Autumn Colors with Watercolors

The beauty of fall can make an artist feel like a race is on -- to paint all the colorful scenes we can under the blue sky. I started this painting with a hike to see the landscape and to pick a scene to paint.  The view above caught my eye above all the others.

I started this painting with a pencil sketch, then added ink lines with a Micron waterproof pen, and started painting the Phthalo blue sky.

Working from light to dark, larger shapes to smaller details, the process of capturing the day's colors began.

Colors used: 

Azo yellow mixed with a touch of permanent rose for the yellow-orange foliage, 

Phthalo blue mixed with burnt Sienna for the deep green trees in shade, 

Azo yellow mixed with Phthalo blue and a touch of permanent rose for the green grass.

Burnt Sienna mixed with a touch of permanent rose for the reddish grasses in the foreground and the distant cows.

Sitting outside painting in the landscape lets an artist immerse themselves in the fleeting beauty of nature's fall colors.  What initially felt like a race to capture colors becomes a meditation on what is happening right now in nature and a beautiful way to experience the season.

I hope you get time to slow down, sit in nature, and experience the season.

Happy Creating! 

Autumn Nature Journal: Painting Leaves

This is the time of year I find myself stopping in my tracks on my daily walks to pick up an acorn or an especially gorgeous leaf.  I can't help myself!

Back in my studio, I choose a treasure or two to sketch.  This particular day, I found a lovely Cottonwood leaf and an acorn. Painting the crimson colors around the yellow veins in the leaf was tricky.  It became a sort of meditation, and all else left my mind.

 I used a new set of watercolors, a Winsor & Newton Cotman Watercolour sketcher's set.  I wanted to get aquainted with mixing these colors before I use them in an upcoming watercolor class I'm teaching.

I added a shadow to the leaf, a few comments in the margins about little details I noticed, and the page is done.

I love painting and sketching little bits of nature, and delight in the way they can tell the story of a season as well as a larger scene.

Autumn Nature Journal

I traveled recently to a wedding, and had a few hours of time before the ceremony. I took my nature journal for a stroll around the hotel grounds.  

The hotel was bordered by an undeveloped meadow with old orchard trees, creating space for an impressive array of native wildflowers -- from familiar goldenrods and white clover to Virginia Mountain Mint, an icy, peppermint-scented plant that makes me feel as though I've been swept away to the Arctic wilderness when I smell it.

Here's the list of plants I found:

wild strawberries

coneflowers( Rudbeckia)

Dogwood red osier?

Goldenrod

St. John's wort

Wild dogbane

Shaggy mane mushroom

Queen Anne's Lace

Mountain mint

Horse Gentian (honeysuckle family)

White clover

Cottonwood

Pear trees

crabapple trees

apple trees

Liatris?

Thistle

Wild grape

Privet

Red oak

New england aster

Willow

I sketched as I went, and found a windblown cottonwood twig with golden leaves to take back to our hotel room and draw.

There's nothing so grounding to me as drawing plants. I notice as many details as I can and sketch them in.  The dance between using two or three different shades of yellow colored pencils to create the hues to match the cottonwood leaves feels a little like a workout.  When it's done, there's a quiet satisfaction that rises up.

Now when I look back, I see little reminders of our time away from home.  I feel grateful to the wildflowers, trees, and geese for making me feel connected to nature. 

Sketching an Autumn Scene

A crisp Autumn day dawned clear and lovely, and I set out to capture a bit of the season's color with my paintbrush.  

I started with a pencil sketch and then painted a wet-in-wet sky using Phthalo blue and French Ultramarine Blue.

After the sky dried, I mixed pyrrol red and Azo yellow to create the orange hues of the sassafras foliage.  I laid in a wash of sap green muted with a touch of alizarin crimson.

I got lost in laying in the greenery along the fenceline (foreground) and in the midground hill.  I used Hooker's green muted with alizarin crimson for the field beyond the fenceline trees.

Finally, I mixed French Ultramarine blue with burnt umber to create a dark gray for the tree trunks and limbs. Yellow ochre muted with burnt umber created the dried grasses.  After the wash was dry, I added in grass stalks in burnt Sienna.

I used the same tree branch gray, lightened for the shadows.  Here's a look at my palette at the end of painting this scene.

This is a great time of year for color!  Even finding a single, vivid leaf or other nature treasure invites sketching, painting and nature journaling time. 

I hope you get a chance soon to record the vibrancy of Autumn in your sketchbook or nature journal.

Happy Creating!

Book Review: Discover the Art of Field Sketching

I just got this wonderful guide to field sketching by Kristin Link, and every time I pick it up, I feel the tingle of new possibilities.

Her photos of the Alaskan backcountry and of her nature journal pages make me feel as if I have been instantly transported to the pristine wilderness that she calls home.  The book itself feels like an adventure.

Link shares her love of nature journaling, remarking, "Sketching combines art, place and nature.  Developing a sketching practice helps us slow down and be present in the places we inhabit... Sketching can be a tool for grounding, reflection and noticing at a slower pace."  

She walks the reader through the process of sketching a natural subject in pencil, then ink & watercolor with 30 photographs and step-by-step sketches of her own.  

The book is chock-full of photographs of Link's beautiful illustrations, journal pages, creative experiments and natural scenes.  She also includes tips for creating shadows and texture, watercolor basics, and how to measure to create an accurate drawing.

I've already started using her approach of listing 5 things she sees, 4 things she hears, 3 things she feels, 2 things she smells and even something she tastes.  I find it slows me down, and gives my busy brain something to do as I slip into the pace of nature.

I highly recommend Discover the Art of Field Sketching.  I hope you get a chance to pick up a copy at your local bookstore or library!

Nature Journal: The First Colors of Autumn

The Autumn colors have begun to come in. I spent an hour with a grand old Sugar Maple tree recently, recording the sights and sounds of the season in my nature journal.

I'm reading Kristin Link's new book, Discover the Art of Field Sketching.  Kristin has inspired me to sit with my nature journal and record what I see, hear, & smell in the moment as I make sketches.  It's a simple & grounding process that brings a page alive when you read it later.

 

I hope you get a chance soon to capture the present moment in your nature journal!

The Importance of Value in Drawings

Tonight in my Pencil Drawing Workshop, we will explore light & shadow in our drawings.  As a person who is drawn to color, I'm always amazed at how important light and shadow is to creating the illusion of 3 dimensions on a flat piece of paper.  

You can see how powerful value is when we turn a color image to black & white. Taking away the distraction of color helps to make the light & shadows apparent.

It took me years to really see shadows, to notice how they often have lighter and darker portions, and to see how light -- in this case, sunlight shining through a window on the left -- bounces off of the white part of the bowl and reflects onto the right side of the two pears on the right.

Here's an illustration of how light falls on a ball.

Seeing shadows on the ball helps us to see light & shadow on more complex shapes.

Remember, you don't have to get all of the values exactly right.  

Try giving your drawing 4 to 5 values, from brightest highlights to darkest darks.

Remember; you're not a camera, and you don't need to be perfect!  I encourage you to play around with seeing and drawing shadows.  

Making a few drawings focusing especially on values will help you to develop the ability to create depth in your artwork.  

I find that art created simply for an "assignment" like this feels less precious so it's easier to focus on the process of drawing.  You notice more, discover more, and learn more as you draw.

Happy Creating!