Monday, September 8, 2014

Summer Painting


I did a lot of painting this summer - mostly watercolours - which is a first for me. I started doing some acrylics last year, but always found watercolours to be frustrating because you can't really fix mistakes. When we went to Newfoundland in July, my mother and I packed our little paint boxes and a pad of watercolour paper and we painted most evenings. In the process of filling up my watercolour book and creating a fun memento, I learned to love doing watercolours. 

The little paint box with a collapsible brush is so portable that I didn't mind taking it with me and it gave me a way to capture the beautiful scenes we were seeing every day. One of things I love the most about painting is how it makes you focus on details you wouldn't notice otherwise - how the shadows fall, all the colours in the rocks, the different greens and browns in the vegetation ... Every evening I would look through the photos I had taken that day and paint one or two of them. I have posted a few favourites below. 

 
 
 

Recently a friend and I went to the cottage to spend some time practicing painting sky and water because boy is it difficult. We were very fortunate to have a fantastic display of different types of clouds and water textures.  I took photos on my iPad so we could paint from the pictures and ended up with a wonderful collection in just two days. I uploaded them to the computer so the quality is not as crisp as with my camera, but that just means they have a painterly quality to them already. 

We had dark and looming clouds


and light and fluffy clouds


  
and wispy clouds

  

and a blue sky with just a few little cotton puff balls 


and even for a short period of time early on one of the mornings a pure blue sky.



The water ranged from ruffled





that was insanely sparkly at times



to soft undulations




to a smooth glassy surface which allowed for great reflections of trees and clouds



   
  


 to an absolutely smooth mirror-like surface.


I can't say my paintings were out of this world, but I learned a lot.  Namely, that clouds and water are hard to paint. Ha!




9 comments:

  1. Simply spell binding. Wonderful in many ways.

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  2. Oh my goodness, those watercolours are fabulous! I had no idea you were an artist. And the water photos read like a series, they would look so pretty hung together somewhere. I could just look at water all freakin day... :-)

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  3. Watercolors are hard to paint with - no "do overs"!! I've played with oils and acrylics and they are very forgiving. You did a fabulous job of getting the water and clouds!

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  4. Girl you are making progress! I am very impressed with your watercolors...and the pictures as well. Glad you had a good summer!

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  5. These are lovely Grace...I wish I could draw or paint for that matter!!

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  6. You are so talented! The water colors and the photos turned out brilliantly. And funny - I have cloud pics in my blog post today too :)

    char@marshallhousematters.com

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  7. They are all so beautiful ... but I especially love the lighthouse.
    S

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  8. I LOVE that first painting with the lighthouse. It does not look like an amateur did it at all! Beautiful!

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