In The Studio: Three watercolor demonstrations

I have 3 new watercolors to show that I painted for my watercolor classes.  They were all painted from images and the lesson in each one of them was the same, to focus the painting down to a simple well designed piece of light and to remove all extra details.  I think they worked pretty well to demonstrate the lesson.  I will show the photos at the end to give you an idea of what I was working from.12 x 16 watercolor on 300lb paper.  This is another Botswana light job that I have tried to make all about the harsh glare on the river.  I kept all of the dark forms massed together as one shape with come temperature variations for perspective.  I really tried to make my brushwork create nice expressive edges

12 x 16 watercolor on 300lb paper.  In this painting I took a really simple old shed and played with the light on the ground, side of the shed, and scrapped post to get a nice feeling of movement across the painting and I used the piece of light in the upper left corner to keep the viewer in the painting.

12 x 16 watercolor on 300lb paper In this painting I composed the light to make it move from a big shape on the left to the small pattern of lights on the right.  This created a feeling of the left building being up above and the other shapes being down below.  I really changed the image significantly to get this painting to work.Botswana image

shed image

New Hope image