was just a bunch of curved shapes in the grass color, then I went in with some blue for shadows, I went in at the very end and put in the tree branches on the top right and finished off with a bit of negative painting in the foreground, not as much as I usually do, but I think this little painting works, I like it and I sure hope you do too.

Painting #68, it's been a long day

Saturday is supposed to be relaxing, not so today, trying to get some stuff done on the computer. The Blue Moon Art Group is trying to get applications and pictures of paintings ready to apply for a residency, not known yet even if we will be accepted, but it sure would be a feather in our hats, still have lots of stuff to do, mostly getting the pictures together to take to the copy place to get very nice copies, then it's upgrade my art resume and also, need to finish updating my web site, I have let it sit the way it was when I first set it up, and I surely have painted a whole bunch of pictures that are not on there, so it will be a good thing, all be it a lengthy operation, one I'd rather not do, but, oh well, someone has to, and since I don't pay anyone to do it for me, guess who gets to do that now.

Well, I did have a very good start on this painting this morning before I got side tracked, then had to fix supper, and got tired (I always get tired when I eat), and so I didn't get to finish this until late, as I just finished it. I decided to try another barn painting, I liked how this one had a building going off on both sides of the picture, I also decided to use those liquid watercolors again to see how they reacted to the clayboard, not bad, I'm fairly happy with them except I need to contact Dr. PH Martin to let him know that I'm not happy with the sepia, it's really watery and doesn't have any pigment to speak of, all the other colors seem to be just fine. I did utilize the white with them, so this is really an opaque watercolor (as soon as you add white, they become opaque).

I like the way the clouds and sky looked in this one, kind of swirly, using this clayboard, you have to get used to that when you add a bunch of water, it just puddles. I painted the sky sort of a purple/blue/gray with white, then charged in with the the blue that's sort of green (I'd spell it but I'm not with the paints just now, oops, no brains, pthalo I think), anyway, I waited for that to dry, then added the roof lines in and the barn shapes, then charged in with green for the grass, this grass was difficult, it, obviously, hadn't ever been cut, so the weeds were very tall and dry so they had lots of patches of beige, very difficult for me to accomplish, so this is the best I could do with that, after layers and layers of over-lapping colors, then I decided to put in a wheel track with a mud puddle, since I didn't have one to go by, I tried to imagine what it might look like, does it work? So, then I put in the trees between the buildings and the telephone pole, I was going to go ahead and put in the wire but then decided that it would be on top of all the rest so I waited until last, I do like this painting now, hope you do too.

Painting #67, it was a struggle

This painting is a bit different, I decided to attempt to use my Dr. Ph. Martin's Liquid watercolors, I've had them for several months now, I attempted to play with them when I first got them, but have just been sitting since. Well, I thought I should get back into the transparent watercolors a bit, so I decided to see if I could make them work. For some strange reason, I decided to try this photo, well, I did struggle with it, all those bricks, I worked on it off and on all day, finally got it to a point that I felt it was as done as I could make it, I'm not as fond of it as I am of the waterfalls and the other water scenes, but you just can't paint water everyday, sooner or later, I'm going to run out of water photo's, so today I painted bricks, I think this is an interesting picture because of the hole in the wall, and the stuff that's growing inside the old building. This photo was taken in Bellevue, MI, it's an old furnace used to make bricks, they said it was where the bricks for the State Capital were made, obviously it's not still in use and is falling down, I really like scenes that you can look through and see things on the other side, although this looks pretty much the way it was, I believe that may need some other interest to pull you in, I'll think about that and decide if I will put something else in it or not, if I decide to, I'll let you know, I'll post it.

I'd like to explain about these watercolors, they come in bottles with eye droppers, so I didn't want to mix them in with my other watercolors, so I used a paper plate and put them by drops around the plate, then when I was mixing I used the center, that was where most of the paint went, as I used it up, I kind of just kept mixing other colors where I needed and used up the color that was there, so the colors all kind of got mixed together a bit, so none of the colors went on pure.

I started with the sky, wet in wet, then a thin wash of a mixture of cobalt violet (this cobalt violet is much darker than the stuff in the tube), and yellow ochre and a bit of indian red, when all that was dry, I put the green in the center hole. When that was dry, I started to fine tune the bricks a bit, I took my flat brush and started to make brick shapes, thinly, then I put some darker color green in at the bottom of the window area and put some darker shapes in for some tree limbs, I added a bit of orange to give it a bit more color, and put the tree coming over the top of the brick wall. When that was dry, I took my small round brush and put sompe pinkish color between the bricks, after that I darkened the part of the wall that was at the top behind the wall with the roof attached, to give it depth, then with the liner brush, I put some cracks in the bricks, that was pretty much it, I'm still looking at this painting, but it's as done as I can do just now, hope you like it.