Little Bits of Practice

These are really small, 3.5x5.5 inches, even smaller than postcards (4x6) but make for good practice.  .  With these, I was trying a few things out.  I wanted to mix colors directly on the paper (wet on wet), glaze transparent washes over dried washes (wet on dry) and try out my new Lamy fountain pen.

This is my favorite one of the series below.  It is the only one using ink.  Unfortunately, the Lamy ink is not water proof, so the ink bled (which did create nice dark washes).  I mixed the sky and clouds directly on the paper and you can see more color transition and gradation than I am normally able to achieve.
 

                              Mosquito Creek, Olympic National Park, WA
                                 watercolor and ink on paper 3.5x5.5

I was a little impatient with this one and the color from the baby moose bled into the background, making it rather blurry.  I mixed the trees in the foreground on the paper and when I did let the water dry, did several glazes of greens and browns on top to try and create the illusion of more distance.  I think this one was semi-successful.
 

                             2 Moose, 1 Blurry, Isle Royale National Park, MI
                                 watercolor on paper 3.5x5.5 

The above two pictures used photo references while this one did not.  I was very heavy handed with the water and flooded the paper.  However, I really like the flows of color and the pigmentation that occurred organically as a result.  The sky, clouds and foreground colors were all mixed on the wet, wet paper.
 

                                     Golden Sunset (or Sunrise?)
                                 watercolor on paper 3.5x5.5