Starry Skies, City Lights

Time for a fun quick painting! The first step is putting paint on paper and for this step I chose some blues and a shot of green. This will be the under painting so I do not have a subject in mind yet for this painting. I throw some kosher salt on the wet paint and let it do its thing. This is what it looks like when it is dry:

 

As I look at this later, I decide this could be a sky (with alto cumulus clouds) or maybe stars? I turn it upside down and add some raw sienna to a few spots to give some variation  to the sky color and then add some hills on the bottom left. The raw sienna on the bottom part of the sky gives it a nice glow. I darken the top a bit. Here is the finished painting:

The more I look at it the more it reminds me of a starry night with the glow of city lights in the distance.
Sometimes I will do several under paintings at once and keep these for working on later. It is always fun to see what you can come up with. Happy painting!

face in the sky

I was working on a painting the other day and I was trying to find the perfect sky to complement the painting (it was for a piece commissioned by a dear friend of mine and I wanted to find just the perfect sky!) Anyway, I went through my files of photographs and was just amazed at the variety of sky photos I have taken over the years! The interesting thing is that many were taken of the same view but each one was very different. Sometimes the sky was quiet and thoughtful; other times it was violent and colorful with clouds churning in turmoil. Some of the pictures showed a soft hazy sky with a few wispy clouds and others were of colorful sunsets at various stages with no two pictures the same. Then I found this picture I had taken a long time ago when I lived in Ellensburg, Washington of clouds that looked like a face in the sky (the white speck is a flaw on the photo). It was quite amazing and I have never seen another like it (so far).

November skies

It's really rainy and dreary this time of year in the Pacific Northwest. Sometimes it drives me crazy! But there are some great subjects for watercolor paintings--dark, moody days with a flash of light on the horizon. Yes, even gray can be beautiful.

November skies, 8x10 watercolor

Heaven and earth

I like to use pastel over watercolor sometimes to create a different effect. It is really effective to use light pastel colors over darker watercolors (after the watercolor has dried). The bright colors over the dark really glow! In this painting I loved the way the sky and ground seem to meet and blend into one.

Heaven and earth, 14x22 watercolor/pastel

Poetry of the earth

I love painting skies! No two are ever the same. Watercolor is an excellent medium for painting skies and creating "movement" in your paintings. And I have used just about every color when painting skies- you can really see a lot more colors than you think if you look hard enough.

Poetry of the earth, 11 x 14 watercolor

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