Back to Basics

After re-arranging all my art materials (I do this regularly when I want to create something but it's just not happening), I made the decision to go right back to the basics and re-familiarise myself with techniques and materials.  Pastels were my first love so I had a fun half-hour playing with oil pastels and a palette knive, then moved on to pastel pencils and coloured pens - made all the easier now that these are sorted in glass jars by their colour groups.  Determined to conquer the medium that is watercolour, I am now working on skies and clouds.

My parents have a small watercolour painting that always makes me want to create something similar everytime I see it.  Today I saw an exercise in one of my art technique books that was almost identical to this painting.  The background is strips of pale washes in yellow, blue, red and green. In my parents' painting there is a tall tree and a couple of people.  In the exercise the picutre has reflections and very vaque shapes suggesting trees.  Well I gave it a go and the result if above. Quite liking the reflections, not sure about the trees...

I tried the colour washes again on a bigger piece of paper with bigger trees. The result wasn't great but I particularly liked one of the trees so cut this out and stuck it in my journal.

The green/brown splodges were a happy accident and I like the impressionist feel of it.

Going back to basics has been such a great idea. I'm not creating works of art but I am creating and that's all that matters.