Sidra, Uncle Ted and I went on a hike.  I was surprised at how steep the paths were, and out of breath I was. I haven’t been hiking in a very long time. Sidra, who is 10 years old, wanted to take the steep trail. From what Uncle Ted told me, if we took that path, we could expect billy goats and men in lederhosen with huge walking sticks, maybe those really long bugles….  and snakes.  Needless to say, I used my power of persuasion to convince everyone to proceed along the easy path.

On the way up, we did short circuit a couple of switch-backs to slake Sidra’s taste for steepness. On the way back, in deference to my knees, I took the easier slope, while Uncle Ted and Sidra braved the steep way down. I made it to the bottom of one hair pin path in time to watch Sidra absorbing the finer points of descent under the tutelage of Uncle Ted.

Today’s watercolor experiment:

It was a beautiful day here. The sky was a beautiful cerulean blue. This was the first color I applied to the dry paper. I wanted to portray the white, fluffy clouds saw in the sky today. The contrast was stark.  Alas, I did not carry out my plan. Instead I used the same color scheme as yesterday: blue (cerulean deep); yellow (Indian yellow); red (opera rose (Sennelier)).

I painted the bottom quarter of the paper with Indian yellow and used Van Dyke brown to paint in the hills of the foreground.  With the end of a 1″ flat brush I sketched in the two paths that we hiked.

Comment:

Although this study didn’t portray today’s beautiful sky, it did approximate some skies that I’ve seen. I tried to use the opera rose, a pinkish color to indicate a rosy reflection on the bottom of clouds. I’m not too crazy about how it turned out.  On the other hand, I do like the foreground, the glow of the yellow over the brown and the slight green band at the interface between the yellow and the cerulean blue.

Future assignment – rosy reflection on bottom of clouds.