Day 85 - The weather

Has been nice and cool for the last week...the warmest it has been is 76 which I LOVE but its also been grey and rainy for the last week...boring skies to paint. One thing about painting...you DONT have to paint the sky you see...you can choose another!!

 I whipped out my jillion photos that I take for the day I cant paint from life...or when I need to finish a painting and picked out a photo I took in my neighborhood when the skies were bright blue a couple of weeks ago.

Savannah River Rice Paddie

The sycamores were just beginning to get golden as they do every fall.  This is the old rice paddie at the end of the neighborhood.  I think the tall standing grass is really old rice because all of the five rice paddies here have that same odd grass with a brushy top.  Maybe we should go pick some rice...or do you glean it?? 

Sky is cobalt blue.  Clouds cerulean and yellow ochre.  Trees are hmm Indigo and ultramarine, a yellow green Holbein, and Daniel Smith Green Apatite with some yellow ochre and quinacridone gold.  I tilted the notebook at 45 degrees so the darker colors ran ...fun effect I think!! I do like drippy paint.

Out my window

I could not paint on the left side of this paper at all...it repelled the watercolor...also a smidge on the right side.  The handbook watercolor journal continues to be a POOR choice!! 

This is what it really looks like out the today...so this one is plein aire despite that I did it in the house.  I used the same colors in the trees...and I really like the way they turned out.  More green in the water than the rice paddie had...no blue sky to reflect into it.  The clouds are cerulean and yellow ochre with a little red violet mixed in.  I repainted along the tree line with cerulean to darken it down some more....not a bad view from your favorite tv seat or your seat at the kitchen table or when you are lying in the bed but the white fluffy clouds win...several more days of this weird misty rainy weather.  

Thanks for looking!!