Sky Studies

One of Two-Wet on Wet vs Wet on Dry

This week I spent some time working on sky studies. Clouds and sunsets, colors and techniques to improve my landscapes.

Prompted by World Watercolor Month for clouds last week, I decided to spend more time getting to know skies a bit more. After all, I’ve spent a lot of time up there and I certainly have seen some beautiful skies.

Two of two Wet-on-Dry

Steve Mitchell, The Mind of Watercolor, had a good tutorial on clouds the other day working in both wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry techniques. As you can see in these to photographs each has its own merits depending upon the affect I’m trying to achieve. Naturally I didn’t want to waste the paint and time so what do we to with two cloud/sky studies? We add a landscape of course!

Continue reading Sky Studies

Arizona Landscapes

Our visit to Bryce Arboretum last month included some stunning landscapes.

I decided to experiment a bit and went larger than I usually paint; this time 8×10 rather than 5×7. The combination of mountains in the background, trees and bushes in the mid-ground  and yucca trees/plants in the foreground gave me a chance apply wash first rather than adding wash after the pen & ink. Continue reading Arizona Landscapes