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!