Hi, Friends,
When I finished the 12 week Artist’s Way course, I made a commitment to myself to follow up with 90-day self-nurturing plan. It includes a concrete plan of action to write daily, take myself on an artist’s date once a week, and explore more fully my favorite creative practices. One of these is watercolor painting.
My “date” this week was to attend a workshop at the local art association, which took place on Wednesday. It included a one hour tutorial by Tony Couch. Today I am sharing the practice pieces that I painted as a result of the workshop.
Tony talked a lot about what the landscape artist paints. He insists that we don’t paint a tree. We paint a symbol of a tree. We don’t paint water, we paint a symbol. Symbols have specific characteristics that make the objects instantly recognizable to the viewer. For example, for a deciduous tree the characteristics are shape (round crown), colors (varies with the season) and textures (expressed by the leaves and the bark)
Painting the symbol of a tree.
Painting a symbol of still water.
To practice the still water technique, I painted a scene from Iceland. It’s based on a photograph published on Unsplash – a free use site for photographers and other artists. Here is the reference photo:
I started with the sky and worked my way down to the water.
Initial washes are complete. I will come back to deepen some areas and add finishing details. This was painted on a Stonehenge paper block using a palette of Hansa yellow deep, Winsor green yellow shade, ultramarine blue, pyrrol scarlet, quinacridone red, carbazole violet, burnt umber and Payne’s gray.
Daily Fiber 