Waiting For Weather

I wish our sky looked like this right now!  I'm so tired of the heat and humidity.  I shouldn't complain because it's fairly rare weather for our area but we've been dealing with it for well over a month and I would like some nice cool rain.

I know the majority of the country has been dealing with heat and humidity for the entire summer and I'm sounding like a real sissy but I'm used to our usual mild and dry summers.  I thought that painting something that looked cool and wet would make me feel better and maybe act as a suggestion for some cooler weather - an artistic rain dance.  After all, it is Fall now.  We probably won't get any rain for at least a month or two but I can dream, can't I?

This is an oil painting on a small stretched canvas.  I did an under painting of red and after it was dry I used a very limited palette of muted colors, letting pieces of the red show through.

Waiting For Weather
Image Size 6" x 6"
Oil

Lake Powell Canyon II - Acrylic on TerraSkin

This is painted from the same photo as last week's painting.  The colors and lighting are pretty different though.   This painting is much larger than last week's and the majority of the painting was poured using liquid acrylics.  I went pretty bold with the color.  It's much brighter in real life.  There are things that I like best about each painting but I can't decide which one I like better overall.  I would love to have your comments.

Lake Powell Canyon II
Image Size 25" x 17.5"
Acrylic on TerraSkin

Lake Powell Canyon - Watercolor on TerraSkin

Here is a small painting on TerraSkin.  This time, I used watercolor instead of acrylics.  It was a bit harder to build layers since the watercolors are very liftable on the TerraSkin.  The one exception was the color that I used in the sky.  For some reason, these blues didn't want to lift and, of course, I started with the sky and wasn't very careful because I expected to be able to lift off my messy areas.  The blues I used were ultramarine and cerulean which aren't staining colors so I'm not sure why that happened.  I think I'll try this scene on a larger scale with the acrylics and do some pouring.

We used to go to Lake Powell every year on a houseboat so I have lots of pictures from there.  Lake Powell is so beautiful with the sculptural rocks and the natural blue/orange complementary color scheme.  Nature's so amazing!  The sky there really is ultramarine blue at the top blending into cerulean blue at the horizon.  No wonder I like using those colors in my skies.  Of course, we don't see those kind of skies here in So. Cal. but I do know they exist.

Lake Powell Canyon
Image Size 12.5" x 9"
Watercolor on TerraSkin

WIP slideshow for Watery World on TerraSkin

Here is the WIP slideshow for Watery World.  I think it was harder and took more time to make this than it did to paint the painting.

I've decided that I need to stick with painting and stay out of the technical world as much as possible.  It's much too stressful!

The music that is playing is "Fingerdance" by Billy McLaughlin.

Watery World - on TerraSkin

This painting wins the prize for the most fun to paint.  I've always loved to paint Koi - which you know if you've been following my blog for any length of time - but painting them on Terra Skin is wonderful!  The surface, along with using acrylics like watercolors, allowed me to get the feeling of water and know that I could layer without disturbing my previous painting.  I am going to continue fiddling with this a bit more but I wanted to post it for this week's painting.  It took SO long to paint.  It's large, 25" x 35", and a lot of the time was spent waiting for layers to dry.  This was painted with  a combination of pouring and direct painting.  So far, this probably has about 20 thin layers of paint, which gives it a wonderful translucent quality.  I took WIP pictures which I will make into a slide show later this week (if the pictures turned out) so you can see my process.

Watery World - on TerraSkin
Image size 25" x 35"
Acrylic