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.

 

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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.

 

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Just messing around

Attempting to match the spontaneity of Fealing Lins's One Fine Day.

Better. More transparent and more interesting. 

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Practice, practice, practice...

 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Reardon workshop day 3

 

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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.

 

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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.

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April 7th

Shadow is off

 

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"Is it a fox or a cat?"

A cat from the same book. I forgot what it's face looked like by the the time I was ready to paint it. Ha!

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Mimicry for another book.

This was good practice.

 

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Lighthouse

 

Another brown rimmed painting. This is an internet image I found to paint so I'm pretty much apathetic about the boring results.

 

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Prickly Pear copy

 

This is an attempt to copy from one of my amazing book. I couldn't get it right. I'll try again later.

 

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White Rock Lake

Small painting of White Rock Lake.

 

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Another apple

 

This is better, without the fake dark background. I'm using bigger brush strokes and like the effect.

 

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Another attempt

Yeah! This isn't awful. I can't get the tape off without ripping or cutting. Luckily, it's cheap paper and an old set of pan paints, probably purchased before wal-mart even existed. I've sized a few of these, so will be using them up before I get to try staples and masking tape

It's an apple set up with a incandescent spotlight directly to its left. The shine looks good on camera, but actually lost a bit of paper when I scraped off the masking fluid.

Lessons learned:

1. Don't use brown tape that requires extra work to remove.

2. Let the paint dry completely before removing masking fluid.

3. Don't have a dark background if unnecessary.

 

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Learning watercolor

So, I going to learn watercolor.

Pathetic attempt at alpenglow. Yuck!

I did a few good paintings in the mid-eighties but always felt it was luck that they turned out as well as they did. It is a medium that intimidates me, so I will go through my collections of art books, research technique online and take workshop from the artists that I admire most.

I will hold myself accountable to paint and post daily that which I've painted, regardless of embarrassing results. There will be many embarrassments.

Busy again

Busy again. I'll post results soon.