Grassy Knolls

Here’s another painting that I did about three years ago, from one of the exercises from Alelene Fletcher’s 2003 publication The Watercolour Landscape Painter’s Pocket Palette.

This particular exercise is on page 18, under the Mountains section, and is in three stages. The first stage is laying down the Transparent Yellow wash mixed with a Cobalt Blue wash in the distant field, pale New Gamboge in the middle distance, a pale strip of Cobalt Blue left in for the sky, and Quinacridone Gold in the foreground. Stages two and three then take you through laying down successive colour washes, reducing the intensity of the greens as they recede into the distance. One of things that I liked in particular is that you get the chance to paint wet-in-wet, as well as practice your hand at some negative painting.

This exercise used a palette of 6 colours:

Click to enlarge

I found this to be a fairly simple exercise and it only took me about 45 minutes to complete.

What I learned

The only difficulty that I ran into was to match the greens as shown in the photographs, as my pigments seemed to be far more intense than the colours printed on the page. Looking back on it now I realise that should have made my washes weaker to portray a greater sense of depth as hills faded into the distance.

If you have painted this particular exercise please share your feedback in the comments below.

Feel free to submit your own rating to the book on my review page here>>>

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About Ian McKendrick

Ian is an aspiring watercolour artist, passionate about painting the world around him in watercolour and sharing his experience with others. Connect with Ian on Google+

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