Its not that bad after all. A few years ago, I made a painting from what I thought was a secret place. Not so secret anymore, the city plowed it over and gave it a facelift with new landscaping and paths for everyone to enjoy. Today I took a little detour and made this painting of the hillside that was barren but is now growing well with grass, trees and shrubs. The only things missing were the bur plants that populated the area before the renovations. To rectify the situation I picked a handful of burs from our backyard plant and spread them around here.
Renovated Hillside, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, October 2022 (No. 3267a)
Looking up the path I saw this interesting interplay between two fences. The one on the left was a heavy looking aluminum-beam fence sitting upon the train yard retainer wall. The wooden fence in the upper right was to keep pedestrians from venturing down the hillside. To capture the rich warm grey of the path, which is made of crushed rocks, I mixed indo blue (PB60) with benzi red (PR175) and yellow ochre (PY43). That mix is very flexible, it can be tinted towards purplish or yellowish, and can become very dark if needed. I find that mix does not fade away when it dries, so its much easier to correctly judge the values. In this painting the grey path had to be middle value so that the grass was lighter, but the shadows were darker.
Path and Fences Interplay, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, October 2022 (No. 3267b)
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