Watercolor Painting Artist Statement – Painting & Printmaking
My watercolor painting is a fall day after it had rained with leaves. The setting is a road that is curving with a wet effect with leaves laying on it. There are trees making almost a tunnel effect over the road, but there is still a pale blue sky. The trees are made up of bright and vibrant colors such as yellow, orange, a strong red that has a pinkish tint to it, and green. There are two textures of leaves throughout it and I would say a good variety of colors. Some branches and trunks of the trees are more of a solid brown indicating that it would be closer to you and the ones that are more faded causing a further distance look to it.
The Intended meaning of my painting was to just enjoy looking at it. I chose a good fall vibe picture to go off of and enjoy creating it into my own. I wanted it to draw people’s attention and give them a happy feeling when looking at it. Joy, happiness, and comfort was my intended goal for this watercolor painting.
I created this painting with watercolor, smaller sized paint brushes, water, and a photograph. When sketching this out I used a pretty light pencil for any mess ups so I could erase easily. One of the techniques I used to darken a color instead of just having a ton of pigment was to layer colors, with this it helped to give a nice leafy look to it. Some areas stayed lighter while others would get darker over top of the original layer. Another technique I used was to have a ton of small dots pile up on one another so also make a cool leafy look. This one took the longest but with the different techniques it added good texture and contrast.
Some elements in my artwork to support my intended meaning would be the colors of my trees. All of the different shades of each individual color also brought out a good contrast. I really enjoy how welcoming this painting makes me feel.
The thing I would probably do differently when painting this again would be first the time management I gave myself, and also how I went about the leaves. The leaves alongside of the road could look a little better and I would try harder to make them look better and less sloppy.
A good goal after looking and working on this painting for the future would probably be to just trust the process. I kept saying how much I disliked this painting as I was working on it and that honestly could have been a good factor into why I pushed it off. In the end I got a lot of compliments and ended up finding good things to point out in it.