Weekly Painting #6 - Captain's Glow

I miss Yosemite and wanted to do a painting based on a photo that I took when we were there last winter. I have lost track of how many times I have painted El Capitan but I thoroughly enjoy it every single time. This rock is majestic and when the afternoon suns hits, the whole surrounding catches the glow of the granite. It is mesmerizing.

Here is the Captain's glow for you.



I also managed to get some iPhone shots of my work in progress.



It is a very quick painting, 1.5 hrs start to finish. Once I decide on a composition, I go alla prima and start with the paint outlines directly on canvas. I almost never sketch on canvas with pencil unless it needs geometric precision for subjects like buildings, bridges etc. I wish I had taken some more shots between the 3rd and 4th step but I got so engrossed in my painting and forgot :).

Through the Cracks - Water color painting

Wanted to share my recent latest watercolor rendering with you all. I primarily use watercolor just for sketching purposes but offlate I have been painting lot of abstracts/ impressionistic style landscapes. Here is one such painting..

Family thinks this looks like broken glass. But this is an abstract representation of tree & water through granite cracks. If you have ever been to Yosemite - Olmstead point, you will know what I am talking about. The inspiration was that but the colors were added for fun.

I used one of my favorite technique for the texture- wet wash with sap green, diox purple and turquoise and tissue paper on top. The tree & cracks were free style following the patterns formed by the tissue paper :-).

Done on a 16X20 Arches watercolor paper