Although I worked on another autumn palette, I did little outdoor painting (and not too much indoor, tbh). Between work, being sick, and general low energy, I had less bandwidth for sketching and painting than I did last year, when I was staying in the country for the whole month. Still, I did some painting experiments and sky pages; I feel I have been spending more time learning.
This will be a bit of a photo to painting post as I will include reference photos where applicable.
The Paintings
Red-bellied Woodpecker
This guy looks like he’s seen better days.
Autumn Mini-Paintings
I was feeling too exhausted to do “a painting” so I did a bunch of miniature scenes to test out of autumn colors.
Scarlet Treetops
This “sky sketchbook” sketch is all about the chroma contrast between the gray sky and the scarlet leaves. The scarlet trees in question? Maples in a parking lot behind a fence!
They’ve continued to delight me as they become even redder, but are difficult to take a photo of because of their placement.
Traveling
Putting my one-point perspective lessons into practice, this scene celebrates the way sunsets can look extra intense over the highway. I’m especially pleased with the red taillights.
Here’s the reference, taken from the car.
Just another sky
This is fairly direct “sky sketchbook” page from this photo detail.
I’m not too happy with it, but that’s how it is sometimes. I did “direct watercolor” for the house and ignored all my lessons in perspective.
Rose Gold Sky
I showed a step-by-step of this one in Mastering Glazing Techniques with Don Rankin, part 2. I took my my time with doing the sky in a series of glazing steps, and I like the results!
Red Maple Fantasia
The idea here was not to be too much of stickler for detail but to just luxuriate in a wide variety of deep fall reds. Here’s a selection of references I drew from.
Big Hills (Les grandes collines)
This was painted about twice as large as I normally work: 10 by 13 inches instead of 5×7-ish. To make it easier to do something that intimidated me, I did a simple tutorial, the first one in the French language tutorial book Sublimez vos paysages à aquarelle by Maria Smirnova. Despite the relatively simple subject matter that I would have crushed in a smaller size, I made some humbling rookie mistakes working large. My brush strokes are awkward and visible because I was using too small of a brush: a size 8 round feels like a size 4 when you double the size of the paper!
Conclusion
I padded this post with reference photos, but I really didn’t do that many painting this month! Less than my usual, to be sure. I feel like I say that nearly every month, so maybe counting paintings is a disheartening thing to be doing. I don’t necessarily feel like my engagement with art is going down, though; I’m learning by reading and practicing, I’m taking photos and chasing natural moments where I can, and I’m beginning to take on more ambitious projects requiring more time per painting, such as paintings using many glazed layers, and larger paintings. As we transition into winter, shorter days, and longer nights, I hope to continue my exploratory, curious attitude and not worry too much about output. And I also hope that I will be able to make use of my back catalogue of landscape photos, even if they’re from the wrong season!