color wheel

I've been asked to teach a watercolor class in the winter term at our local art center. I'm a bit adamant about learning to mix colors, maybe because I don't want to spend the money on heaps of tubes of different colors. So yesterday I worked on creating a color wheel using only three colors: rose, cobalt blue and yellow. I used the complementary color (the color opposite on the color wheel) for the shadows on and of the balls. I may do this again, varying the red, blue and yellow, to see which combination I like best.

Dune Fence

We spent last week at the New Jersey shore with friends. For four days we watched 2 nor'easters pounding at the wonderful, huge windows at the place we were staying. We could see lots of huge waves in the distance. There were a couple of nice days when I got out to walk . . . with my camera, of course. Yesterday in my studio group I painted this watercolor from one of my photos.

Here's a photo from the house and my painting:

More autumn in the woods

Back to pastels again. It's easier to carry watercolor supplies to the art center for our Tuesday painting group and easier not to put all the pastels away at home for any other painting, so I may just do watercolors on Tuesdays. Today we had our small painting group here. As I was looking for reference photos, I came upon this one and knew immediately that's what I wanted to paint. It was the purple in the foreground that drew me, and all those red leaves. It wasn't clear in the photo, but I must have been standing on a bridge spanning a creek because it sure looks like water in the left foreground. As usual, any of these have better color if you click on the picture to get the larger size.

water and rocks

I went back to watercolor today, to paint for a project on rocks and woods for the online watercolor group I help moderate. It was fun and I'm reasonably happy with the painting which is a combination of a photograph I took in Scotland several years ago (the top), and a creek mostly from my head. I like rocks and water almost as much as I love woods and have painted them enough that I don't need much of a reference. There are a couple of tweaks to be done but basically it's finished, I think.

more little pastels

I painted these last Thursday when our little painting group met at our house. I love being in the woods where the dogs can run free, without leashes, and I can walk the trails without holding leashes. I love the woods. And so I love to paint woods.