A Peaceful Day at Little Bear Lake

 

my first photo of my sequence of layers

I was asked to take photos of my process of painting. This is a painting of an area that I love up near the Sierra Buttes in Sierra County.  Here is a post from one of my plein air trips up to this area:  Bear Lakes Loop- World Watercolor Month #2

I planned this out carefully with a value sketch (yay me!) color swatches (yay me, again!) and then proceeded to get the job done.

When I started taking photos, at this point I believe that this was my second or third layer. I painted the background wet on dry though I did use my sprayer to help feather the paint to help create some branches, to loosen things up a bit.

Here I started on bringing up the depth of the water, etching out those falling trees in the water, working on the foliage in back of the rocks. Another layer on the rocks I believe.

 

completed painting on a quarter sheet 140# watercolor paper

 

This is basically finished. I do believe that I lost some vividness of the color on my last photo, it matches more with the second photo. I soften two of the rocks on the far right, scratched in some sparkles on the water, soften the edge of the water on both the background and far right. As I look at this painting. I feel that I need to clean up the top of one of those rocks where the foliage is, it looks lumpy.

I decided to go tighter this time around because now and then I like to go slow and detailed just to teach myself some order and especially to take my time. I can’t always go like a bat out of hell working through my watercolors. I do believe that I managed to make that far rock on the top left my focal point but wonder if I made all those rocks too closely related, a big lump of rocks. Next time I think that I will bring my designated rock to completion and leave the rest a little uncompleted.

colors used: Quin. gold, Aureolin, Prussian Blue, Cobalt Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Raw Sienna

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