Marsh Light

I'm a great admirer of the Tonalist painters. The Wikipedia definition of this style says "Tonalism (1880 to 1915) is an artistic style that emerged in the 1880s when American artists began to paint landscape forms with an overall tone of colored atmosphere or mist. Dark, neutral hues, such as gray, brown or blue, would usually dominate such compositions. Two of the leading painters associated with this style are George Inness and James McNeill Whistler." Most of the tonalist artists were oil painters and since I love watercolors and want to stay with this medium, I try every now and then to create tonalism in my watercolor landscapes. I love the mood it creates and the harmony it brings to a painting. I was quite pleased with this attempt, inspired by the marshes in Mill Valley, CA, near where I live. I first did an underpainting of raw sienna on Arches hot-pressed watercolor paper. Over that I painted the sky with brown madder, burnt sienna and cobalt blue grayed with a little Payne's gray. The marsh was painted using burnt umber, burnt sienna and Payne's grey. I had to go over the sky with a glaze of cobalt blue to tone it down to achieve the atmospheric look I wanted. Size: 13.5" x 10".

Experimenting With Abstracts

I had a lot of fun this week experimenting with abstracts. I think watercolors lend themselves to abstract art. One can achieve a variety of techniques to make an interesting piece. Unlike oils and acrylics, with watercolors one can splash with water or alcohol to get interesting results and then there are the lost and found edges that cannot be achieved with other mediums. The piece above was my second attempt after doing a smaller piece (below). The one above is 14" x 10.5" and I used burnt sienna, raw sienna and Payne's grey. For texture I sprayed some alcohol on the lower half when semi wet. When it was dry I dipped my fingers in the water bucket and splashed it onto the watercolor, thereby creating different size circles which I dabbed with a tissue. It's a great exercise in loosening up. I took these pieces to class this week and they were well received by both the tutor, Jerry Stitt and the rest of the class. I sensed there would be quite a few people bringing abstracts to class next week.
This smaller piece is 9.5" x 7.75" and I used the same colors as above.

Breaking Wave

The last two weeks of classes were demonstrations by Jerry Stitt on how to create waves with watercolors. It ain't easy. My first attempt I made the sky too dark in my quest to reflect light against dark with the sky and wave. I am fairly pleased with this attempt but feel there is room for improvement. I used indigo, raw sienna, payne's grey, burnt sienna and French ultramarine. I also used a very rough Arches paper which I thought would leave more white of paper when scumbling on the sea. However, it is not as good as regular Arches cold pressed for this. Size is 14" x 10.25".