Advancing with Watercolor "Winter Trees" A Stand of Trees

Week 2 - A Stand of trees

For me and many artists Trees often have a more personal connotation - One of my favorite characters in all of literature were the Ents from Lord of the Rings…Treebeard conceived by JRR Tolkien as a “Tree Herder” or caretaker. Tolkien imbued the trees a personality and they intern remind us of the the connections we make as artists within the natural world. In a word “Empathy” one of the qualities that …The trees we are painting today defiantly feel animated a carry a gesture that implies movement - specifically dance.

This is a quality I intend to exploit with brushwork and so lets delve a little deeper into the image and what I will aim to focus on

Composition

Behind any great image is a well thought out composition. In this image we have a dramatic display in terms of the 2 Verticals meeting the horizontal (snowline) . There is a nexus at the foot of the tree and the movement upward is quite straong

Notan

In this Notan I learned that the I would need to distinguish the light subject by using a dark background. Keeping a few lights connected in the upper branches was important in maintaining the integrity of the image

The Tonal Study

The tonal study helped me to understand the the mid tone better - It needed to be quite dark - not easy in watercolor. I discovered further how I might utilize a graded wash within and around the trees. It also gave me a chance to experiment with different marks and observe how these translated of failed to translate into branches and twigs