Snow Covered Pine

Snowy Tree Demo

Because snow is what we see here in Northern Michigan (and pretty much all we see), my Thursday students wanted a snowy tree demo. They did a beautiful job with their trees!

It's been snowing here since the middle of November.  We may as well embrace it.  A couple of students requested a snow scene demo for next week.  Good idea  - we have a long time to do still life paintings.

I've lived in Michigan all my life, but the concept of snow still fascinates me.  Don't you think it's weird that this pure white frozen stuff falls out of the sky and we have to shovel it??!!

Stay warm!

More Succulents

Sketchbook Page

This is a very quick contour drawing loosely painted with watercolor.  I did this after my class left on Thursday.

For me, contour (continuous line) drawing is very much like connect-the-dots  -  connect-the-shapes.  I really don't know what's going to happen until the end.  I'm thinking "shapes", not "objects".  Some of those shapes might be negative spaces, not an object at all.

I'm not thinking about composition either.  I'm just getting down the information that's there.  I can put it to good use later. I can move things around for a better composition (although I I am pretty happy with this), and shape up that clay pot on the right.

I can't believe it is January 11th already.  I have waited so long to begin a fresh start, that it just isn't fresh anymore.  I'm not good at fresh starts anyway  -  I do better just plodding along.  I enjoy plodding along, so I'm doing okay.

Loose and Juicy

Succulents

In class this week we were trying to see how simple we could keep it and still show some separation of shapes  -  such as the leaves on the plant on the left.  I had intended to work in some detail as I went along, but I really liked what was happening with the looseness, and decided to leave it alone.

I knew the composition was weak, but my intent was to demonstrate some drop-in color and then do some negative painting, and I wasn't thinking much about where I was putting things.  The plant in that dead-center blue and white cup was going to have some negative painting to show the pointy leaves, but I just liked all the bleeding colors there and decided to move on and not do anything else to it. That's what is so much fun about watercolor  -  so often it will do something that is much better than I would have done.

I like some of the things going on in this little painting.  I wonder if I worked out a good composition and gave it another try, if I would still get some of these results.  I am not good at re-doing, but we'll see.