Plein Air
Plein Air Painting in the spring is something I absolutely love. It is so very vibrant with the brightest greens and so many colorful flowers. I want to share a plein air piece that I entered last year at the plein air booth contest in “Art on the Green in Coeur d’Alene, ID“. This piece won 3rd place. It is entitled, “Beauty After Fire H1224”, a watercolor on 140lb wc paper showing a vibrant forest scene coming back to life after a wildfire.
Here is a picture I took of the sky right when I started. It was a beautiful sky full of life. I was sitting where we just finished rebuilding our house after the wildfire of 2023 (Oregon Road Wildfire), and, these are the only patch of trees that remain. They looked so happy and I was so glad they were there. I thought I’d go ahead and put those tall standing giants on paper with their great backdrop. The biggest challenge for me was doing that dramatic sky first.
This second picture is what it looked like at the at the end of that first afternoon. I returned the next day, but of course the sky was not anywhere near the same so a lot of the view from there was more from my head than my eyes seeing it. I added the red’s in the sky after I had put orange in the bare clay dirt at the tree bases. It really warmed things up, yay!
Today taking a look outside, the bug has really got me and I am wanting to get out there and paint, hope to see you out there too!
Join us at the Art Reception
I keep adding greens to the background till I get the effect I want.
To make the rich color of the petal centers, a deep red purple is dropped in on wet surfaces and extra is brushed off with a dry brush. The line details at the middle of the petal are carefully drawn in on dry paper. A drop of yellow brings that bump out. Browns are washed over the background last.
Black and White
Large Area Wash
You can see the yellow petals painted carefully with lemon yellow and reserved light areas. While still wet, I drop in a mixture of orange, alizarin crimson, and cerulean blue if needed for shadow. It is a fun way to get the paint to do the work. I can always use a dried brush tip to lift off any excess paint in the wet area. The leaves in the background on the left are painted the same way.
I had my first plein air paint out with
A Bucket of Berries is the subject of my next watercolor. While looking through pictures taken in the garden last year I ran across this photograph. A bucket of blackberries and strawberries turned on its side on the dining table. Every morning I pick the berries that are ripe in the garden. They are so very colorful and juicy. The photo just looks yummy to me. The berries are coming back to life in the garden and do not seem to mind the fire at all.
Next more light washes sort out the blackberries from the strawberries and the tabletop gets a light shade in front.
The darkest surfaces are carefully painted while saving the highlights on their shiny surfaces.
The blackberries are rendered one-by-one on the left side as they lay on the table. It is a gradual berry-by-berry painting, with darkening on the bucket parts to give us a hint of the depths. The darkest shadows on the berries are painted, and with a little water added the bright medium shades are applied. If you are careful enough, the saved highlight will show well.
A Charming Traveller visited me in the garden. I heard him arrive with those fast wings and watched as he screeched to a stop and hovered right in front of me. Luckily, I had a camera locked and loaded and got a great picture of him. 
Hummingbirds are such expert aviators. It is utterly amazing how fast and accurate their flying is
Beginning with the hummingbird’s main subject, I then drew the most important flowers behind and below him. I used his photograph to draw him entering the stage from up and to the right. Putting a pastel kind of wash in the background helps me to see the bird outline better.
I faithfully render the hummingbird main star.
To show how he quickly arrived and froze, the only thing I could think of was to put those cartoon movement curves on him. He was repeatedly drawn. The first image was very light and getting darker till he arrived in full color.
The patch of sunflowers I sat in is pretty thick, full of flowers and leaves. With a complicated puzzle of background requiring a little bit of simplification. Finally, becoming a continuous melody of nature.
Slowly finishing the background and adjusting the hummingbird shapes to allow transparency was kind of tricky.
The gradual darkening, and adjusting transparency of the bird were completed in many steps.
The painting was almost complete. But as I gazed at it, there was something wrong. It was the background that competed with the main character.
Elk Hideaway was our home lost in the Oregon Road Fire of August 18, 2023. This is a watercolor painting of it from what pictures I could find. The finished painting reminds me of the peace surrounding our forest home, before.
Our hideaway was a DIY house that we designed and built, my husband and myself. We did most of the work ourselves over 5-years, which is probably why the loss is so hard to settle. Painting this portrait begins with a light wash background and the structure surfaces placed in light yellows.
Next, the shadows and brown pigment are added to the structure along with a little foreground highlighting in the painting.
More darkening on the structure begins to show more of the detail.
I add light wash coats to the foreground and background which seem to start to bring it to life.
The final touch is dropping a beautiful blue skyline over the rooftop. Fini! I get a feeling that everything will be alright.
After rendering a 
The yellow beauty in the front is from my spice garden. It may have survived the fire, but we won’t know until things warm up in spring. The name tag for the yellow rose is long gone. I darken the background using blues, greens, and splashes of alizaron crimson with purple.
