The Sketch Crawl

It was a chilly Wed morning so we did a sketch crawl through South Davis. Each stop was 20 min. These are 3 of the 6 sketches I did. The others had no color so were not included. The few chickens in one painting represented probably 50-100 that thought we were going to feed them. The tractor was in a yard with a very angry dog that would not stop barking. (20 min. is a long time to bark.) The painting with 2 trucks was near a pasture with 20-30 cattle. The cattle quickly moved off to a very distant green field as soon as I started sketching. None the less, it was a good day. Quick sketching results in surprising things; quick decisions on colors, edits, composition and missing cattle. I need more workouts to pick up speed.

Birches and Snow

I attended a presentation by the Daniel Smith Watercolor representative and given the colors to test, I did a birch tree in snow. The Daniel Smith colors are very nice but I wondered how the colors on my palate would compare. One gets used to making colors by mixes so I tried a full scene.That is what you see here. Birches are like soccer balls in terms of contrasting values and easily become a focus. Snow is white paper where the sun hits and shades of blue where shadows or contours occur. I do see a difference in the water. This is a stream and should be very cold, hence, dark blue. I'm not sure that I captured that as well as the Daniel Smith color of Mayan Blue did. I can tweak it some more.