Tuesday, July 27, 2010

It's Not Easy Painting Green







Our sketch group went to the Caldwell Lily Pond yesterday. It was a beautiful location but I'm still struggling with the Khadi paper. The paper is so absorbent that the paint just doesn't flow no matter how much water I use. Green isn't one of my "easy" colors either. I seem to go from dull to neon. It definitely was a green spot and I definitely prefer neon!

There was a huge frog in the pond. He made the loudest, strangest sound, not anything like I expected. He sounded like an air conditioner turning on - hmm, maybe it was his way to beat the heat.

I discovered that a Sharpie makes some nice lines on the Khadi so I think I'm going to change my approach in this book, maybe just sketching and eventually adding spot color later.

All in all it was a good day. A beautiful day, a beautiful location, good friends, good talk and I learned something!

9 comments :

  1. You did a great job... I think your greens look VERY good. I'm not familiar with that paper... looks heavy though.

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  2. It's not easy painting green, that's true, but you have a lovely range of them here, from the gorgeous sunny greens to the cool greyed greens. Beautiful work.

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  3. Interesting--I was looking at the images "large," and trying to figure out what that paper was--it looks beautiful. As for green, don't get me started--yours are lovely! These are fabulous pages. We were visiting my sister in GA and their backyard green area is home to a frog that honest to God barks like a dog! It was hilarious--I never heard anything quite like it before...

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  4. These are excellent! There is so much depth in that second one!

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  5. Greens are definitely not easy! You did a very nice job with yours, they read natural and sun-spotted. Beautiful!

    I also wanted to let you know that there is The Sketchbook Project 2011 going on. Some of my friends and I have signed up to participate. Here's a link to it, if you're interested -
    http://www.arthousecoop.com/projects/sketchbookproject

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  6. I love all the greenery! Like Raena, my favorite is the second one. I can feel the heat on the sunshine in the clearing on that one.

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  7. Your paintings belie your comment - you make greens look easy! I think using the pen and ink and touches of wc on this paper will work well. Maybe the frog was telling you he wanted a model release form! ha ha

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  8. I'm having the same trouble with Brown today. Anyway, I think you did a fine job - there are many varied greens. Love the texture of that paper.

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  9. It's interesting that you don't feel you do greens well, because these pages just glow - I feel as though I werethere.

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