Skip to main content

Plein Air

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/needles are too warm. The strokes that represent the foliage don't accurately describe the form of the tree. That trunk is pretty nice though. And, taken as its own thing, I'm pleased with how this turned out.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ice Skating Characters

 

A Competent Profile

As I start to become more familiar with proportions and measurements for the various faces I attempt to draw, I am starting to wonder how to make a more complete portrait with my limited time. Do I stick to lines? Do I bring a brush and some ink? Which lines should I include? Which shapes are important to represent? Maybe this is a good time to look at the work other artists have done and try to work out some of their methods.

Inktober Day 3 - "Bait"

Old school pen and ink. I haven't used a crow quill pen since high school - and, even then, I remember struggling to get it to work. This time, I thought I would try to create something using only cross-hatching. The prompt word today is "bait". This word took me into a lot of different ideas, but the one I ultimately landed on is based on the will-o-wisp. In my head, I imagined glowing orbs in front of a copse of swamp trees all created with layers of cross-hatching. Things had to be scaled back a bit. There are still two trees in the background if you look hard enough. Success? Sort of. It forced me to use a different kind of pen and, in doing so, made me want to keep going and get better with it.