Two New Paintings

These are the first two of what I hope will be a series of rock and water themed watercolors.



I'm on the fence about this second one. I used guache for the sky, and went nuts trying to make this perfect, flat application. I'm not sure if the painting benefits by it. It's kind of dead.



These were painted with Chinese brush, ink, watercolor, guache and just a little acrylic. This is my first really serious attempt to do landscape painting. The landscape painters I'm probably most inspired by are Emile Nolde, Turner, and Hokusai. I was going to do this series in oil, but I wasn't getting the immediacy I wanted. It was too easy to overwork the painting, to paint over mistakes. Watercolor records everything. There's no faking it or fudging it, which is why I ended up painting the first painting about 3 times. I'm pretty happy with it now though. It has an unusually muscular look for watercolor which I hope to maintain throughout the series.