“Amish Schoolhouse” is the very first watercolor we completed in the Two Red Chairs Gallery Wednesday night class. (I worked on another one in an adult class previous to that, but I haven’t gotten back to it yet. I’ll post it in a bit, unfinished though it is.)

so…Amish school started as a plethora of loose colors splashed about. On this splattery “canvas” of splotches, we built the structure of the window and Steve took us through all the layers and details. I wasn’t real happy with some my distracting flops of paint so I’m putting up a crop (detail) along with the “big picture”.

On February 14th I posted an image called “Spring Morning”, that was a quick exercise to create a given atmosphere. While Spring Morning came out nicely (I thought), this “Early November Snow” was a little more of a challenge for me. But Tony (our oldest son) says your blog is for the struggles as well as the good stuff, so…

After painting the Neutral Wheel, I thought I’d try the “double circle technique” in the pure colors. This one is a little tilted, with red at 1:00, blue at 5:00, and yellow at 9:00. That “pure” red was a little “off-kilter”, too, but here it is anyway.

An interesting thing about Browns: I found this in a watercolor book called “Light Up Your Watercolors”. The idea was to mix alternative versions (in this case dulled versions) of red, yellow and blue, and finish out the color wheel. The band around each color is it’s complement. Painting the band is a way to make the center color appear more intense. I enjoyed painting this off-beat wheel and unearthing a rich cache of browns!