Mid-Fall Trees

My palette is continuing to be a place of great learning for me! What fun it is to discover new combinations! I recently added Quinacridone Gold and Thalo Blue to the palette. Both of these colors have the ability to create some of the most wonderful greens. Because I've added two colors, I needed to remove two colors, in order to keep the palette limited. I removed Cerulean Blue and Cadmium Yellow. This doesn't mean I'll never use them. It just means that the focus of my learning will be with using these two new colors and how they work (or not) with the rest of the palette.

10.5 x 14.25" watercolor, $95.00, unframed

Ocean in Black

This piece is another of my favorites. It is a study of values. I loaded the brush with pigment and water and with it created a wash for the sky and then for the ocean. The clouds were created by pulling pigment off the page with a damp brush. The pigment is not actually black but, rather, a mix of ultramarine blue and burnt umber. If you click on the image, you can get a close-up view and see how the two pigments have separated on the page in a few areas. I think that makes for a subtle and interesting effect.

9.5 x 6.25" Watercolor wash, $65.00, unframed

New Birch

I call this piece New Birch because it's a contrast to the image of a birch I use as my logo, which I created about six years ago. You can find the logo on my website, www.birchtreestudioart.com. Compare the two vastly different styles! I love them both. But I think this one reflects more technique with the medium of watercolor. Look at the area on New Birch where the foliage meets the trunk. I love how the colors from the foliage seem to drip into the shape of the trunk. What do you think? Do you like on style over the other?

10.75 x 4.5" Watercolor, $75.00, unframed

Green Forest

This image was as study in negative painting. The idea is to first create a base wash of color with a loaded brush. The brush is loaded with lots of pigment and some water. Bringing in a variety of colors during this first wash can produce some exciting results but I chose to stick with a within the green family. I then threw a bit of salt into this wet layer and let dry. Once this layer is dry, I drew in some tree trunks and painted around the trunks. Essentially, painting in the negative spaces between the trunks. I used darker pigments during this process and less water than the first layer, but still somewhat wet. When this dried, I repeated the second step one more time. When all was dry, I brushed off the salt and ended up with this little gem!
10.5 x 4.5" Watercolor, $85.oo, unframed

Cow & Barn

This piece is based on a photo in a Yankee Travel magazine, . I saw the photo while flipping through the magazine and new right away that I wanted to do something based on it. It is not a "copy" of the photo. I rearranged elements to come up with a composition I liked. I was concentrating on using more pigment than what I'm used to, composition, and creating a pleasing balance of values.

3.5 x 6.5"$55.00, unframed.

Week of October 14th

Hi friends!

I have some new works to share with you! All are watercolor paintings. I'm beginning to explore a new direction with watercolors and am practicing with them fairly regularly. Last week I participated in a four-day landscape painting workshop given by Ann Lyndsay (www.annlyndsey.org). She is a wonderful teacher and through the exercises she was teaching, I was able to narrow my focus and identify exactly where my struggle has been with painting. It's so liberating to identify what my weaknesses are! Once I identified my specific challenges, I only wanted to take off and start the process of improving these specific skills.
My challenges lie with values and pallette. My colors have tended to be too watered down, too mid-toned throughout the images I paint. There's not enough pigment to give pizazz and pow to my paintings. I think I've changed that! Or at least I've started to change that. I learned that I really like a bright pallette. I don't like using too many neutrals. I envision spending the majority of this winter working on new paintings that have this central focus: deeper colors (more pigment, less water) and a pleasing balance of values (lights and darks). I'll be out and about taking photos and working on preliminary sketches in the field that will then be used to create finished paintings. When the weather warms up again I'll try my hand at plein air painting, hopefully with these new skills perfected over the winter.

All of the new art is posted above this entry. All of it is for sale. Prices and other details are listed alongside the image. As always, I'm very interested in feedback from you so take a moment to let me know what you think!

I will continue to post new art on this blog as quickly as I can get it uploaded. My website continues to be a central location of information and will be updated seasonally. But my blog will be the place to look for the freshest and newest of my work and a place for interaction with you. Please send my blog to anyone and everyone whom you think would appreciate what I am doing. Thanks!