Advancing with Watercolor: Winter Trees - "The Foot of the Tree"

Advancing with Watercolor: Winter Trees - "At the Foot of the Tree"

Week 1 - winter trees

I am starting with a general description of the path I take toward building a painting - throughout the series you will see like ideas and the way I like to develop an image. For me the initial experience is what I return to again and again to find the inspiration and discover what is meaningful in its execution. I will show you some simple concepts and practices that I use and though your own exercise you will decide what is helpful to your process..In this scene I felt the cold of winter presented in contrasts. Dark against Light, soft against hard, warm against cold…. and large against small…

Clearly I identified with the Squirrel

What will you need this week

For this weeks class I will use a piece of Saunders rough surface 14 x 16
I use this paper for the other video as well

Brushes

I will be issuing a 2” wide flat  brush for the early stages , followed by a 1” flat, and couple of sabelettes,  #10, #14 to paint the branches and trees

Colors

Yellow ochre, cobalt blue, burnt Sienna, a little white and Paynes gray and sepia…,

Other materials include

Other stuff

Masking tape, a rigid board, spray bottle, paper towel

What will we do this week

We will start our series with the demo of the “Tree with a View” and exercise a couple of techniques…

Working wet into wet with gradations

See supplemental video in our email

Following this stage and drying off the painting we will work with dry technique - taking advantage of the rough surface of the paper

Homework

For our first homework I have include 4-5 interesting photos which you may use to paint the foot of the tree - of course using your own photos would be better as you can tap into your experience..