Evergreen Notes - 30/30 Challenge 2016

Evergreen Notes, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 7"h x 12"w, 2016 #13

Bid in My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $65)

Playing with limited palette and want to create the illusion of fog in the background. To add warmth in the foreground I used a muted yellow-brown which compliments the overall blue-purple color scheme of the painting. The painting was done from a quick 30-minute study on site when hiking in the high sierras. The way those tall mountain hemlock and silver fir trees dance in the wind left such a strong impression on my mind, that even now I can still just close my eyes and see it...

Morning Fog, Tamalpais - Day Eighteen of the 30/30 Challenge

Morning Fog, Tamalpais,

 Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #20

Bid in My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $40)

Day Eighteen of the challenge -- Trying to catch up today but was not quiet happy with the other painting I am working on, so maybe I will get a fresh eye tomorrow morning... For this one I again worked from a previous Plein Air piece, changing the format from horizontal to square, allowing more space for the receding mountain ranges. As the evergreen-covered hills gradually get closer, I added more Quinacridone Burnt Orange to warm up the color, and put down the last two tall fir trees in the foreground with thick paint on a quite worn-out old brush to give some more interesting edges. The whole painting was done in one wetting of the paper, but I was not too happy with my first two attempts of it, so this is the third one. Sometimes you can wash off freshly applied watercolor paints and start over on the same piece of the paper, but I find often the surface sizing would largely come off this way, and granulating pigments don't quite settle the same way, so for a small piece like this I would just start anew on a fresh clean sheet. Luckily the shapes worked out quite well the third time... Now it is really time for bed! :-)

Marsh Dawn - Day Fourteen of the 30/30 Challenge

Marsh Dawn, Watercolor on Arches #140 Cold Press Paper, 6"h x 6"w, 2015 #16

Bid in My DPW Auction (Starting Bid $30)

Day fourteen of the challenge -- I am really late for this one. I tried a very limited palette of Cobalt Blue and Quinacridone Burnt Orange on this one, going for mood and atmosphere rather than details. I found that with restrictions often comes poetry, such as Haiku, with its extremely constrained forms the wonder of poetry often comes through quite easily compared to free-form modern poems where everything goes. 

This is not a particular scene that I am painting from life, but I have seen it so many times while taking morning walks in different wetland parks bordering evergreen forests -- at the mouth of redwood forest streams, near the river estuaries of Olympia National Park, even along mountain meadows at the edge of alpine forests in a wet season. The lingering fog and the mirror-clear reflection of the forest is woven into my most intimate memories. When I close my eyes, it can just flow out to the tip of my brush. I can almost smell the moist air tinged with the scent of new grass. Somethings you just never forget...

Spring Meadow, Tamalpais -- 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge (Round Two), Day 12

Spring Meadow, Tamalpais,  

Watercolor on Winsor Newton 140# Cold Press Paper , 6"h x 10"w, 2013 #63

Sold!

My theme for the "30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge" this week is "landscape with water" -- I guess fog is a form of water hence this painting still fits the theme. ;-) I've learned a lot about using aerial perspective and soft-to-hard edge transition to create a sense of depth from doing this painting, as well as how to create varied shapes within repetition -- it is really hard to make every next stroke representing a fir branch to be of a different size, shape, direction and color from the last one! I don't think I've done an excellent job here -- more practice definitely needed. I've also experimented only using color transition and texture to represent the meadow. Unfortunately it looks more interesting in person than on the photo...

For those of you who are in the bay area -- tomorrow (Saturday, September 14th) and the day after tomorrow (Sunday, September 15th) will be the "Meet the Artists Day" event for the exhibition at Filoli Garden - "Nature’s Many Splendors: Farms, Gardens and Woodlands"! You are all invited to this special art-festival-like weekend, to meet the artists in the show, watch them doing art demos, chat with them and learn what has inspires them to create their art pieces. Framed pieces, prints, note cards and other items will be for sale both during the show and at the "Meet the Artist Day" event. And I will be doing demo there! The show runs from August 27th through October 27th, at the art gallery area in Filoli Garden, which is located at 86 Canada Rd in the lovely town of Woodside, California.

You can now buy high quality Giclee prints of many of my sold paintings, both on paper and canvas, as well as some note cards with my paintings here:

Falling Snow (Thoughts of You Fall Quietly upon Me...), & Slowly Proceeding forward with Spring Meadow, Tamalpais...

Ok, ok, I am admitting... Like everyone else I am addicted to the new HBO series "Game of Thrones". And after watching the snow-covered mysterious northern countries of the Starks for weeks, anxiously waiting for each new episode to appear on the TV screen every Sunday, I thought I'd pay my homage by doing some small paintings of snow scenes on Sundays. 

Falling Snow (Thoughts of You Fall Quietly upon Me...),  

Watercolor on Arches 140# Rough Paper , 7"h x 8"w, 2012 #30

Sold!

This Sunday's episode gives me a profound sense of loss and loneliness, which prompted me to try to capture the same feeling in this little imagined scene. I imagined it outside someone's window in the northern woods, and the thoughts of the host slowly drifting away to a distant place to be with someone she cares deeply about with the snow veiling the worlds surrounding her little by little... Life in the northern woods, where the life changes following the pattern of the seasons. A distant past, another life...

It was fun painting this one. I experimented with diluting the paint mixture little by little when painting each of the foreground trees from top down to create the effect of snow being blown by wind and drifting near the ground. Paper towels came in handy in wiping away the last bit of thin mixtures near the bottom of the picture to make them completely disappear. I played with calligraphic strokes on the dried weeds near the ground, and on the bare branches of the little tree in the foreground. A limited palette of Cobalt Blue, French Ultramarine, Brown Madder Alizarin, Burnt Sienna and a little bit of Raw Sienna was all that's used. Sober mood calls for muted colors...

I'm also progressing cautiously with my fog painting, "Spring Meadow, Tamalpais". I painted wet on dry using very fluid mixture of Cobalt Blue, Indian Yellow, Burnt Sienna and a little bit Sap Green, paying attention to vary the proportion of colors in the mixture when painting the tree shapes to make it more interesting. Near the ground, I thinned the mixture again in the attempt to capture the effect of ground mist often found in foggy mountain meadows. Again, paper towel came in handy here and there for lifting and wiping out... I am trying to be cautious about how many layers of trees to put in -- a small picture surface can quickly become too busy if I get carried away planting trees ;-). But one or two more layers may still be needed...

Spring Meadow, Tamalpais,  

Watercolor on Winsor Newton 140# Cold Press Paper , 5"h x 9"w, WIP 3

More Fog Paintings...

Here's one of the other fog paintings I worked on yesterday and today. This one is more of a struggle compared to the previous post -- I liked the subtle effects I already achieved in the first wash, but realized that I had to take the risk and put a second, third or forth wet wash on top of it to achieve the depth and subtle muted color needed for this fog scene. The foreground meadow was far too bright and saturated. In a foggy day the meadow may appear very lush green because of the moisture, but to achieve unity in the entire painting, that lushness had to be toned down just a bit since the water vapor in the air would affect even the most close-by objects and blur them a bit too. I did just that in the second pass -- wet the entire painting front and back and laid it on a piece of plexiglass covered with wet paper towels to extend precious time I can use to manipulate wet pigments on the paper surface. I used Cobalt Blue and Indian Yellow to mix the green for the tree line, adding just a tiny bit of Burnt Sienna to mute it further. The yellow and blue separated on the very wet surface, and formed a slight blurry yellow halo around the tree tops, which I really liked -- it reminded me the morning sun shinning behind the foggy forest. I experimented with stiffer brush and denser pigments on the foreground meadows a bit. I think the most scary part -- wet the entire sheet -- is done at this stage. I will add layers of tree lines wet on dry and work on the foreground meadow a bit more to finish it... (Instead of ruin it, I hope :-P)

Spring Meadow, Tamalpais,  

Watercolor on Winsor Newton 140# Cold Press Paper , 6"h x 10"w, WIP 2

I also spent quite a few hours really darkening the background foliages and adding wet-in-wet effects on "Peppermint Rose". Color granulates so nicely on Fabriano Artistico paper surface, but adding the required density of pigments are really painful to accomplish on this paper! I am in a love-hate relationship with it. The soft surface stop to absorb water and pigments much faster than harder paper such as Arches or Richeson, so it's very easy to have dense pigments pooling on a wet surface, creating mud. This one is close to a finish now, I have to be very careful with it...

Peppermint Rose, 

Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico 140# Cold Press Paper, 8"h x 8"w, WIP 6

Morning Fog, Tamalpais (Finished), and Keying Petal Light #1

I worked on several small landscape paintings today, some turned out better than others. My focus was on how to achieve believable effects of a foggy day. This often means a lot of wet-in-wet painting to create soft edges, adding more blues to the far-away objects such as background mountains, and neutralize color rapidly from foreground back. Some lifting with a damp brush and tissue paper near the base of trees may be needed, as well as adding water to created a graded wash when painting a group of trees from top down -- as their base are often covered by ground fog and appear lighter and more indistinct. I did all of the above in "Morning Fog, Tamalpais", and introduced my warm colors (Burnt and Raw Sienna) only in the foreground shrubs to make they appear forward.

Morning Fog, Tamalpais,  

Watercolor on Arches 140# Cold Press Paper , 6"h x 9"w, 2012 #29

Sold!

I sent out some packages of sold paintings during the week. One of them was a gift to someone living in the American River Delta so I included a little sktech I did the other day on a watercolor postcard by Richeson & Co. It was a scene right before the summer rain rolling onto the far horizon of the delta. The time constraints imposed by paper drying rapidly outdoors determined that a sketch like this cannot take more than a couple of minutes to finish, which I think is a great exercise for me -- since I am such a slow painter. I should definitely do this more often!...

Before the Summer Rain - Sketch of Delta,  

Watercolor on Richeson 140# Cold Press Postcard, 4"h x 6"w, 2012 #30

To switch gear a little I worked on "Petal Light #1" in between wet washes of the foggy landscapes. To gauge how much more work needs to be done to the leaves, I put down the local colors of the bird of paradise flower, carefully saving my whites on the lightest of lights by wiping away any astray colors in these areas with a damp brush. Then around the flowers I put down some of my darkest passages of leaves to see if the flower pops out enough. Putting down the darkest darks -- even just in small areas and lightest of lights (other than the whites you are saving) is very important in developing a sound value pattern of a painting. I often do this in small, isolated areas when I am developing a painting mid way, and get confused of how much darker everything has to go. I think I have a better idea now -- the bigger leaves on the top half of the painting has to go way dark, but maybe one or two value lighter than the leaves next to the center flower on a nine-step value scale. Now the challenge is to achieve that without losing luminosity and create a "black-hole" in the top half of the image. Some wet-in-wet glazing time...

Petal Light #1, Watercolor on Arches 140# Cold Press Paper, 10"h x 8"w, WIP 5

Work in Progress: Morning Fog, Tamalpais

More landscape paintings... I have to admit that they are extremely addictive once you get into the "zone"... This one is about the fog over Mount Tamalpais again. I am experimenting with painting with thicker and thicker pigments from background forward on saturated wet paper -- as the paper dries gradually during the painting process, the pigment would diffuse less and less and therefore give more definite forms to objects in the foreground. I've intentionally left some white passages unpainted to hint the veil of the fog around the hills, and trying to keep the far-away mountains cooler in color to be consistent with aerial perspective. It is challenging to paint the conifer in consistent but non-repetitive shapes to maintain interest in the foreground area, and I was trying hard to just use one or two strokes of a flat bristle brush on its edge to hint a tree... The foggy mornings in the redwood forest of California are truly beautiful and other-worldly. I just wish I have enough skills to do them justice on paper...

Morning Fog, Tamalpais,  

Watercolor on Arches 140# Cold Press Paper , 6"h x 9"w, WIP 1

Two Small Landscapes: Season Change (Finished), & Tamalpais Meadow (WIP)

I've felt a bit experimental lately and ventured out to paint more wet-in-wet landscapes, some successful, others disastrous. To manage the drying time and achieve the soft, wet, flowing look that I love about watercolor landscapes, I've shrunk my paper size significantly for some trial-runs before to attack the larger sheets -- quarter sheet for me is large at my current skill level of managing wild wet washes, I'm not greedy in my expectations :-P. And I do fall in love with some of these small jewels from time to time -- sometimes a trial run has the kind of freedom and freshness that a well-planned, well-executed larger piece lacks. There is a delicate balance between spontaneity and careful planning that I am still struggling to grasp...

This is a card-sized "experiment" I did trying to figure out how to create those fluffy white clouds   I've so often seen when travelling in the high country of Colorado and Utah. I did it in two wet cycles in this piece -- first wetting the who image with clear water, and drop in Ultramarine and Cobalt Blues to indicate the sky behind the white clouds; while this is totally dry, I rewetted the white area and dropped in a very light mixture of grey made by Cobalt Blue and Burnt Sienna. The most important and difficult thing here is to try to not let this grey flow to the edge of the white space , so that you still have some white left between the blue of the sky and the grey of the cloud that's facing away from the sun. I played with calligraphic strokes while creating the spruce tress, paying attention to increase the value and saturation of color gradually from the background trees to the ones which are in the foreground. I liked the slight melancholy and sober mood of the resulted piece, and may do a slight larger piece of a different format of it in the future.

Season Change (High Country Snapshot I),  

Watercolor on Arches 140# Cold Press Paper , 5"h x 3"w, 2012 #25

Bid at My DPW Auction

This is another piece I've started in the same fashion, trying to find out how to find fog-covered coastal hills. It's a view I so often see and marvel at while hiking in the Mount Tamalpais State Park in winter and spring mornings -- while the entire view ahead is veiled by beautiful silver fog, there would sometimes be a patch of meadow cleared of fog because it is not covered by oak and redwood trees (the respiratory action of these trees actually create huge amount of vapor in the air, and therefore make the fog denser). I'm struggling to recreate the quiet, moist, fresh air in my memory on paper in this one, and so far I've only done one wet cycle on the paper, painting from background forward as the paper gradually dries, leaving more and more obvious brush marks on the paper, ending with the dry-brush mark of muted brown underneath the tree shape near the center of the picture. At this stage I am more concerned with color temperature relationship and the abstract aesthetics of  brush marks -- the variation of shape, size, edge quality among these marks. Glazing over dry paper and tidy up these marks can be done without much difficulty later, as they are all quite soft and diffused. I love this stage of watercolor painting -- it's both exciting and nerve-wrecking, demanding 120% of the painter's attention. I'm feeling like walking on a tight rope while doing these wet-in-wet piece, which is a good change of pace from the more carefully planned floral paintings. Time to go back to the studio. Ciao!...

Spring Meadow, Tamalpais,  

Watercolor on Winsor Newton 140# Cold Press Paper , 6"h x 10"w, WIP 1