August 25, 2009 - Day 15

Da Vinci Watercolor and Prismacolor colored pencil on
140 lb Bockingford cold press watercolor paper

I am determined to improve my landscape paintings so today I tried this painting taken from a reference photograph that I took while on holidays.

I pulled out my watercolor instruction books and started reading up on techniques. One technique is to use wax crayons, candles or pencil crayons in place of frisket or masking. Since watercolor paint does not cover wax those areas remaining lighter in color than the surrounding paint.

I used white pencil crayon to draw in the tree trunks and a light brown pencil crayon for some of the shoreline. The clouds were created using a bunched up tissue to lift out the still wet watercolor. The lines in the water were lifted out while still wet using a tissue wrapped around a bank card.

After it was all said and done I wasn't pleased with my painting so I decided to paint it again.

Da Vinci watercolor on 140 lb Bockingford cold press watercolor paper

The only things I did differently for the second painting were to use frisket to mask the trees and I used a utility knife to scratch out highlights in the water and along the shoreline. It was more difficult to get a nice thin line with the frisket so I think I will continue to use white pencil crayon in the future.

I discovered that after it was all said and done that there really wasn't that much difference between the two paintings. I like the background hills and trees better in the second painting but I like the foreground land and trees better in the first painting.

My biggest frustration today was trying to calibrate my scanner to accurately scan the greens and blues. They are pretty close but are just that little bit off. The greens aren't quite green enough and the blues aren't quite bright enough. Perhaps I am being too picky and the color difference is only noticeable to me. My scanner is very old though so maybe a new scanner would be more accurate.

Tomorrow I am going to try another landscape. I just don't know which one yet.

August 31, 2009
Looking back at these two paintings I now like the first one much better than the second one. Just goes to show that sometimes you need to step back and not look at a painting for awhile in order to really be able to see it.