I have deep-dived into painting these last few weeks and I can't seem to get enough. Specifically, I am starting to notice and try to capture more of the light and shadow if I can. Below you will see several paintings from different locations and I will try to hash out some of the details.
A day at the park and I saw a bright spot of flowers illuminated with light through some trees. I got excited about the idea of capturing this but really was not entirely prepared for how to do it. Shadow isn't just a darker color of the pre-existing landscape. It's blue toned in most cases but it's tricky.
I met with the local Dane County Plein Air Painter group and we went to Donald County Park (located in Dane County--no I don't get it either). I noticed the dramatic shadows at play and tried to capture them without making things too dull by just using a dark green for the shadows. I went with a purple-ish tone instead. Both of these paintings were warm-ups for the next painting that I was to do "in studio" not plein air.
The big show coming up in Carson City for the second annual watercolor event--and the deadline is fast appraoching. I learned a lot about technique last year from Kristi Grussendorf during one of her demos. Last year, I really had no idea what I was doing and broke a lot of traditional rules with watercolor. This year, the prospectus is really detailed. I can only use 20% or less ink, no claybord, etc.
Kristi explained that high quality painter's tape is better than frisket--so thats what I used. Painstakingly carved out the detailed areas to preserve the white, it is the lime green areas.
Luckily, years of working with perspective for comic books helped prepare me for some of the challenges of this image. I liked this image mostly for the dramatic shadows that play with the landscape and had a chance to capture the enchanting wonder of Carson City. I did a light very thin line of ink to get the details down just right as I did not want to get close to crossing the 20% ink limit and get disqualified. However, I needed something solid to paint against and erase the pencil. I also learned from last year that once graphite gets wet on watercolor paper it becomes permanent. This isn't always a bad thing, but for the level of detail happening here I did not want to add unnecessary details. I am also using that fancy paint color palette mostly Grumbacher and Daniel Smith watercolor. This is kind of uncomfortable for me, so I did a few practice trees.
The finished product after using black watercolor to simulate ink lines, I did the "inking" outlines after everything else was done. I sent a photo to a few art friends who provided me great feedback to darken the shadows at the last minute. Big thanks to Carolyn and Brittany!
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