Watercolor Landscape -- Foggy Lake 2

Watercolor on Arches 140-lb CP paper, 7.5" x 11" (19 x 28 cm).

Another attempt at the photo reference from my recent David Becker workshop. The original photo featured clouds, but after laying in the sky washes, I decided I liked the way it looked without them.

More stuff on Flickr:
flickr.com/photos/liquidchroma-

liquidChroma is now stevepenberthy.com

Not to confuse things, but I've changed the name of this blog from liquidChroma to stevepenberthy.com. If you link here, or have email or RSS feeds for this blog, you won't need to change a thing--the legacy links still work.

If you want, continue to use the old URL:
http://liquidchroma.blogspot.com/

Or, update to the new one:
http://www.stevepenberthy.com/

Thanks for checking in!

Barn, Cornfield, and Sky

Watercolor and pencil in Canson Montval All-Media sketchbook, 90-lb CP paper, approx. 9" x 12" (22.3 x 35.0 cm).

This is some more prototyping for an upcoming painting. See a pencil sketch that forms the basis of the farm shown here:
flickr.com/photos/liquidchroma-/2436583870/in/set-7215760...

Toy Watercolor Set

My sister gave me this little toy watercolor set. There's a small loop in the upper right-hand corner so the set can be used as a key fob. I think it would be interesting to paint a little painting with this set, just to see how something might come out... Not sure how well the little brush would perform though... :)

Ruler shown for scale (English inches).

More on Flickr:
flicr.com/photos/liquidchroma-/

Colored Pencil Sketch - Apple

I bought some colored pencils recently, just to play with. I haven't really done anything seriously with colored pencils, so this is my first-ever serious attempt. This apple sketch was done as an exercise from "The Complete Guide to Colored Pencil Techniques" by Beverley Johnston, which I checked out from my local library.

Homemade Watercolor Sketch Box

I made this sketch box by gluing empty half pans into an empty first aid kit. I used rubber cement, which is non-permanent, so that I can change or rearrange the half pans later if necessary.

The box is an emptied Johnson & Johnson first-aid kit that was purchased at Target for a dollar... When closed, the outside dimensions are 3.5" x 4" (10cm x 11cm).

The eight half pans are filled with artists-quality tube paints, featuring both a warm and a cool of the primaries plus two earth tones as follows:
1. Hansa Yellow Medium (Daniel Smith)
2. New Gamboge (Daniel Smith)
3. Scarlet Lake (Winsor & Newton)
4. Permanent Alizarin Crimson (Holbein)
5. Ultramarine Light (Holbein)
6. Peacock Blue (Holbein)
7. Raw Sienna (Holbein)
8. Burnt Sienna (Daniel Smith)

More on Flickr:
flickr.com/photos/liquidchroma-

"The Most Important Watercolor Class You'll Ever Take"

Watercolor on Strathmore Gemini 300-lb CP paper, 11 x 15" (27.9 x 38.1 cm).

My sister and I attended David R. Becker's workshop titled, "The Most Important Watercolor Class You'll Ever Take" on Friday, July 11, 2008. This is the second workshop I've taken from Becker (you may wish to view my posts from the 2007 workshop here and here). Like last year, the workshop was held at the Learning & Product Expo -- Art! event in Chicago.

The focus of the workshop was to learn to control wet-in-wet and wet-into-dry washes. We got started by just playing around with both techniques on a practice piece of Gemini paper. We did a second painting (the one pictured above), working from a photo reference given to us by Becker. The painting above is actually my second attempt; I wasn't happy with the first one so I re-painted it once I got home (I may even try it a third time with some new ideas for the sky; if so, I'll post that painting).

Like last year, all paints and brushes were supplied to us; Nevertheless, I brought my own brushes this year. I used the 1" flat brush (Stratford & York) supplied in the class, but used my own rounds for detail work. I must admit that I don't use flat brushes much at all, so I forced myself to use the 1" flat in order to get more experience using them exclusively in a painting. Two Styrofoam plates were used, one for a palette and one for mixing. Becker supplied us with ten Holbein pigments: permanent yellow light, scarlet lake, mars yellow, indian red, burnt umber, burnt sienna, permanent violet, prussion blue, peacock blue, and horizon blue. We worked on Strathmore Gemini 300-lb CP paper.

I really enjoyed the workshop; I learned much, and it was fun to see everyone else's results. At the end of the workshop, we displayed our finished paintings at the back of the room; Becker made a great point by saying that, even though we all used the same paints, brushes, and photo reference, the results were all unique.

I have more photos from the workshop posted here.

There's more stuff on my Flickr site:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/liquidchroma-/