Thursday, February 2, 2012

The idea for this watercolor came to me a couple of months back when I saw the most unusual exhibit at the MFA.  It was a case with bottles and mirrors and were arranged in such a way as to appear to go back in space infinitely. It was a mind-blowing image and it stuck with me.  Once again I needed to depend on my memory of winters past to come up with a snowy scene.  I am not complaining about the unseasonably warm weather we are having.  My mood is still winter and for creating art that is all that matters.  I suggested to my students that they take a try at copying this.  I know they understand that these are my compositions and they shouldn't represent these works as their own by signing copies, showing or selling them.  I just want them to practice the techniques involved so they can use them in future paintings of their own.  I suppose artists always risk someone clipping their ideas but I feel students should have more respect for a person helping them to grow as artists.

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Stone Cold

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

I have been doodling quite a bit with stone shapes and decided I would put then in a watercolor sketch.  Lots of putting and in and taking out of paint to model the stones finished by scraping with a razor blade to give the effect of snow covering.  I also got a chance to practice a house shape and some wet in dry washes in the background tree shape. 

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Long, lonely winter

Monday, January 23, 2012

This is a three value watercolor painted from a value sketch greeting card.  The dimensions are exactly twice the size of the original study and was done to show my students how to scale up a painting incrementally. The washes were first applied in flat poster-like and separate value fields.  Detail was then added to each area to without upsetting the home value to create a more realistic interpretation.

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Come Fly With Me

Friday, January 20, 2012

Next week I want to teach my students the technique of graded washes and thought this scene would be doable at their level of skill and experience.  It's a fun painting using 3 shapes, 3 values and 3 colors. It will give them an opportunity to balance with notan and to noodle the foreground weeds and bric a brac. It will also teach them a way of using white in an area that's not snow. Great illusion of light.   I used to paint scenes like this quite often when I lived in Marshfield.

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As Cool it Gets

Friday, January 20, 2012

This began as an exercise using two colors to depict a simple three shape composition. When looking at it with fresh eyes I decided to create a larger forest of trees using a bit of Hooker's green with burnt sienna to bring the dominant tree forward. 

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