Warming Up

Autumn Glow
(Based on Geoff Kersey's Trees, Woodlands and Forests)
Watercolour on Paper
18cm x 15cm (7" x 6")

This is my interpretation of a demonstration by Geoff Kersey. It is from his third programme on “Trees, Woodlands and Forests” from The Painting and Drawing Chanel.

I tend to paint something from the Painting and Drawing channel as a warm up at the start of each painting session. It gives me a chance to get into a painting frame of mind and to muster my eye-hand coordination before working on one of my own paintings. It is also a good way to experiment and learn about other people's techniques.

The background in this picture is painted wet in wet. Geoff started by wetting the paper and then adding a yellow gold, a red gold and a purple. The colours merge into each other to create gentle transitions and a soft golden glow.

After the background was dry, Geoff used a dry brush technique to create the broken effect of the foliage. He applied stronger mixtures of the same colours (and an autumnal green) using the side of dry brush to skate along the surface of the rough paper.

He used a similar technique to create the broken texture on the trunk and branches to give the impression there are leaves in front of them. The final step was to add some opaque yellow leaves to increase this effect.

I’ve had a productive day - I painted the picture on this post, finished painting my Christmas cards and did some more work on the painting of Coverack Harbour (see Preparations for Coverack Harbour).