The Greens of Summers Past

The Greens of Summers Past, watercolor on Yupo, 20x26

Nowadays, Summer arrives with the sound of children on vacation playing in the neighborhood... Thinking back of younger years my summers were also filled with the sounds of friends playing in the back yard or on the streets, but also the loud noise of cicadas, the warm, humid air of southern Brazil and the intense, unforgiving green of the landscape. It was in this nostalgic, peaceful mood that I painted my latest creation on Yupo synthetic paper, of a scene in a park near my sister's home in Castro, Brazil. It was based on a study I did on my sketchbook. Simpler days that can still inspire...

This painting was done with only four colors, and only one green. I took advantage of the variations allowed by the color green apatite genuine from Daniel Smith to create a range of greens. When applied very densely, this color is very dark. I layered a thick coat all over the colored areas, and later painted back into some sections with clear water, diluting the pigment to lighter, warmer greens to create the main tree and other features. The sky and the house and the highlights in the water reflections were all lifted back to white, in a negative shaping process akin to carving. I'm including below a detail, to show some of the textural effects of the color on Yupo, some intentional, some less controlled.

Boulder County Plein Air Art Exhibit

This a recent plein air study done on location in North Boulder, celebrating the fact that the weather is more friendly nowadays, and that I have been accepted into the first Boulder Country Plein Air Art Exhibit. The 16 selected artists will be doing their paintings in June, and the exhibit will be held from August 1st to September 3rd, in two different locations, in Boulder and Longmont. Four guest artists will also add four paintings each to the show, for a total of 80 pieces portraying the beauty and variety of the local open spaces, from lakes to museums to mountains.

The painting above was done with a single brush, a squirrel mop size 6, on a 18x12 sheet of Fabriano Artistico rough paper. All the colors are M. Graham: ultramarine blue, cobalt violet, yellow ochre, cobalt teal, viridian, burnt sienna, permanent alizarin crimson, and burnt umber. I used a lot of drybrush to bring out the textures of bark, ground and rock.