Winter sun

Here in the Uk we are bracing ourselves, yesterday Storm Dudley blew in and tomorrow, Storm Eunice is heading our way. Strong winds and rain hitting our shores. Today there is a lull in proceedings and looking out of the window the sun is shining.

Last week I was involved in a car accident, reminding me again how precious life is, and how things can change for any one of us in an instant. News around the world looks bleak, and I empathise so much with people living with fear and uncertainty ...lets hope resolutions can be found and that innocent people don't bear the brunt of decisions made in pursuit of power.

However I realise how lucky I am, seeing views like this from my garden

 

 

Delighting in more and more snowdrops making an appearance

Today is apparently 'random acts of kindness day', although why we should need a day to remind us to simply be kind ...maybe we do.

I feel your kindness towards me everyday via my posts and blogs, and your concern for me this week. For all of that I am so very grateful, and I hope you enjoy my blogs and step by step tutorials and see them as a kindness back to you all too. 

And seeing my favourite hellebore in flower again I realise  nature is kind , as well as stormy !

 You may have noticed , that I have been trying my hand at a few landscapes recently. This piece was influenced by a watercolour I saw online, I loved the way the sun shone through the trees and wanted to try it for myself.

So I sketched out a landscape, with mountains and trees, and masked off a small circle for the sun.

Then I flooded the sky with yellow ochre.

Making the tones much stronger around the sun, even adding some orangy brown tones.

I then followed that though into the distant mountains., then dropped in some purple tones using cadmium red and cobalt blue

Then I let everything dry.

Now I am beginning to add tree silhouettes , around the sun, I have rubbed off the masking fluid at this stage. I am using greys made with cobalt blue and burnt umber, and some raw sienna.

Smudge out the rays of the sun using a damp piece of kitchen roll

Now we are moving forward, adding hills and mountains that are nearer to us so the colours will be brighter.

I add more colours and tones and add more trees. The colours are warmer where they are kissed by the sun.

I have also added a sprinkling of ordinary table salt to add texture.

 

Keep your palette clean, and keep refreshing your water so the tones don't get too muddy.

Now it is all dry I want to go back into it and work some more.

Adding darks, adding detail. More colour here and there , I even scratched out some tree trunks using a palette knife.

I added some more colour around the sun and defined the trees a bit more too, and my winter, imaginary landscape is done.