Autumn Air

Winter is not my favorite season. Every year I sruggle through the holidays and by the time February arrives I feel almost desperate for spring. Thankfully, painting helps me get through the long Montana winters. This season I'm trying watercolors. I've found that I can paint at home in the evenings and using a flat surface is easier on my injured shoulder. 

The learning curve has been much more challenging with watercolor for me for a few reasons, but I'm pretty excited about the process because its forcing me to work on some of my bad lazy painting habits. Watercolors are a challenging medium and creating a watercolor painting is completely different than creating an oil painting. For example, with watercolor, you can't go lighter so the painting needs to be planned out before you even start if you plan on having any light colors or contrast. when I use oils, the painting emerges over time, and often I dont have a clear plan before I start (I usually have a subject in mind but not a clear plan). Another challenge with watercolors is that the actual colors are difficult to mix into the shade I'm trying to make. But that might just be my inexperience. however, I'm used to using white to mix colors. with watercolors, you mix the colors and then water them down to lighten them. 

All in all, I am happy with what's happening on the paper. I like that I'm not feeling completely in control over the painting which allows the process to be more intuitive. I'm hoping to make more abstract landscapes in fun color schemes, and kinda loving the results so far.

All of my Watercolor paintings will be listed at Saatchi Art, both originals and prints. I am directing traffic to Saatchi which has been super helpful for me as it gives me more time to work on the art instead of marketing and sales.