Beth’s House

Final sketch done on Arches CP Watercolor Paper

I was excited when our friend Beth asked me to paint her childhood home. This was done from a photo and although painting from a reference photo is not optimal I had several photos from different angles which helped a lot. I ended up doing a summertime scene from the group of photos I had on hand.

Every sketch has a struggle and this one was the trees. Painting trees is still a work-in-progress for me and I continue to learn by observing and trying ways to express tress somewhere in between blobs of varying hue and detail at the fringes. The trees here were a dominant part of the scene and not just blue-green forms in the distance so I went with a little more detail in the final sketch.

Study done in a Holbein Mixed Media sketchbook

I start always with two thumbnails: a line sketch and a value sketch. My next step is to do a study to work out the local color and represent the values. Like most sketches at this time in my journey, I need to push the dark values more!