Tomato – Watercolor Study

I know, I’ll do a tomato. That’ll be easy
Yeah, right.
Its all shiny and smooth, so you can’t fake a texture.
Its shades of red in light and shadow, so you have to get the values just right to create the form.
I know, I think I’ll keep trying until I get something close to what I was [...]

Bananas – Watercolor Study

Another practice watercolor study, this time of bananas. First I do a pencil sketch and then go in with the watercolor and try things out. This was about 30 minutes total time. I never really got into it, because the station on Jango was playing music unfamiliar to me and I wasn’t grooving on it. [...]

Window on Main Street – WIP – 4

I got some good tips from Rey Milici at my art class on Thursday. The bricks were a little too uniform, four broad bands of similar color. I broke them up a little bit with varying colors. He also suggested going over the gray building with a ultramarine/lavander wash. I’m not sure if it is [...]

Apple – Watercolor

This is a just a study of an apple. I am going to do more of these small studies where I do a drawing and then put in the watercolor. Partly to get more practice drawing and partly to get more practice with the watercolors. It helps with seeing as well. Seeing the form, then [...]

Window on Main Street – Work in Progress – 3

I worked on the Window on Main Street painting, and had a few nice things happen. I simplified the bricks. I just put a thin dark line under and to the left of each brick as a hint of shadow. That worked pretty good. Here and there I tried fluffing it up a little bit, [...]

Orange – Watercolor

I’m trying to get into more of a routine and do quick studies every day to keep fresh. With some of the more difficult experimental paintings I’ve done recently, I find that I need the weekend to have the time and mental state to work on them. So during the week I am going to [...]

Window on Main Street – Work in Progress – 2

I continued working on this interesting painting. I worked on the masonry facade on the left side. These are just big blocks of gray in the shade. Not much variation on each block, so I am trying to get the subtle differences of gray from plane to plane.
Then I worked on the bricks. I started [...]

Window on Main Street – Work in Progress

I’m finally feeling a lot better after my flu/cold thing; I had enough energy to start a new painting. Even while I was sick I had scouted around Northampton looking for something to make a painting of. I have a number of candidate paintings, but this is the one that won out. I really like [...]

Ideas of Shadow and Light I Got While Sick

I’ve been sick with a flu of some type or another for a week, but I’m finally feeling well enough to relate this interesting experience that I had in the middle of my illness. Sometime in the middle of being sick I was having those odd am I asleep or awake, why is mind [...]

Coin Op, Northampton, Watercolor – 2

I Spent much of the day, in fifteen minute segments, working on the Coin Op. I slowly put in various layers of color, then layers of shadows building up the tonal values, until I put the black on the right. Now I can see I have to put some darker shadows on the left. I [...]