More Stamping

  This entry was originally posted on Monday, August 6, 2012

Stamping is also a great way to create trees.

Instead of scratch away grass, scratch away some tree shapes.

 

Add some paint to the stamp and start stamping!

 

Spritz with some water and you have a forest of trees.

More Sponging

  This entry was originally posted on Friday, June 15, 2012

Another way to break up the look of the sponge is to spray the paint while it is still wet.

This will cause some areas to merge and become soft.

Sponging Trees

 This entry was originally posted on Thursday, June 14, 2012

Another way to create foliage is with a natural sea sponge.

 

This is the most common way for creating foliage but to be honest, it is not my favorite.

Perhaps it is because quite often it looks contrived.

It becomes the same pattern of leaves over and over again.

 To avoid this look of everything being the same, turn your sponge different ways and use different sides of it when applying the paint.

This will help in making different patterns of leaves and foliage.

Fun Foliage

  This entry was originally posted on Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Creating foliage and leaves can be fun and there are several ways to do it.

My favorite way is to splatter paint.

Load up your brush with different colors.

And tap it against another brush or stick.

Be sure to get close enough to your paper that it lands on the paper!

Also protect the areas that you do not want to get splattered and messy.

This technique is also best when done wet-in-wet with different colors of foliage.

Uplands

14x20"

Sylvan Shore

Sylvan Shore

15x22"

Two weeks ago I taught a workshop on how to paint landscapes. For this workshop, I showed my students some fun techniques for painting foliage and rocks. The image I used to demonstrate these techniques was from Botanical Beach on Vancouver Island. This beach is one of my favorite places to visit and I have gotten a plethora of inspiration exploring these shores. 

To begin the painting, it was first drawn out on a half sheet of watercolor paper.  The sky was painted by first wetting the paper, then adding a wash of yellow and a red across the paper on a diagonal. The yellow I used is something new for me - Winsor & Newton's Transparent Yellow. The red is Daniel Smith's Quinacridone Rose. After I did a wash of the yellow and the rose in the top half of the painting, I then added a mix of Cobalt Blue and Winsor Blue to the top and bottom of the painting. This was laid flat to dry. 

After the wash was dry, I masked out the sky area and what I refer to as "sky holes". These "holes" are the bits of sky seen through the trees.

Then I splattered paint, starting with yellow, moving to green and blue and finally to a dark green by adding the rose to the green.  While splattering, I also sprayed the paint to get it to move and blend the colors. I also splattered some burnt sienna and cadmium scarlet into the trees while working with the different greens.

After the splattered paint dried, the mask was lifted and the rocks were painted. To do the rocks, I used burnt sienna and French ultramarine blue. While wet, plastic wrap was placed on top of the paint. This was allowed to dry and the plastic wrap was removed to reveal rocks. I continued to use the plastic wrap to create more rocks, leaving space between them to allow for the water and seaweed. These rocks were further defined by adding darker paint to create more crevices and shadows. Then the seaweed was painted with transparent yellow and Winsor blue, adding a touch of salt, to create texture. 

Finally I painted in the tree trunks to finish off the painting.