5.15.2015

Blood Moon


Having fun with Schmincke's tro-col bronze dry gouache powder. We had an eclipse recently and I was inspired to come up with a dramatic piece involving the moon. I remember my old art teacher, Jerry Stitt, telling us it's never a good idea to have a large orb in your painting which the eye then gravitates towards. So the way around it is to create a cloud or two across the  circle which breaks it up and lets the eye circulate around the painting. I used indanthrone blue, new gamboge and perrylene maroon watercolors and sprinkled the Schmincke's dry gouache in pale gold over the wet watercolor and rocked it back and forth until I was satisfied with the pattern. I love experimenting with interesting materials to stretch the boundaries of watercolor. Schmincke has a few different colors in their tro-col-bronze dry gouaches. You can get some interesting results mixing them in with your watercolors.

5.10.2015

Fall Glory


I know it's not yet that time of year, but I wanted to experiment with a combination of yellows and oranges for a course I am creating on the site udemy.com on how to paint a fall landscape. I am pleased with these particular color combinations and think I will go with them. It's paradoxical that fall leaves create such a beautiful site in their dying throes. I used Daniel Smith's new gamboge,  golden ochre, cadmium red mixed with new gamboge and French ultramarine mixed with burnt umber for the few darks in the leaves. For the ground area I dribbled sepia ink over the watercolors for texture.