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Monday, July 18, 2011

10-minute watercolors

A view in the Rodopi mountains in Bulgaria
Rainy sunset at the lake

I have been reading, and re-reading, the little booklet "10-Minute Watercolors" by Hazel Soan. A real gem! The underlining idea is to learn to simplify your subjects so that you can capture their essence in a very few brushstrokes. Great skill especially for painting en plain air. Not being able to simplify is one of my big problems. Limiting my time makes me plan better and look only at the main and important things in the view. The other trick is using a very limited palette - no more that three colors. This saves time too and also leads to more harmonious colors. I didn't quite fit in the 10 minutes, especially with the first sketch, but I finished it relatively fast and stopped myself from going back and fiddling with little details.
The top one I did with prussian blue, alizarin crimson and yellow ochre; the other one is just prussian blue.

2 comments:

Judy said...

Great paintings, Blaga!

Blaga said...

Thank you, Judy!