Down River -- Adding More Glazes

I wanted a very serene, calm river. I think I got close to that but, I also wanted it to be in gorgeous, wet, luscious color. That I'm not too sure about. The colors all seem a little dull. I think I have done too much mixing with opposite colors, that has made everthing a little to gray-brown..... maybe a little too much blue with the orange-brown. hummmmm...I may try to add a bit more green and orange to the water up near the clump of distant trees. That water seems too white.

I worried about painting in the dark trees and ground at the far left side, because it is so easy to ruin a painting when it is almost finished and there is something bold and dark that needs to be added. What I had left would take dark paint...and there would be no going back. I looked at it a long time and then, I put on my brave, mixed dark heavy paint, got my brushes in line and attacked the piece as boldly as I knew how..... I held my breath and ..... lucky this time, the area seemed to work OK for me.

Even still, I wish that I could have just left everything alone after the first coat, a hazy, soft, redish brown, swirling nothing. I liked it but, it really was just a soft swirlly nothing .... no picture?

I added more color to the water so the first picture is now how it is. I like seeing more reflection. I wish I had done this with earlier glazes. I would have added even more darks.

Misty Morning

I am trying to decide if this painting is finished. I wanted the trunks of the Aspen trees lighter, but, they got lost with the wet in wetness of other colors. This is as far back to light as I can get them and keep the painting transparent.
I could paint the trunks lighter if I used a thick opaque paint like white watercolor or acrylic. But, it would change the feel of the painting big time. The thicker paint may seem harsh or strong and overpower the rest of the work so that the trees would feel out of balance with the background. I have never done much with mixed paints because I have always felt this difference between paint "attitude" or "personality" (does that make sense?) and I do not think that I know how to create communication very well between them. I have tried it a few times and only felt good about doing that once. I painted in a few very light leaves to set off the sunlit edge of a tree. I do not know whether to try it here because I like the soft overall transparent-ness of the whole painting. Yet, the trees aren't quite what I had wanted. I guess I will have to think on this for a bit.

When is a painting junk ... or just not finished?

If I reach a place in a painting that stops me and I do not know how to finish it or I don't like what I have done, I sometimes get discourage with it and put it in my big stack of junk work. Every once in a while I look back through the stack just to see if I get a new idea about any paintings there.

These three paintings have been sitting in that stack for a while. I was looking through the stack ealier this week and these three seemed almost right. They seemed so close to being finished. I pulled them out and thought maybe they just needed a couple of tweeks here and there ..... Yet after working on all three for a while .... I am still not satisfied that they are any better. Besides that, I may now have painted them into the ground ..... Paintings seem to change magically when you don't look at them for a while so I will keep them around a bit and then look at them in a week or two. Then I will decide if they go back to the old junk stack or not.

House in the Trees

This is the finished version of the painting I put on last time. I adjusted some of the values especially in the roof of the building. It was too light in the center of the painting. I like this better but .... it is always scary to change a watercolor because you can never go back to the way it was before you changed it.


I have also finished a tree painting. It is a little odd but, was fun to try. There is a tree in my backyard that was the inspiration for the trunk. I did not do my backyard tree justice but I tried. Of course there is a flat long wooden fence behind my yard tree. I made up the field and such behind this painting. I seem to really like fields. Most of the things I want to paint seem to be field oriented.


I must do more blogging. I find out how to do something and then I don't get in here and blog for days and by then I have forgotten what I learned ....

Changing the Basic Layout -- New Painting

Today I changed the template that holds the format of my blog. I did not like the other one very well, but today I found many more to choose from.
Every once in a while I am going to try to do something different in this blog. Today I tried to understand how to change the template. The main problem I am having is how to get back into the draft and edit it...... I am not tech-ie enough.

I painted this little painting yesterday and today and I wanted to see how it looks when it is on a monitor. Paintings can look different on a computer screen than they do in life. The weak places often show up. I can see that the roofs are too white and so the center, where the point of interest should be, is lacking. .... Now just how to fix it??