It's been a while since my last post as I realized this post will be my one hundreth POST!!!! I found it to be a bit intimidating to approach this post as I didn't want to just keep posting recent art. I've been wanting to find the time to post informational and interesting posts. There is sooo much I have learned over the years to make my process faster, easier, and just with making art in general that I would like to share with others. Unfortunately those kinds of posts take a lot more preparation and effort. One day I suppose I will get to some of my ideas for those.
For today I decided to show a bit of behind the scenes for my materials I take with me when doing plein air watercolor paintings. In the past I've done alla prima oil paintings which would be a completely different, heavier more complex set up than this. At some point I will likely do a post on that process. When painting in oil I plan on taking the whole day to hike out into a field and stay set up for atleast a few hours. The light changes a lot over that time, so sometimes I end up going back a few times if needed.
Above is a picture of all my supplies in the general setup I use while painting. In this case I was sitting on the ground so I used my larger wicker paint box which I believe was a fishing basket I picked up cheap at a yardsale.
Generally I paint while sitting on a tree stump, rock, or chair etc. in which case I tend to use the smaller paint box (#2) which sits on my lap. 3) sometimes I tape the paper to the back of a watercolor paper pad which can be proped up inside the wicker basket. Other times I tape the paper to the upper inside cover of the #2 box. 4) I generally bring extra water so I can have clean paint water whenever needed. 5) Is a small set of watercolors which has four little mixing areas in the lid and a convenient thumb bracket on the base. 6) I generally bring my camera as most of the watercolors I do are with the intention of possibly turning them into larger oil paintings later in the studio. Taking pics will help me to get extra information that may be needed for that process. 7) masking tape holds the paper down so it doesn't curl or buckle while painting. 8) a pencil sharpener. 9) pencil to sketch out the image before starting to paint. 10) I find that those little chicken bullion cube containers work great for holding the paint water and the lid seems to be water tight from my experience. 11) a variety of brushes and scrap paper to test colors. I forgot to number the additional paint pallet I sometimes bring with me, shown in the pic. I also generally bring sunglasses which help me to see values easier. It's also to have a viewfinder cut into a pice of card stock which helps to frame the image. Lastly you'lle need paper towels to clean bushes in between colors.
The resulting painting for this particular outing is shown above. For me the interesting elements to this scene were the lines and shape of the landscape. I also tried to capture the warmth of the morning sun. As I was painting, a woman was walking her dog and stopped by for a short chat with my fiance and her dog. She saw me painting and it wasn't until she left that I found out she was the owner of this particular house.
A few more watercolors I've done over the past couple of weeks. I do enjoy doing these, but I also find this medium to be a bit frustrating at times as some things just need more time to do properly with watercolor.These same paintings with oil would have been probably four times longer to do though.
