“Rural Route”

5″ x 22″

This watercolor painting is unusual in several ways.  It began as a warm up excercise using  an oddly shaped leftover piece of watercolor paper and leftover paint from the mixing areas of my studio palette.  Using a single brush for the entire painting – one of my favorite 1″ flats (Winsor Newton Series 295 aquarelle) and drawing no lines first, I picked up some palette gray.   Palette gray is a term I use for the pools of leftover pigments left on the palette during and after a painting session.  The colors tend to mingle freely creating areas at the edges of the pools where multiple colors have run together forming unusual grays and browns.

The first stroke placed on the paper ultimately became the facing wall of the small, dark gray farm building near the center of the picture.  Once placed, both the color and shape reminded me of a weathered old barn and of a previous winter farm composition – http://tonyconner.com/2008/11/18/new-work-designing-winter/ – and that  became the point of departure.

Trying to stick to the original exercise, I continued to use only the 1″ brush and the gray and brown leftovers from the palette.  The building roofs were created by painting the negative areas of sky and trees around them.  Wanting to add some color punch to the forground I did pick up some cerulean blue for the left foreground and some Ultramarine mixed with some of the “palette brown” for the muddy road.  By the way, I have recently begun using Ultramarine Blue by M. Graham & Co.  I find it to be a terrific watercolor paint, with great color character and intensity.

I finished up the painting by placing the falling down fence in the forground and glazing on some deeper and darker color on the faces of the building that were not catching direct light.
This and other works on this site are available for purchase. Contact me if you have an interest in this or any other paintings on the site. Email me at tc@tonyconner.com or by phone at 802-375-5548.

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