World Watercolor Month – the first week

Not sure what distracted me – I painted but I didn’t post here. Starting with Day one and moving on down to Day Eight. The third and fourth photos are postcards both done on Day Three. Now let’s get back on track with this, shall we?

World Watercolor Month – the first week

World Watercolor Month – Day One

Work by definition has to be when you woulda liked to have gone out and painted in the afternoon but by the time you can it’s thundering and lightning and raining.

Went anyway.

Not my favorite of recent paintings but hey, wipers and darkish.

World Watercolor Month – Day One

Where did June Go?

Mainly it went in a swirling of brain-drain as I trained and adjusted to doing a new thing while working from home. It has taken really three weeks to go from abject terror to only moments of wondering what-the-heck-am-I-doing, LOL. Toward the end of last week, which ends on Saturday, I had moments of – oh, I know what to do here! Or hearing someone else asking a question in our support chat and thinking, ‘isn’t that…?’ So slow but sure.

Working at home means no forty-five minute plus commute each way, but also means I make my own coffee and breakfast and lunch. And dinner. Sometimes I get to eat one or all of those sitting on the front steps. Sometimes I get to dash out afterwork because the sun is out and I can get a painting in and take photos of the evening coming on.

July brings with it World Watercolor Month so get ready for a more regular appearance of paintings here. After that – August Poetry Postcard Festival 2020 – although with the pandemic in play, some of us started early on that. I did a month’s worth of postcards during NaPoWriMo in April.

I feel the rhythm of my year changing and yet it’s the same. A few photos popped up in facebook of watercolors I’d done in 2016 and 2019 and it was interesting to see what was the same and what was different. Since being home I found a place in New Lebanon where there is a 360 degree view of the sky. Looking back years from now I’ll be reminded of the pandemic by many many panoramas of the sky and clouds and landscape.

Here are photos from today. Mostly clouds and landscape but a few plants and flowers and a couple mushrooms that snuck in at the end. Look close – some of the clouds were being visited by birds and other things!

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Where did June Go?

World Watercolor Month Day #30

It was apparently too hot to blog yesterday although I did sit outside and then inside to paint. That was about all I did, LOL. Sat outside in the warm morning

Painted this:

and doodled a bit inside and then painted from the previous day’s photos”

World Watercolor Month Day #30

World Watercolor Month Day #29

Drove over to the Clark which was very full of people looking at Renoir and Ida O’Keefe. I did go in after spending time with the hill, the clouds and the cows. It was very hot. Tonight at dinner I had two BIG glasses of water and then I had to wash out my painting hat because it had developed a salt ring! I refilled my gallon jug and two smaller water bottles so I’m ready for next time – hopefully it will be cooler!

World Watercolor Month Day #29

World Watercolor Month Day #28 and Yesterday

Last night, Mom and I saw this, reflecting the late evening sky at Naumkeag, Stockbridge Mass..

And when night came it danced with fireflies.

Tonight the late sky looked like this:

And I painted this:

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
— Albert Einstein

World Watercolor Month Day #28 and Yesterday

World Watercolor Month Days #25 and #26

Not sure how I forgot to post my bit of watercolor yesterday but here it is. I have a new palette and I’m debating how to set it up, so I’m still messing around to see what colors some new possibilities become when mixed with other more known players. Seems to me that if you’re going to have another palette it should be substantially different in some ways from the other ones you’ve already got going. I don’t know. On the other hand if it was wildly different from what I commonly use, chances are I wouldn’t use it? Ack.

Yesterday I received my first postcard for the August Poetry Postcard Festival. Today I received postcards #2 and #3. They blew me away, humbled me and filled me with gratitude.

World Watercolor Month Days #25 and #26

World Watercolor Month Day #24

Stopped to paint clouds on the way home. I didn’t think there would be a colorful sunset.

I was wrong.

World Watercolor Month Day #24

World Watercolor Month Day #23

Was grey and misting when I painted this from my car in the driveway.

and then the sun came out:

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World Watercolor Month Day #23

World Watercolor Month Day #22

It rained all day and it’s still raining. Which is good because during that insane sunset last night the temperature and humidity dropped 10 points each and this morning it was a swell 65F.

An online tutor that I have, Alan Owen in the UK, posted a video demonstrating mixing various greens and wondering what blues and yellows we were using to mix greens. He’d asked me that question the other day about a painting I’d posted to the group and I have the feeling he’d prefer that we all mix our greens. I do test mixes from time to time because in theory mixing greens make sense. You have blues and yellows on your palette that should be all you need to mix up whatever you need. In reality I keep a few greens on my palette and mix from there. I think it’s often water control that messes me up.

But anyway – rainy day and a question worth answering – what greens can you get from the blues and yellows on your palette (and beyond). I took nine blues and six yellows and did a rather orderly mixing chart. Then I did a page of just various greens I have.

I’ve been thinking of setting up the new palette I got recently but was trying to figure out how to make it different than the one I’m carrying at the moment. So while pondering this I swatched out the yellows and red and browns plus a few purples. That about covered the whole spectrum.

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World Watercolor Month Day #22