Watercolor Dirtbag
I didn’t know it at the start of the month, but September was my last calendar month in British Columbia. I’ve been dreaming about moving back to Massachusetts due to homesickness pretty much from the moment I arrived five months ago, but recently, the feeling switched over from “I miss home, but I am determined … Read more
Trees are still mostly green as we pass the midpoint of September here in Vancouver, but the first few leaves are starting to change. I decided to take the opportunity to paint with my 2023 fall foliage palette and see if I can refine the colors to make it an even better palette for autumn leaves.
Along with my watercolor discord, I decided to redo Kolbie Blume’s 10-Day Painting the Wilderness challenge from 2021, the same challenge that I found super valuable in helping me get into watercolor in the first place 3 years ago!
It’s fun to read back to my original post and see how much this challenge meant to me the first time. Doing it again reminded me of that excitement – the anticipation and joy of listening to those first strains of the video theme song and the ritual of taping my paper down each time. I followed the tutorial less this time than I did originally, opting more to do my own thing.
In August, I continued to paint a lot from Unsplash photos. I luxuriated in some summer photos, uncharacteristically painting the current season instead of the one coming up! Then, my painting buddies and I decided to redo Kolbie Blume’s 2021 #PaintingtheWilderness 10-Day Challenge, which one of the first challenges I did that I credit with teaching me a lot about watercolor when I was first getting started. I didn’t quite finish, as I had to pack up my stuff for another small (in-town) move. There’s nothing after August 18, but hopefully I can get going again in September.
Here’s the paintings!
When I’ve previously tested color mixes for blue skies, I’ve focused on the contrast between a more violet-blue zenith and a more green-blue horizon. But are there other contrasts to think about?
I finally had a place to work, so I did more painting in July than June. Not everything I painted worked for me, but these eight did. I also began experimenting with acrylic gouache! Watercolor I was feeling kind of homesick for New England which made me not want to paint either New England or … Read more
After two years of 3x/weekly posts, I finally ran out of runway! I had enough posts saved up to see me through my move, but I didn’t count on my move-related exhaustion hitting me most in the month after we arrived. Not only have I not written posts this month, I also haven’t painted much. … Read more
There is a real before-and-after to this month: before I moved and after! Either way, it’s a very light month because it has been such a month of upheaval and I haven’t had my paints set out most of the time. In Massachusetts A random landscape and some birds. In BC I did only one … Read more
Lately, I’ve been doing a “photo to painting” post just about each month, showcasing paintings I did recently and the photo inspiration (which may or may not be old or bad photos). Going through my old photos, I found a run of photos from 2022 that were used as inspiration for my “Sky of the Day” photos in summer 2022. While I posted those in various contexts (e.g. my year 2022 retrospective), I’m not sure I ever posted the references.
As always, you are cordially invited to paint any of my photos that you wish. See the curated highlights on my Unsplash.
April was a busy month for me as I gear up for my move! Plein Airpril I attempted a plein air theme month but didn’t do it as much as I had planned. My first three weeks of plein air sketches can be found in my weekly reports (week 1, week 2, week 3). After … Read more