Farmland in Monochrome

Watercolor always scares me due to the apparent finality that comes from contact between color and paper. There is no way to retrace steps once brush meets paper. Yet I have seen videos of watercolorists who seem to effortlessly correct "mistakes" and produce beautiful pictures. As a result I have played with watercolor more and am finding that accidents can be turned into unanticipated creativity.

That was not the case with this farmland picture, but the challenge I set here was to produce a watercolor picture with a restricted -- almost monochromatic -- palette. I used only burnt sienna, raw sienna and ultramarine blue. The effect is a rather pleasing dusky scene that is so reminiscent of the American midwest.

Farmland in Monochrome, Watercolor on 300lb paper, 9"x12", Not for sale

Afternoon on the Prairie

This is a rather fast knife painting, an approach perfectly suited to acrylic paint. The colors were mixed directly on the board and moved around only as much as needed to the shapes and light-dark contrasts. Even the colors in the tree (ultramarine blue and cadmium yellow medium) were moved just so as to create the shape. The fact that this minimal working of the paint still produced a mostly green hue reinforces the wisdom about how overworked paint can lead to mud!

As I said in another post, scenes such as this one are commonplace in the midwest and their beauty probably wholly unnoticed by most people. To me the play of atmospheric effects on farmland along with the change of vegetation with seasons is enough to inspire forever.

Afternoon on the Prairie, Acrylic on board, 11"X14", $150 (unframed)