Field study

The edge of tree lines are always fascinating to me. There is sometimes a tree that stands out away from the rest and has a character of its own while the rest of the trees become the woods. When I will drive tractor for my dad during planting season I'm always watching the tree lines with their shapes and colors. They change the entire time you are driving. Every time you turn around and go back you get to look at it from afar all the way to almost touching it (and you will if you're not paying attention). Also depending on how big the field is, you can see it change over the course of an entire day. During the morning the entire front side of the tree line could be lit up and 5 hours later everything but the top and largest trees sticking out are in complete darkness.
Anyway watching the scenes around me always kept me from getting bored while out there. This will be the last daily watercolor in this series. I'm deciding to cut the watercolors short and move on to pastels. It is always excited to be working on them and hopefully it shows in the upcoming paintings.

Kentucky Hills under paintings

 In yesterday's post I mentioned borders was having their store closing sale. Last night they had taken the prices down even further. I bought Richard McKinley's Pastel Pointers. I follow his blog on the artist network and have been wanting to get his books for a while now and with one on sale decided to pick it up.
If you look at his work the first thing you might notice is the under painting that shines through his pastel application. I've been using under paintings for my pastels for a while but only using pastels with turpenoid for the medium. Today seemed like a good day to try a watercolor under painting, so I did two of them. The first was one that I wanted to finish with watercolor and the second with pastel. He talks of arranging shapes in value masses that way you don't jump around the painting and exaggerate certain areas to an extreme. The reason I chose to do the under painting that would be finished in watercolor first is because while the pastel under painting is drying the watercolor painting can be quickly finished in a loose style. Then when the watercolor is done you can start on the pastel already warmed up. This seems like a good strategy for now and I will use this for plein air until I'm burned out.

This is the watercolor under painting for the watercolor finished painting. The thought behind this was to get everything massed in while staying at the lighter end of the value scale for the masses that way they could stay as highlights and be darkened where needed. I like the way the hills roll down in Kentucky. It reminds me of the car trips to see my mothers side of the family. I think the dark value masses frame the rolling nature of the hills well in this painting.

This is the under painting for the pastel that I will eventually get to during the second half of this round of paintings. I tried to get at the average value for the masses on this one. Also the value map changed on this under painting from the previous. I decided to push the tree above the foreground trees back to showcase it. The shape of it was interesting as it was the only one that fanned out and let a lot of the hillside behind it shine through.That will be a lot easier for me to show with pastels at this point than watercolors so i went that way in this painting.

Anyway if you are a fan of McKinley's I would recommend getting the book. Most of the stuff on it can be found on his blog, but it is nice to have a physical copy to flip through when you need some motivation. Also the DVD included with it was great and the ideas sink faster when you see him explaining them.

Pulling ahead

Today I worked on a scene from a recent trip to the smokey mountains. I was wondering what it would look like in the fall so I decided to go with autumn colors. After drawing a few thumbnails and value studies I drew it out on watercolor paper.
On a side note, borders is going out of business so I went in to look at the art section. Sterling Edwards has a book that I have been wanting to get for a while and they have it. I haven't bought it yet but I did have a few minutes to thumb through it. I'm a fan of his work and he is an advocate of using stiff bristle brushes for watercolors so I decided to go in that direction with this painting. The sky and top mountain tops were laid in using a 1" gesso brush which turned out very well. The third mountain top is too dark, but I could always darken up the closest trees to offset that. I liked how the grass in the foreground turned out along with the small minivan-suv and semi. The truck out in front was another story. The brush got away from me while I was putting in the darks and again when I was laying down the paint for the trees behind it. Anyway I'm going to go pick up that book as soon as the sale gets better.