Streams in the Woods: a painting

Streams in the Woods

Title: Streams in the Woods
Watercolour on Handmade Paper
21.12.2011
Original Size 36 x 27 cm

My sister wanted me to paint something with water, hills and greenery. Water is a challenging subject to paint with watercolor, especially moving water. So I decided I would do it today.

I had painted a waterfall in VIII grade.It was one of my best in those days. I stuck that painting to a glass window pane at home for display. It remained there for about 6 years till we had to change our home. The painting tore as I tried to take it out. It broke my heart. I never painted moving waters again as it reminds me of loss of that old painting of mine. Well, it has been over 13 years since that painting got destroyed and it is time I painted moving waters again.

I completed this painting in one day from start to finish.I am very pleased with it, as it reminds me of the old one. I have used a layered approach, waiting for paints to dry before I paint another layer over the previous one. I used red in the tree to bring autumn effect. I ended up using TOO much of it. It distracted the focus from the waters. So I splattered yellow over that region. It broke the edges and also softened the focus in the tree region. I followed traditional transparent watercolor painting style for water, meaning white means paper being left as it is and not white paint. I must add I splattered a little bit of titanium white on the rocks to give appearance of splashes and spray.

By the way the painting did not match my sister’s requirements. She said rocks are not hills. Hills were what she wanted with water and greenery! 🙂

Hope you liked it though.