Stories, etc.

The color strip on the left is a value study comprised of Burnt Sienna mixed with Ultramarine Blue mixed equally. The right value study is comprised of Alizarin Crimson mixed with Winsor Green Blue shade.  I used the mixed neutrals to do a master copy of a painting by one of my favorite watercolor painters, the Swede Anders Zorn. I divided the painting in half to get practice using both value mixtures. Below is my completed value study using the two value studies above. I also have included the original on which my master copy is based. 

Well this painting kicked my tail. I should have used grisaille to do an underpainting for the feathers. 

Alamoosook Lake, mid-August sunset It was a long, lazy summer afternoon in the town of East Orland, Maine, population 1,825. I was on the shore of Alamoosook Lake, looking out at the water, and all its possibilities glimmered like light on the backs of a school of fish. Without a doubt, it was the hottest week in the state that summer, late July, with trees so green they looked yellow. I was to embark on a motorboat ride with my cousin Colin, three years my junior, into those aforementioned hopes. My grandfather had just acquired a new Evinrude 500 motor that was clasped onto the back of the little tin boat, ("as tinny as a tin can" he used to say) and everything seemed alright. He wasn’t around that afternoon, so without too much supervision my cousin and I proceeded to paddle the boat out, from the shore to just off of it, to a place deep enough to start the motor. It was passed the reeds and patch of cat tails. The waves were tiny, delicately lapping the sides of the