Tips:
The table is slightly tilted to allow the downward blending of color, creating foliage like texture…
Wet Paper.
Good paper and paints make a big difference; I use 300 lb Arches paper and Sennelier watercolor; same Arches with different weight also produce different result.
Mixed colors recedes more than primary color.
Reduce hard edges; wet on wet helps achieving this.
The photograph really does not do justice to the overall atmosphere of this painting…The original appears warmer, cleaner and deeper..while this one seems a bit flat.
Both images are 8″ x 12″
300lb Arches cold press
with Sennelier watercolor
Both are painted with photo reference taken at the Central Park, NY…
However, they were done with different methods. This first one is additive layering(not sure if there is such term…), I painted the lighter background and gradually added darker foreground. The second one on the other hand is sort of painted intuitively…I painted the foreground and background at the same time with dripping paints on wet surface, and the space left over without paints become the lightest reflection on the painting; after that I added the branches and then some final touches for the shadow.
These are the 3 recent paintings…
I thought I did a good job on the sun-setting atmosphere at the Central Park on the first painting; it’s not so hard to capture the feeling of the light background with the shadowed foreground, because all I have to do in this case is to paint the dark foreground on top of the light background…what is really hard is to paint the shinning foliage against a dark background, which I haven’t figured out a good way to do it…
All of them are available at my eBay store:
Last week I went to Metropolitan Museum and saw some really amazing detailed paintings by ancient masters….their paintings allow viewers to gaze for a long time and still discovering “new places” on the landscape…this experience inspired me to be even more focused on the details of my landscape watercolor…I find I start using some of the tiniest brushes to paint; in the past I seldom picked up those tiny brushes….
This one is a bit smaller…at 5.5″ x 8″
It’s up for bid on eBay.
I got frustrated this morning…for I feel a bit tired to do all those detailed branches…so I decided to do something looser and smaller…. without any preliminary sketch I started this painting…then I quickly fell into my old habit of painting those branches…
I think it’s not that I am tired of painting branches…it’s just that I am tired physically…I wonder why…when I am tired physically… I can’t get focused enough to paint…
I also feel sometimes I am using the wrong side of brain to paint…become too calculated about what I want to paint instead of just paint intuitively… after some experiments…I find it’s very important to balance out both sides of the brain… get the right mixture from the two…a good amount of intuitive painting with proper control over some details always seem to produce good result.
12″ x 8″ Snowy Central Park 18
Starting from this painting, I would no longer use my seal along with the signature…
I have been using it because I thought it would remind people of traditional Chinese painting…
But now…I feel it is not necessary….there is no need in using it to tell people that I am doing watercolor with Chinese painting influenced style…I think the paintings could speak for itself.
Furthermore…I also get some feedback saying that the seal is somewhat a distraction…most of my snow scene paintings are dull…to stamp a red seal on top of it really breaks the whole atmosphere at times, and due to the fact watercolor paper I use have rough surface…it is really hard to stamp a complete impression onto the paper..
I might still use seal at the back of the painting…
These are two latest additions to the gallery. Both are 8″ x 12″
I wasn’t quite satisfied with this one…the back ground was overdone…
and I thought I paid too much attention the those branches to the right side..
allowed them to get “too old”…..and branches to the left side were just terrible
trying to paint those cumulated snow on branches really disrupted my “rhythm” of painting process… I found myself thinking more than painting intuitively…or could it be just because of the higher complexity???
over thinking …over doing…is it a good thing or bad thing??
