Learning Mode: Trees and Small Figures

A Walk In The Snow, 2.5"x3.5", watercolor on 90# Bienfang

Last week in watercolor class, my tutor taught me to paint wet-in-wet trees on the horizon, and small figures. This is a practice piece using those techniques.

More Sitting Pretty (ACEO)

Sitting Pretty Purple, 2.5"x3.5", Watercolor on Canson 90#

Another mini-painting on the Sitting Pretty theme. Limited pallette, using quinacrodone rose, ultramarine blue, and viridian. Quin rose and ultramarine mix a beautiful purple that granulates. The eyes are hansa yellow. The gray is mixed from ultramarine and burnt umber.

Pears, For Practice

Three Pears, 6"x9", watercolor on Arches 140#

I painted these three pears while I was working on my color studies last week. I'm fairly happy with the pears and the shape of the shadows. I'm not happy with the way the darker pigment deposited itself within the shadow. I would have liked for it to be smoother.

In Learning Mode...

I'm taking watercolor lessons from a local artist. Since I'm the only student at the moment, I'm getting personalized attention. In our first session we covered color mixing and complementary colors on a standard split primary palette. Yesterday, I spent the day making paint swatches, looking up pigment properties, and mixing samples. Today, I selected the paints I'll use in my palette, then painted spheres using color complements for shading.

Sitty Pretty (ACEOs)

Sitting Pretty Green & Sitting Pretty Orange

(2.5x3.5) Watercolor on 90# Canson

More small paintings. These are color studies for a larger painting. Both have Paynes gray underpainting. The underpainting on the orange dragon seemed terribly dark when I started, but I think it turned out okay.