Inside my Watercolor Practice: 10 New Paintings from the Studio
Winter is often one of my most creative periods during the year. While it is not my favorite season due to the lack of sunlight and less than favorable weather, the cozy vibes and desire to hibernate usually feeds my desire to paint. This year, my new year energy hasn’t quite started to fade, but I have also been hit with the reality of how much time and energy it takes to blog, post on social media, paint, draw, record the process, etc. I also feel like I am in a transition of sorts. My artwork is changing. What I am interested in painting is changing. I am interested in developing my surface pattern design work for things like fabric and stationery, which is pulling my attention in different directions, towards mark making and drawing rather than painting. So when I look at the ten most recent paintings from my studio, at a glance, they seem a bit all over the place. I see elements of experimentation. I see explorations of new themes and color combinations. I see how some drawings in my sketchbooks have made their way into paint. It is both exciting and frustrating. I see elements of my style in all of them, but I’m definitely working towards something, I’m just not sure what that is yet.
Abstract Landscapes Continued
Before the holidays, I was experiencing a huge creative burst playing with abstract and deconstructed landscapes. Inspired by summer in the alpine, I was creating paintings that combined pine trees, mountains, and water in different ways. (You can learn more about those paintings in this blog post.) These two paintings are an evolution of Floating Mountain No. 1 from the end of last year. Where that painting only had one mountain, one tree, and one body of water, I wanted to explore this idea a little further. For both of these paintings, I wanted to keep the layered falling water effect and I wanted the mountains to feel both grounded by the water and disconnected from it at the same time. I feel like the landscape orientation of these paintings allowed for more experimentation with the layering of the elements. For Floating Mountain No. 3, I played with orientation a bit and two of my favorite elements of this painting are the upside down mountain and the tall skinny trees. This may be the first time I painted pine trees in this way and I see how my pen sketching is making an appearance in how I paint.
Floating Mountain No. 2
Floating Mountain No. 3
Experimenting with Trees and Composition
As the calendar turned to 2025, I have found myself obsessed with trees and how they define a landscape. I found myself paying attention to the kinds of trees on my hikes and walks, how trees look when they are grouped together in the forest versus when they are a solitary aspect of a landscape. I loved how winter light reflected off the trees and cast shadows on the landscape. Many of the pictures I am taking with my phone during this season are of trees. So it is not surprising that trees are playing a significant role in my work at the moment. I am still embracing the use of white space in my paintings that is a hold over from trying to deconstruct a landscape on my paper as well. Rather than trying to fill up a whole piece of paper with color to form a crisp edge, I have grown to love a really inconsistent edge to my paintings and how the paint interacts with the texture of the paper.
Snow Day on the Farm
Inspired by a photo I saw on instagram, my favorite aspect of this painting is the tree and the fence behind it. I love the browns and purples that dominate a winter snowy landscape, and the boldness of golden grass against the snow. For this painting, I tried to utilize the white of the paper to indicate a snowy landscape.
Landscape in Indigo and Gold
I have been using indigo in my paintings more than ever before. This is such a dark and bold color that up until now, I used it very rarely and usually quite watered down. But with my use of it in most of my falling water landscapes, I have come to really enjoy its intensity. I also love the contrast of that deep blue with the gold of yellow ochre. Again, I tried to use the white of the paper to indicate a snowy landscape.
Snow Day on the Farm
3 × 5 inches
Landscape in Indigo and Gold
3 × 5 inches
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Darkness at Water’s Edge
This is perhaps my favorite painting of the recent bunch and a happy accident in many ways. I have been really inspired by joannagray75 on instagram, who does these truly amazing abstract landscapes and I wanted to try something that was moody in its color and composition. My favorite aspects of this painting are the trees in the foreground and how they are not necessarily grounded in anything as well as the birds in the background. In my mind, they are ravens.
Frozen Lake
This was a little study that I did after my long holiday break from painting. Painting after a break can always be a bit intimidating because you worry if you have somehow forgotten everything that you ever learned. In reality that is never the case, but I think painting something small without the camera on is the best way to ease back into the process. My favorite aspect of this painting are the tall skinny trees in the foreground.
Darkness at Water’s Edge
3 × 5 inches
Frozen Lake
3 × 5 inches
Elk Meadow in Winter
This painting was inspired by a photo I took while hiking in Evergreen. While the sky was moody the day of our hike, when the sun did come out the landscape practically glowed. I love the contrast of the golds and browns against the dark greens of the pine trees. These are my favorite colors of the winter months here in Colorado.
Elk Meadow in Winter
4 × 6 inches
Rocky Islands
While not my favorite paintings of the recent bunch, these are clear examples to me that I am exploring and experimenting. These started as sketches in my sketchbook, where I wanted to combine some of the elements of the abstracts I was working on such as falling water and a layered composition, but I also wanted to make the rocky landscape more pronounced. I wanted rocks and boulders to play a larger role in the composition in addition to the mountains and pine trees. There are elements I like from all of them though none of them really capture what I imagined the final result to be. I did learn a lot, such as what kind of rock textures and colors I like the most and I am continuing to paint trees in new and different ways.
Sketchbook planning
5 × 7 drawing sketchbook
Rocky Islands Studies
4 × 6 inches
Final Thoughts
I think more than anything the real secret is to just keep showing up. There isn’t going to be a lightbulb moment where I have suddenly figured it all out. All of these smaller paintings and experiments are teaching me little things along the way, things that hopefully will come together in a composition that will work down the road.
Do you have a favorite?