Works in Progress

A collection of random notes about my successes and failures as I paint in watercolor

Some days the paintings work, and some days they don’t. Yesterday’s was a real stinker, and I’m trying to figure out why. (Maybe I’ll post a picture of it later.) The scene was a group of backlit trees and a tombstone painted late in the afternoon. The foreground was in […]

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I was very happy with the latest lion that I painted last Thursday.

The ninety-plus degree heat and a code red smog alert made the working conditions less than pleasant. The actual sky was light and hazy; I darkened it considerably after I got home.
This lion was a rework of another […]

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I did another watercolor outside this morning. Although I wasn’t entirely happy with the results, I did manage to take pictures after each wash. Here’s what I did:
Step 1: Working out a Battle Plan
The subject was a white statue in shadow. The challenge was to get the statue dark enough to read as […]

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I did this watercolor early in the morning about a week ago at Oakland Cemetery. Finding a shady spot in which to work was a challenge and forced me to work from a radical viewpoint, which made for some dramatic foreshortening. Overall, I was pleased with the result.

Materials and Technique
I used Arches 140# Rough […]

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