Storm at Sunset

"Storm At Sunset"

Image size 10" x 14"

Watercolor

This is another old painting that I covered over with gesso using a piece of mat board and scraping a random design into it so that some of the original colors show through and then I painted a new painting on top of that.  I know this is a pretty scary looking sky, but I liked the drama of the dark colors against the pastel hues.

Skyscape III

"Skyscape III"

Image size 12" x 30"

Encaustic

Painting is my primary focus once again and really enjoyed finishing this encaustic painting.  I love the colors in it and the shine of the polished wax really makes the colors pop!

New Heights

"New Heights"

Image size 15" x 8"

Watercolor and Acrylic

This is painted on a piece of 140# hot press Arches paper.  As soon as I began wetting the paper, I could see that it had problems with the sizing.  That seems to be an ongoing problem with the paper that I have.  I have purchased some new Arches paper for projects that involved a lot of drawing where I don't want any surprises with how the paper will react, but I've come to expect most of the paper that I have stored will have problems with the sizing so I'm keeping a lot of matte medium on hand so I can seal the paper when I have this problem.

I'm sure that I've had this paper for at least 10 years because I don't typically buy hot press paper.  I find it hard to work on since I like to paint with many glazing layers.  The previous layers tend to lift on hot press, which is really frustrating.

Of course, when I seal the paper with matte medium, the paint layers lift even easier.  In this painting, I painted the background and initial base colors of the pear with watercolor.  Since I wasn't doing additional layers on the sky, the watercolor was fine.  For the pear, the watercolor was lifting way too much so I carefully painted a layer of matte medium over the watercolor and painted the rest of the layers in acrylic.  There's always a way to make things work, which is a fun challenge.

Skyscape

"Skyscape"

Image Size 14" x 11"

Watercolor

This painting was also done on a saturated piece of paper.  It was my first painting in Jeanne Hyland's workshop.  There is space at the bottom that I cropped out for this view.  I haven't decided whether or not to put some land in or leave it as a skyscape.  I like it this way, I think.

Autumn Sky

Here's a small study of clouds.  I want to paint a series of cloudy skies using different mediums.  I think I will probably do some large ones in oil but I thought I would start small.  I want the sky to be the center of attention so I just painted a sliver of ground with some loosely painted trees changing color.

Autumn Sky
Image Size 4.5" x 11"
Watercolor

O Canada - Pastel

This month's location for the virtual paintout is Prince Edward Island in Canada.  When I saw this sky on Google Street view, I wanted to try recreating it with pastels.  I wanted to make the sky the focal point so I didn't do any detail in the foreground.  I didn't do any blending on this.  I tried to give the impression of the clouds' wispiness with texture instead.

O Canada
Image Size 9" x 5"
Pastel
Unframed
$100.00 including shipping in the U.S.