Cathedral Peak

Sierras

Dolomite, detail

Another try

Completed

Dolomites

My favourite subject. Coming up on a year since I visited. A great
trip that continues to inspire.

Thursday night paintout

L is asleep early for once. I pour myself a glass of lemonade and gin.
Grab some brushes, paint, water, paper and all is well. Painting
mostly with a squirrel mop, a WN synthetic 1" flat and a #4 rigger. Experimenting with new
color mixes and using my brushes differently. I know I'm out of
practice. I warm up for an hour or so until my arm, hand and brush are
friends again and ready to flex in new ways. Those paintings you won't see. But this last spread I'm happy with a few parts. Working with a $3 Utrecht #4 rigger I got today. I like painting rock details with a rigger and it's always more versatile than I remember. It also helps that I don't have to work tomorrow, otherwise this night is no different than any others, so why can't I paint every night once she is alseep?

More takes on alpinist image

Sierra Lenticular

The original

With shadows added...

Who needs those bright colors on a palette?

Adding some color...

...while drinking tea and discussing a home purchase.

Mountain contours to paint

Noodlers carbon ink on Holbein. Mt. Ambition from Alpinist 35.

Shadows

Alpinist images

Ruwenzori

Mountains of the moon. 1962 Ordnance survey. Shaded relief,
hatchuring, color. A nice map I used yesterday to double check the
elevation of Bottego, the north peak of Mt. Gessi in Uganda. Would
like to see (and paint) these mountains someday.

Ink mtns.

Sketching late into the night. Insomnia. Pentel Stylo on Holbein.

Trevor Chamberlain

Chamberlain quotes a British art critique (unaccredited) writing that watercolor "requires the forward planning of a chess player, the concentration of a Zen master, and the dexterity of a brain surgeon."

Chamberlain is a painter I admire. In the next couple of weeks I'll be posting a quote from some of the watercolorists I look up to along with some samples of their work. I began this series of posts with a very similar quote and some samples from the website of Melbourne based Joseph Zbuvic last week.  He's a great painter that holds his palette colors close to himself. I'm very curious what's on his palette....I've been watching one of his videos this week instead of painting. I'm amazed to watch the brush control these folks have. They can do so much with precision and exactitude. Not much is left to chance, whereas my best paintings are happy accidents.

Back to Chamberlain. Handprint has a great page on his approach, palette, biography and a few lovely samples that I will just link to here. He has a nice book in the Atelier Personal View series that is worth owning if like me you enjoy loose, expressive British watercolor.

Selkirks x3

 

Last weekend I prepped a sketch from a photo (above) I took in the Neptune Range of the Northern Selkirks in 2009. I thought it was a good sketch and probably the best I have done. I've tried painting Neptune probably a half dozen times now and I was excited to work from this sketch. I also decided I would take my time unlike how I normally paint which is fast and perhaps not as considered as it could be. The first couple of times I painted this scened I used masking to save some highlights and paint the sky, the results were ok and I decided I would go back to masking which I rarely use nowadays. I carefully masked out the mountain mass so that I could paint a nice wash for the sky. The masking turned out ok. Unfortunately Ihad sketched this on the first page of one of my new Saunders Waterford fat pads and I had never worked on this paper before. I used a heavy application of WN masking fluid and after putting down my sky and letting it dry I tried to remove the fluid. It turns out the 140pd paer is a bit fragile and the WN fluid is much tackier than the fludi I used in the past. SO... I ended up with no underdrawing and a ripped surface in one spot. I was quite sad as I loved this sketch. This was earlier this week and it's taken me several days to get over it and get on with the painting. I didn't even bother re-drawing it in the end, too worried it would not match the quality of the original...so a la prima I went...

The rsults are ok. If feels very much like a field sketch or a wrm up rather than the more finised painting I was hoping to achieve. I guess thats what these sketch pads are for and I should limit my use of masking fluid to heavier grade paper taht can handle it. Either way I've definitely notice that masking fluid will remove pencil lines regardless of the paper which is quite annoying. There is probably some logic in drawing details after masking and panting sky.

While this piece was drying today I got out some other sketch books and paper. In one I alid a very loose wash of Indigo and light red and practiced lifting with a new WN white taklon brush I go this week at a sale. I was happy with the results and decided to add some details from the Neptune image onto it. 

On another sheet of Canson colored pasted paper I have I dug up some white gouache to experiment with snow painting for the first time. Again using Neptune as a model. I ended with white gouache on both paintings and I have to say I'm fairly happy with the results both feel like my style of painting and very different at the same time. I'm excited to experiment with this some more so for now the gouache is staying out.