Rainbow Bisque

This tree represents my first excursion out into the wild...ok, it's a tree at the elementary school around the corner. I could probably see this tree from my back patio if I wanted. So I didn't travel far to capture this tree, but it represents a couple big steps in my watercolor journey. First of all, I've never done any sort of major painting outside. I set up my portable chair and did this whole piece start to finish over my lap (sometimes holding an umbrella in my other hand, due to the sporadic rain). I look forward to working like this more in the future. Secondly, this is my first painting with watercolor pencils. I have had next to no experience with watercolor in pencil form. How much water can be used? How well do these things blend? How many layers of pigment can you get away with using? There's still a lot of unanswered questions, but I like the results. Does my drawing/painting look like the tree I was looking at? Eh, kind of. The colors of the leaves

I wanted to try a few new things out tonight. First off, this is the first time I've used a liner brush for fine lines in a watercolor painting. Second, I tried out a dry brush technique on the foreground - using the very little water and painting with the side of my brush. Watercolor landscape painting is mystifying to me. Watching a professional work through color choices and composition while inventing techniques for representing various settings and objects is inspiring. I think I may be on my way to trying out some on-site watercolor landscape painting later this week. Lastly, I think I am using too much water in my palette. That's easy enough to fix.

I don't really like the way this one turned out - but I learned a ton! I am now 100% certain that doing a practice run in graphite is the way to go. I know that a little pthalo blue added to brown makes a rich, cool, brown. And I know the importance of making small, incremental, tone changes as I proceed through the piece. There are probably many more things I can learn by continuing to draw this bag. Perhaps this will make a good warm-up exercise in the future.

Yeah, more fruit. This time around I wanted to approach the painting in the more traditional manner - light to dark. I got a little impatient (my ultimate downfall in a lot of these pieces) on the shaded side, but I like the overall look much better. Using purple for my shadows really made for more rich colors.

This piece looks finished now. I tried some new techniques with masking tape and one of those magic eraser sponges (a pretty amazing watercolor tool, surprisingly).

This bottle, man. Whew. I spent some quality time sketching this one out before embarking on this crazy journey. Sometimes I take on projects that I feel are a little out of my comfort zone. Here, I've really stepped out. I tried out a bunch of different techniques here. I used masking tape to keep the label clean until the end. The bottle is made up of a series of transparent glazes. I used some white gouache to create some of the highlights (though lifting and liquid mask techniques tend to produce more pronounced highlights). I would like to go back in and fill out the label - that's the only part of this that screams "unfinished". I will definitely seek out and include more transparent items in my still-lifes. I would also like to use some of my free-time on non-painting days to practice color mixing and washes.

I'm no stranger to the idea of glazes and under-painting - nor am I a stranger to bananas. I think this marks the first time I ever created a tonal under-painting for a watercolor and the first time I ever painted a watercolor banana. The results are pretty good. I will say that in the future, I will use light colored glazes rather than grey for under-painting. This time around, I should have experimented with purple. This would allow me to darken without giving up intensity and play to the strength of watercolor.

Based on a photograph from a really awesome book about mushrooms. This one is called a parrot waxcap. Here, I've tried to build color slowly from light to dark. I also just purchased a new set of brushes that I was eager to try out - in particular, a smaller round taklon and a cat's tongue brush. This was a fun piece to color and try new ways of expressing surfaces and edges. I'm not a fan of the background, though. It feels a little rushed and it doesn't provide the contrast I was hoping for. Oh well. Next time.

This evening's painting is actually two paintings. Inspired by a project in the book Fairyland , I sketched out a basic layout and duplicated it with my lightbox. The point of the project was to show how color and light can change the meaning or mood of a piece. I was hoping to apply faint, white qouache to the castle in the night time scene and create a kind of glow. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get my washes dark enough to use that technique. I am still learning how to properly mix my paint and load my brushes. Things still feel a bit...random.