Certain events conspired to keep me around home—fires in California and a bout with bronchitis. Since I was not feeling too bad I decided to make the most of my home stay, and among other things, took walks in the neighborhood, always with a phone camera. Today, inspired by the beautiful shapes of some deciduous trees, I snapped a photo and later painted the scene back in my studio. I had passed these same trees many times on previous walks, but something about the blue sky and summer leaves caught my attention.
I used my “Northwest Palette” consisting of burnt sienna, raw sienna, ultramarine blue, cerulean blue, and a touch of alizarin crimson. after setting down a light wash of the cerulean, I quickly charged in all the other colors using thick paint to achieve the dark background while carefully painting around the tree shapes to preserve whites.
Later thinking about my inspiration for the watercolor, a quote from Marcel Proust came to mind (and I paraphrase): “the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in seeing with new eyes.”
KC