Watercolors Continued… June 22, 2006
Posted by Mitchell in Home.trackback
After the ugly bottles we started getting into landscape elements. The instructor painted a couple happy trees, one via brush only and the second using a sponge for the leafy material. I don't usually draw happy, leafy trees. I like naked, "attack" trees.
Eh. Better than the bottles or the flowers, but not particularly good. I didn't bother to finish it.
Next up – he showed a rockscape on a screen. Paint!
Mmm. Starting to get a little better. Watercolors demand a very different style of working than I'm used to. You have to be fast and accurate, in a non-hurried and un-specific manner. Yes, that makes no sense but it really is that way.
The instructor reminded me that I need to do a leafy tree. I went forth and I treed.
Not bad for a first effort at spongewielding. The instructor chided me for not putting in a sky or ground. I was wanting to get on to something else so I hadn't bothered. Fine – a quick sky & ground. The instructor then chided me for putting in a heavy sky that left a halo around the tree – I should have just suggested a sky and left it mostly white. He will remind me many more times about not leaving a halo in upcoming practice sessions.
Gotta run – more to come.
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The Center of the Anomaly 
Seems like you have an urge to create a skewed symmetry between the sky and the water/ground. Like in the attack tree and the second seascape. More monsters from the Id?
Geoff – no, I don’t think so. Remember the sea stuff was just practice with some painterly effects, there was no effort to create any kind of composition. As for the tree – it’s unfinished. Originally I had in mind a tree on a rocky prominence high above the middle ground that fades into the mountains. The tree wasn’t working because I was doing to much. Maybe I’ll finish it anyway, just to get some practice with craggy rock features.
there was no effort to create any kind of composition.
Yeah, but that’s when the Id comes out. It just struck me when I looked at the 2nd seascape that the crests of the waves were not very distorted versions of the clouds above. And your attack tree had that roots = branches thing going on. Like you’re a dualism kind of guy. Or maybe it says more about me than it does about you.
I like both of the trees.