It takes More Paint Than You Think

I love a super saturated watercolor like this one. It was fun to paint and a little out of my comfort zone. I first did a simple drawing of the tracks and the horizon line. I didn’t draw the electric posts or the lights because I knew the first washes of paint would set the pencil and I might want to change the placement slightly, so I drew them in after the background was done.

Next I masked the tracks with masking fluid and after it was dry, I started swishing on color. I was working wet into wet, which is great for making color move around, but the downside is that putting that much water on the paper dilutes the paint. It dried much lighter than I expected. After the first layer was dry, I charged the paper with very saturated color without adding very much water. I added some darks at this stage as well. When this dried, I still didn’t think it was still as vivid as I wanted.

In the last stage, I punched up the color even more and darkened the darks to really give it some contrast. Next, I painted the posts and the signal lights. Before I took the masking off, I scrubbed around the tracks to give highlights to the junction area. After removing the mask, I toned down the remainder of the tracks with yellow and fiddled with the details to complete “The Junction at Sunset.”

 

 

 

 

Painting Large

This painting measures 35″x13″. Way out of my comfort zone. I usually don’t paint this large for several reasons, the first of which is that my art table isn’t that big. I have to stretch paper this large on a piece of Masonite and work on my kitchen island and I have to work standing up. I hate stretching paper. I get tired of standing up painting. And it takes a lot of paint.

I love the visual impact of a large painting, but matting and framing are a whole different matter. Expensive. I never would have stretched a piece of watercolor paper this size in the first place, but it was supposed to be a commission piece. Here’s the story.

A client wanted me to paint the Loess Hills view from her house, and she wanted it painted large for her living room. Okay, a sofa-size painting. I had a beautiful antique frame laying around my stockpile at the time. She agreed to buy the frame along with the painting. So I stretched the paper, took the reference photos, and was ready to start the piece, when she called and cancelled the project. No explanation, just cancelled.

Sometime in the intervening years between then and now, I sold the frame. I forgot about the stretched paper until a few days ago when I was cleaning and organizing. I had turned the Masonite over and was using it for a cutting board. I still thought Loess Hills were a good fit for this project, but not her hills.

The tree is one that’s always captivated my attention as I pass it on the Interstate on the way to the city. Mom always liked this tree as well, and so this one’s in honor of her. The reference photo was taken on a sunny March afternoon, not at sunrise. The background is mostly from my imagination. I wanted an impact that the afternoon photo with the blah background just didn’t deliver. I thought that if I were going through the trouble of painting this big, I wanted it to count for something.

It was fun to work this big; I got to use my big brushes. But I probably won’t do it again unless it’s a paying gig. This time with downpayment up front.