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.