EASTERN SHORE DECEMBER

Just wanted to detail some of the colors I used for this painting.  I used cerulean blue and cadmium red for the sky and water.  The real painting is more of a pale violet than the one showing on the computer.  So I made more of a grey violet color.  I used the same color for the distant land and then also added raw sienna to grey it down even more.  I also used raw sienna and burnt sienna throughout the background.  Those are the only colors I used in the painting except I substituted cobalt blue in places where I needed a stronger dark such as in the branches.

Water Feature Still Life

 

We are starting this painting in our new fall classes.  It's small but something to get us started.  Cathy in my class took this picture at Longwood Gardens.  It didn't have the lion fountain just a plain one.  I added it in as an afterthought!

I started painting the red flowers with some cadmium red lt. and some alizarin mixed together.  I added some violet (cobalt and alizarin) shadows on the flowers on the left....just slightly.  Next I painted the yellow flowers with some winsor yellow (or cadmium yellow lt.) then some gamboge.  It needed to be a little more orange on the left side so I added some cad. red lt. to the winsor yellow.  Next I painted the green leaves on the left in the back.  I used cobalt blue and winsor yellow....making sure to vary the greens (warmer and cooler) adding a little more yellow in some and more blue in others.  I painted the foliage in the clay pots.  Also some cooler and some warmer.  The foliage in the 4 pots in the front were painted in one continuous manner connecting each one.  The I painted the large pot.  Using burnt sienna, cobalt blue and alizarin and making the left side a little darker.  The inside of the pot I used burnt sienna and cobalt blue.  The clay pots in the front are next.  I alternated their colors so as not to make them all look the same and the sun was hitting them all a little differently.....some cooler, some warmer.  I used yellow ochre, alizarin, cobalt and burnt sienna.  Some pots I used more alizarin (but watered down), some I mixed all the colors together and some I added cobalt for shadow.  Next I painted the bricks with a diluted wash of alizaring and burnt sienna.  When the bricks dried I painted the shadows under the pots with cobalt, alizarin and a little touch of burnt sienna.  It's a light wash so I didn't go heavy on the color.  When that dried, I added a darker shadow of the same colors and blended it out with water so there wasn't any hard edge.

For the rock wall, I painted all the rocks first.  Some with burnt sienna, some with a mix of burnt sienna and cobalt, adding alizarin at times also and then adding a raw sienna glaze on some.  I sprinkled salt on some of the rocks while still wet and scrubbed some to add a slight highlight.  After they dried I glazed cobalt blue with alizarin and a little burnt sienna mixed in over the ones on the left to put them in shadow.  On the right side I used the side of my brush to skip around and not define the rocks too much with a watered down version of that mix.  After all that dried I did glaze a bit of raw sienna over the rocks also.  I didn't want all of the rocks to look the same....that's too boring for me.  Variation is very important in painting.....when things look all the same, the viewer gets bored.....and so do I frankly!  I ended up spattering some color around....and then painted the lion and water.  I used the same colors for the lion that I did for the rocks and the water also has some of the violets that the rocks have.
That's it.
Oh, I added the lion by making a stencil of it's head and the water and scrubbing it out.....that simple!