COMING OUT OF HIBERNATION

With the days getting longer (we are having about 8 hours of daylight now) and a couple of days where the sun actually appeared, I'm coming out of hibernation. I seem finally to be over my cold and went for a long walk on the beach yesterday and took my gouache paints with me. It felt great in the sun though it was still below freezing. I ended up painting for about an hour from the car and watching the sun go down at 4.... the little gouache I did might or might not show up on my other blog where the small ones go.

I've been continuing with the monochromatic gouache paintings.



gouache 6x9" on CP Arches

This one is a little larger than the others. Its from a photo I took last week from my kitchen window during our big snow fall. I started with a transparent wash over all which remained uncovered in the sky. I'm loving not having to save my whites. I might splatter some white paint for snow flakes.... or not.

MOUNTAIN HEMLOCK WATERCOLOR AGAIN

After painting the hemlocks in gouache, I went back to the one I did in watercolor and worked on it some more. The first state is here.


watercolor 9 1/2 x 7

And here it is with more work. I had cropped some on the left side of the first version, but left it in on this one. I used glazes of watercolor and a little bit of gouache. Looks lots better to me.

I've been doing some value studies of the trees out my window for the Wet Canvas challenge that I discussed on the previous post. Here's one I did yesterday.



gouache 5 x 5

GOUACHE PAINTING

I decided to try to paint the mountain hemlock again... in gouache instead of watercolor. One of my goals for the new year is to work on some other media. It took me most of Monday to find everything and get set up to paint. My first start was on a light gray piece of mat board... after a few hours it got to looking pretty bad so I quit. That night I looked on line and found some really good gouache painting on Maggie Latham's blog, Everything Gouache , and her challenge on Wet Canvas..... Painting Trees in the Landscape ....... a bit of serendipity.

I had joined Wet Canvas when I was still on dial-up and it would have taken most of a day to do anything, but now with my 2G, its doable....most of the time. There is lots and lots there... I've spent a whole bunch of time already reading past challenges and following links to more gouache paintings. I need to figure out how to post scans and photos, but I have joined in. I started in with Maggie's instructions this afternoon to do small monochromatic studies of trees..... out the studio window of the trees I've painted so many times.... very overcast all day and light snow.

Back to the mountain hemlock painting. Yesterday, I started over on a piece of mat board that I painted with black gesso.


Gouache on matboard with black gesso 5 1/2 x 61/2

I worked on it some more today and am liking it a whole lot better than the watercolor. In fact except for a couple of things, I'm pretty happy with it and jazzed about getting in the studio tomorrow to use the gouache again.

HAPPY NEW DECADE AND A NEW PAINTING

Overwhelmed in December as usual and now ready to get to work. Here's a painting that I started before Christmas and finished a few days ago.



9 1/2 x 6 watercolor

These are mountain hemlocks near where I live at about 3000 ft elevation where I've backpacked to and camped in the past.... a grueling trek that I don't think I have the strength for anymore, though when I look at the photos from there and look at the mountain from here, I think maybe one more time.



5x6 watercolor

After finishing the painting, I remembered this sketch done on location in 96 and found it. It has a vitality that the one I just did and spent hours on doesn't have.... don't know why though. I guess I'd better try again with this sketch as reference along with the photo I used.