New Art On-Line

Dear Liza,

A dear friend, Lynn Huff, referred me to an artist who does youtube.com videos. The teacher is Karen Rice. She has many, many followers, a lovely British accent, and a fine hand at watercolors. I decided to give it a try, as Ruthie Inman says, ”for practice”.

Here is the picture Karen Rice was having us paint:

She used quinacridome gold, burnt sienna, and ultramarine. I have the sienna and ultramarine, but no gold. I used a yellow ochre instead.

I did one picture yesterday, but was so busy trying to follow the directions that I forgot to take pictures as I went along! Here is that first painting, all finished:

Doing another one today, I gained from my practice, but watercolor is such a chancy medium that I never know how it’s going to come out. Today, I followed the directions carefully…

I sketched the main parts of the picture with a pencil, then wetted the paper and laid down the wet-in-wet background.

I sprinkled salt in some of the wet paint to give it texture, then let it all dry.

Next, I borrowed a sea sponge from Auntie Bridgett to dab in colors for the foliage. This part is hard because if the paint is too wet, it runs together and doesn’t look leafy. The tricks seems to be to add thousands of tiny, separate flecks without getting them too close together.

Once the foliage was dry, I put in the trunks of the trees. This made the whole forest make sense, tying all the leaves together. I kept adding more blue to make it more moody and contrast with the bright background. I know my picture is more BLUE than Karen Rice’s, but I’m okay with that.

This lesson has taught me how to make this sort of picture, but also a more important lesson: If you think you ‘can’t get’ something, keep trying! Keep looking and dabbing and …. who knows what might happen?

Love,

Grandma Judy