Heathers and Willows - Watercolor Painting

This is a painting based on a photograph from my summer trip to Mendocino Botanical Garden. They have a beautiful Heather garden under an old willow tree that always has full blooms in summer. The photograph itself was an attempt to abstract both the subjects. I was quite happy with how the photo as well as my painting turned out.

The photograph..


The painting..


As for techniques, the background was wet wash with lifting & streaking with the brush. The foreground heather was intitally masked with some masking fluid and then finished with impressionistic strokes. Done on a 16X20 watercolor paper.

Both this painting and my previous one "Through the Cracks" are very different from my usual realisim/ semi realism style. I have entered both of them for Filoli Gardens "Expressions in color" exhibit and keeping my fingers crossed :-). I don't think I have shared all my watercolor paintings here on the blog. If interested, you can see more of my watercolors on my facebook album : Here

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