Bird and Berries

I really do enjoy working with my watercolor pencils. Just watching the color blossom as the brush goes on is a thrill for me.

Matt on the River

A few weeks ago I got a chance to head down to part of the Wisconsin River with my friend Matt. He wanted to fish and I wanted to do some 'plein air' painting (painting outdoors). So while he was catching bluegills, I had my folding chair and sat in the shade painting away. I was glad I had made those swatches of color I've posted about earlier. They were a great help in helping determine what colors the background trees were and which shade of blue the sky. It was a good exercise for me, as a lot of my drawing and painting I do from my imagination and this helped me work on seeing the colors as they actually are.

Matt caught eight fish.

Working on textures

My latest project has me practicing the layering of color. I'm attempting to get smooth gradients from lighter to darker shades, with only occasional success, by layering successive washes of color onto the previous ones.

My palette probably has too many colors for this painting, but I wanted to get a good diversity of color for the rock wall. The viridian tree on the right doesn't seem to match the intensity of the rest of the painting. I think I'll need to work on the shadows more and increase the contrast to make the lighter parts pop more.