I have been entertaining myself with watercolor painting for a few years. Sometimes, it isn’t so entertaining, though. When I want to emulate a style that represents the ethereal sky at sunset, or something as simple as a dramatic cloud formation, I feel as clumsy as if I were trying to draw a detailed drawing with a bar of soap. It is very frustrating.

Paints

I love the paints themselves. I must restrain myself every time I enter an art supply store. If I could I would buy all the colors from all the manufacturers. I have settled for amassing quite a collection of pigments (ostensibly) to study their places in the color wheel. I have done quite a bit of testing of each of my colors. However,  as yet I have not used all the paints in my paint box to actually paint with. That is going to change.

Today’s experiment

Since I had such good luck with my ocean theme yesterday, I dusted off my color strips and looked for all my shades of blue.

The Blues I Have

I started painting at the bottom of the paper with blues on the reddish side and proceeded toward the top using the greener hues of blue. Part of my idea was to portray a sense of depth, so together with the hue variation, I varied the size of my brushstrokes from large at the bottom, to small toward the top.

Today’s experiment:

Sometimes ocean water can have many different shades of blue. I hope that my future studies will evoke feelings of the sea from the viewer.

The Blues
9″x12″ Cold Pressed 140# Watercolor Paper

Today the blues, tomorrow the reds.