Representational Watercolor Exercise.

December 25, 2011:
Merry Christmas to everyone.  This is the painting I am working on (almost finished) of Mt. Tabor Park in early November when the leaves had begun to fall.  I was inspired by some of the best realist watercolor artists of our time...and of course, Andrew Wyeth.

Mt. Tabor Park 6.5" X 9" Watercolor on Canson 140lb cold pressed paper.

Mt Tabor  (With less contrast in photo)

 As I have mentioned before, I used to shy away from landscapes because I lacked the skill and expertise to feel confident or motivated to do them.  Quite honestly, the idea of painting landscapes gave me a slight sense of foreboding tedium.  That is not to say that I didn't immensely appreciate fine landscape Art.  And that is not to say I didn't enjoy success when I did do landscapes.  The pull to draw and paint people was simply stronger, and because of that I spent much less time doing landscapes.  Sort of the chicken and egg question.





December 26th, 2011:
After the original posting on Christmas, I decided to continue to work on the painting to see if I could resolve some of the issues I had with the background trees.  When I photographed the painting, I noticed that the trees looked like strands of hair, tubular and translucent.  I tried to give them more definition at least in shape and texture.  I made some enhancements to the foreground tree to create a little more depth. The lower path was oversimplified and didn't seem to match the foliage around it. I tried to give it a little better shape and texture.  For a piece that was supposed to be a study, I was pretty happy with the development. The bottom photo was not enhanced as much as the first, so it is difficult to get an overall evaluation of the changes.  This painting was done  from a photo I took at Mount Tabor Park in Portland sometime in early fall. Now I am inspired to move forward with more of this representational painting. Since I have noticed that most of my paintings have been landscapes lately, I am excited to see what I can now do with People as subjects.

"Beauty is the sign of another and higher order"     Plato