Friday, April 18, 2014

Nordic Inn

Watercolor
12 x 18 inches

This is the Nordic Inn in Mt Crested Butte. We can see it from our balcony.

The painting took 4 days. I tried to have as much wet-in-wet as possible, learning all about greys which tie it all together.

 

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Partially completed Nordic Inn

This has taken many hours, much longer than I thought. Tomorrow.

I'm learning the value of washed out greys. They are lovely to put a drop of color in. I'm also learning to go back and soften egdes that were to dark. Using strathford paper is working well, as it forces me to limit lifting out areas.

 

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Bandit at Lake Irwin

This is one of our favorite hikes, Scarpe Ridge. Bandit loves the hikes because he gets carried when he gets tired.

Paper: Stratford 400 140 lb. WC artist grade paints (Daniel Smith and Winsor & Newton): Phthalocyanine blue (RS) for shadows and UMB for shadows. Viridian, carmine and cobalt for atmospheric colors. Quinacrodone gold, Cadmiun orange, quinacrodone burnt orange and quinacrodone burnt scarlet for warm colors. Phthalocyanine green (YS) for my greens and finally titanium, embarrassingly, to cover up my mistakes in the focal area.

The drawing took forever.. I obviously need to spend more drawing. Ha! I spent so much time erasing that I was certain the watercolor paper would be damaged. The painting went fast at times and slow at others. My attempts were to do mostly wet-in-wet with a decent drawing to create boundaries. Tomorrow is another day.

24hrs later: Brian really likes this but I am very unsatisfied. It took to long and I overworked many areas. It's most likely a matter of experience with the medium. I think I'll focus on individual aspects of this and try again later in the week.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Another lighthouse


Another one of that lighthouse. I just used colors where I thought they would be, instead of looking at the reference photo.

Brian noticed that the image is darker than the original, especially the blues. I need to figure that out before I post again.

Friday, April 11, 2014

Sunset path by the sea.

Inspired by another online image. I'm not sure about this yet. I like the warm tone. This has a bit of cad orange, but mostly it is produced by the quinacrodones: gold, burnt orange, burnt scarlet and balanced by phtalo blue and carmine in the shadows.

Value study below.


24 hours later, the pathway shadows are to dark. Focal area is confusing.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Reardon workshop, Day 2

 

Started with a diluted wash of cobalt on top and cadmium orange on the bottom. Background is lovely...diluted mixture of atmospheric colors: carmine (basically alizarine crimson substitute), cobalt and viridian. The foreground is disappointingly darker that I prefer. The path turned out nice. The focal point is supposed to be the water on the rocks...

It's not awful.

 

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Reardon workshop day 1

Blech!! Background way to dark. This is definitely going to be used for the back of the sheet. I did learn a lot. I will post later, after it's been processing for a while.