Frýdlant Journals: Five - Watercolours of My Yard

Dear Humans,

It is day two of feeling wan and PMS-y, but I have rallied a bit more than yesterday. Mostly because I couldn't stand the idea of having to tell you folks that I was just as unproductive today as I was yesterday.

I spent some of the morning and afternoon playing with watercolours. I took a few photos last around my yard last night using my last screeds of energy and phone battery. Today I tried converting some of the images into watercolour paintings. I haven't done anything very serious in watercolour for a while. I have mostly been using it as a splash of colour for my journal illustrations. That doesn't require proper use of the technique, though--I just dab it on randomly.

Here are three of my brief pictures from today:

1. This painting is of one of our garage windows and some spare logs. I like the way that the logs turned out. The key with watercolour is to put the darker colours, such as the blue shadows of the logs, on last. I started with the light shades of the walls and then I added started to build up the logs with washes of orange and brown. When the washes were dry, then I added some darker contours and detail. I also had trouble with the window. It got a little overwrought with too many layers.

 2. This is of the big, round lightbulb above our garage door. I had toruble manipulating the paper in this painting, because I was using notebook paper instead of watercolour paper. Watercolour paper is designed to be able to absorb several washes of colour and to withstand the friction of the brush without pilling. You can see that under the lightbulb the paper got too soaked and a bit messy. I like the colours, though.

Also, this might not actually count as "watercolour" because I used a white paint for the lightbulb. Technically, there should be no use of white paint in watercolour--the white should come from the paper shining through the gaps in the paint. It is a mark of proficiency to be able to plan carefully enough to do this. It also maintains the airy, translucent feel that watercolour is meant to have. What I have done should probably be categorised as "gouache".

3. This is a small landscape of the view from our kitchen window. I do not love the way the strands of the telephone pole turned out. But the washes of blue actually photographed well. I think this painting has more value when photographed than in real life. Sorry to disillusion you!

Love,
LR

PS
Check out these extremely old watercolour experimentations of mine! Or these...Wow. That feels like so long ago. It was just at the time when I was beginning to apply for art college.

You can also get caught up on my five-part series of Sketching Tips. It is very educational. You receive two college credits for reading it! Hooray! Free college credits!