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“Iris Watercolor Painting with Travel Palette”

Me painting with sketchbook and watercolor palette in one hand.

I decided to put that little travel watercolor palette to test. I picked up a gorgeous iris and lily yesterday, sketched it out and started the first stages of painting. My objective here was really to test out the palette, watercup arrangement and holding the light board all in one hand. I want to see if I can use it like this in the field without an easel for little studies. You can click on any picture to see enlarged views.

My travel watercolor palette with watercups attached

I show a close up of the arrangement so you can see the watercups; they are actually for holding mediums for oil painting, designed to hold the liquid even when tipped slightly on a hand held palette. They worked fantastic! I had to get over the habit of looking for my watercup on the table! You can see the ‘sticky tack’ or ‘blue tack’ in my palette. Yesterdays blog explained that better, so they get tested today and it worked wonderfully! Yay..two experiments that worked.My hand got a bit tired from holding the board and palette but this set up is supposed to be for quick studies, I worked on it longer than I would in the field.
The pictures are to show the stages of my painting, start to finish.

Iris pencil sketch

starting to lay in some colors

Putting on the blues, make sure yellow is dry first

Adding more details now, layering on more blues

Adding final details and darker values

Finished!

Click here to see Note Cards of this painting,

and Click here for magnets in my shop!

“Oak Tree Along Edge of Feild” 11-2-07

I painted this 4″ x 6″ oil painting on an early November day, sunny, cold and gorgeous. I have updated this post with photos of the day out in the field, please see below.

"Oak Tree"

"Oak Tree"

The great thing about painting or drawing outside, en plein air is what you observe…hear, see, feel, smell. This day it was the visit of the bees and teeny tiny spiders. It sounds creepy but when you’re used to treking around in nature you learn to just observe the critters for what they are and do, and not get ‘creeped out’!
Burnt Umber sketch with bee

Burnt Umber sketch with bee

So as a wasp kept landing on my painting and easel, I figured it was interesting. I took pictures of him of course.This shows the first stage of my painting, I used a ‘wipe off’ method here; you paint Burnt Umber on the masonite board and brush it out so it’s a medium value. Then you ‘wipe off’ with a rag and your finger or a brush, the areas that are lighter. It’s like sketching with value, it’s very freeing as you won’t try to catch details you just look for the big shapes and wipe them out. If you don’t like it you brush it back on, easy! Then you lay in darks and bring out shadow shapes with more burnt umber. I have my board attached to a piece of cardboard that has clear tape covering it. There is another small canvas ready to go next to it and they are both attached temporarily with ‘sticky tack’ or ‘blue tack’.
spider on easel

spider on easel

Then every time I started to paint, a tiny spider would appear hanging from the brim of my baseball cap, I’d lift him off with his thread of silk and put him in the grass, then another would appear on my easel. My guess was they were ‘sailing’ on their threads down from the beautiful oak tree.