Fabriano Sketch Paper

                                      (C) 2025 Photograph Dale DiMauro

Every artist has there own preferences but I like this sketchbook paper. I happened upon it by accident as my local sources for paper do not stock this paper. This sketchbook was purchased in Maine while traveling.

This paper is Fabriano 1264 which is made in Italy. Fabriano started making paper in 1264 and thus is the oldest European paper mill.

I prefer sketchbook paper that doesn't tear so easily yet will hold up particularly when using the larger sizes. Recently, I began using the 18" x 24" books to encourage me to draw the human figure and landscapes at a larger scale.

                                                                                 (C) 2025 Dale DiMauro

After several interruptions it is always great to get back to watercolor painting. Simply dragging paint across the paper releases emotions and begins to establish new associations within the color spectrum.

For some time I have been trying to transition to a larger format - that is a full sheet. I have painted many full sheets but to be able to paint at that scale as readily as at a much smaller sheet will be a turning point for me.

However, to paint at that larger scale requires more pools of paint, drawing at a more accurate scale and a portability which is quite different from working on a small watercolor block. Regardless, I think I am transitioning to that scale as time goes on.

Recently, I saw some Andrew Wyeth full sheet watercolors in person and could gain a sense of what direction I might carry a painting at this larger scale. One thing is you don't have to fill the whole paper with paint. Another salient point is that over time and practice the compositions one develops are transferable regardless of scale which enables an artist to become more intuitive.

In conclusion, I am not trying to bore the viewer but put down some thoughts at this moment to carry the painting process forward......

Last Night's Plein Air

                                                                                    (C) 2025 Dale DiMauro

Last night my wife & I caught a production of Shakespeare's As You Like It, in a local park. It was a lovely evening to paint outside with great light, rich colors and an impressive audience.

I tried a different approach to this watercolor. Pigment was lifted as I was painting the sky in with a brush. Then I put down a wash of green as a backdrop for the trees. Then I painted the trees and trunks over that wash. This made the trees simpler to paint yet provided more depth.

Capturing the undulating ground with a shadow was a nice feature in this watercolor. Overall I like how this picture turned out particularly as most of this painting was created while sitting on the ground.

In conclusion, there were people watching me paint the whole duration of making this picture. However, I expect that in public places. When painting outside the public usually feels entitled to see what you are doing and offer comments and reactions or even try to push you out of the way.

 

Great Setting Light

                                                                                  (C) 2025 Dale DiMauro
 

Last night I caught a small concert on the Brattleboro(VT) Common. It included a trio of seasoned musicians playing a whole range of the American songbook. One of the musicians was Kevin Parry who has hosted numerous open mic's in the region. 

While attending this concert I noticed the amazing setting light in the background which lit up the landscape in ways I have never experienced before.

The warm glow lit up the tree trunks with a lavender hue while the foreground in the light had a pastel-quality to it. Even the distant hills had a misty blue, yet surreal characteristic to them. The above photograph does not pay justice to the experience which ultimately, in my eyes, overshadowed the concert.

July 4th Inspiration

                                                                                 (C) 2025 Dale DiMauro

Oh - the fourth of July - what a holiday of traditions. Independence day and all that. For some the beginning of summer. Parades, marches, picnics and fireworks. In this time we are living in - we take our freedoms for granted!

I love this little watercolor painted fast with zero hesitation and no fussing about. After all it was the fourth of July and you could hear fireworks in the distance and see them up close temporarily decorating the sky.

For me watercolor is the only medium where you can capture the smoke and other atmospheric qualities of the lit torch at the end of this guy's hand.

This was painted from memory but still lives on with great clarity in my mind.

Imaginary Landscape

                                                                                (C) 2025 Dale DiMauro
 

On Thursday, July 4 I was irritated with the national news and painted this scene in a decidedly fast manner. I wanted to express some of that aggression in a powerful, yet expressive way.

When painting this watercolor I tried a few different techniques. I painted a very wet sky and dropped in pigment right up until the paper dried. The spray bottle was utilized right into the end.

Ultramarine blue is a transparent color which means I can lift the pigment pretty readily. So I lifted this blue from the body of water and got these whitish streaks which gives the surface a reflective-quality.

Last, I painted the dark evergreens in the immediate foreground to thrust the viewer right into the picture. Sort of implying that the future is now.

It always feels good to mix up your painting approach and try something new. I learn the most when I challenge myself. Most days I learn something about watercolor that I didn't know before. On other days I learn a whole lot about the medium or at least challenge my perception of things going on around me.

Living Memorial Park

                                                                                              (C) 2025 Dale DiMauro

Last week my wife and I went to Shakespeare in the Park, at Living Memorial Park in Brattleboro, VT. It felt great to do a summer activity after months of work. It has been a stressful spring like no other, including being selected for jury duty at my busiest time of the year.

This was painted while watching A Midsummer Night's Dream being performed before us. I kept looking at the distant hills as the night wore on and thought I ought to try to capture that scene over there.

It may look like something you may find along the coast or at a mountain top but nevertheless, I like the finished product. The sky was painted very freely and has an expressive- quality to it. I used an atomizer to encourage the colors to run into each other. As the sky dried I added more pigment and lifted out streaks in the sky which may not be visible in this photograph.

The middle and foreground was painted very wet, too. Perhaps, too much as the gray colors bled into each other. I think the darker patches are great as they add a bold stroke to the picture and give a sense of the contours to the distant hill. I lost the distant trees as they dissolved upon drying into the massive rock.

Local Park

                                                                                 (C) 2025 Dale DiMauro

If I have learned anything about spring it is that greens and browns are the colors of the season. The green is the re-emergence of all the growth around us and above our heads while brown is the earth and river bottoms all churned up.

Getting outside is a wonderful thing. This was painted not long ago - as in the early evening - tonight. After dinner I walked to a local park and painted this watercolor, taking advantage of the longest days of the year. There is an old concrete wall and staircase which faces the woods where I set-up my studio for the moment.

It's funny how lively the paper is when it is wet with pigment and water and then as it dries it becomes much flatter in appearance. I painted this picture with just two brushes thus, it made for a quick clean-up.

I feel like the colors are pretty true to what I was seeing - even though the light is always changing all around me. However, the mosquitos gathered around me the whole time I was painting.

Shelter from the Sun

                                                                                    (C) 2025 Dale DiMauro
 

It will be great once this heat wave passes. I can not recall a time in Brattleboro, VT where we had three straight days of one hundred degree days or close to it. Yesterday, the exterior temperature at my house reached 101 degrees. And that sensor is in the back of the house where it is in the shade!

This watercolor conveys the importance of trees in our lives. They provide shade, dappled light and habitat for birds, to name a few. However, in my neighborhood they always seem to be cutting down trees. Ironically, they don't seem to replace the trees or if they do it is with a weak replacement or something that is not allowed to grow to it's full height. This all seems silly and irresponsible to me.

As far as painting trees I find them fun and rewarding. They don't have to be the perfectly symmetrical trees either. Misshapen trees have a lot of character and add much value to your painting. For summer foliage I keep experimenting with the pigment combination of winsor green and burnt sienna.

Madame Sherri Forest

                                                                                               (C) 2025 Dale DiMauro
 

The Madame Sherri Forest in West Chesterfield, NH is a lovely 513 acres of undeveloped land to submerge you into the sights and sounds of one of our great local ecosystems. I prefer the wetland and pond in the lowland, yet at a higher elevation is the lovely Indian Pond.

It seemed like I had a great start in painting this watercolor, on site, until I started to run out of time. By the time I began to paint the water in the foreground, I knew I had to head out to my scheduled medical appointment in the late afternoon, putting a stop to my painting practice.

I was particularly excited about painting the beaver lodge in the foreground with it's distinctive architecture. In addition, I like the blending of pigments for the base of the tall reeds towards the back.

This landscape scene always has dramatic light, which seems to magnify the features of the landscape. In particular, the shadows of the tree masses and the ripples across the water capture my imagination every time I am at the water's edge.

Pond adjacent to Chestnut Reservoir

                                                                                      (C) 2025 Dale DiMauro
 

The Green Mountain State has been very green this spring. I mean deep greens as well as many shades of green. Someone told me today Vermont has had only two weekends with no rain since the first of January. That statement is hard to accept but it might well be the case. I have observed a lot of gray days.

Regardless, of rain or not I have been painting outside a lot. I have been been painting outside what is before me in a fast and direct way. Plus, I have been painting on different surfaces and at different sizes.  This watercolor is an unusual size: a square format(12" x 12"), not the usual horizontal(landscape) format. With this size you have to think twice about how you want to develop your composition. In this case, I simply started painting on this sheet with no hesitation as I had time constrains.

This watercolor was painted walking distance from my house. There is a small pond next to the Chestnut Reservoir which often hosts a great heron amongst the wetland growth. The perspective is unique as I was looking down towards the center of the pond which has a bowl-like quality to it. Yes-it has deep, still, dark reflections which makes the experience have a meditative-like quality to it.

Regardless, of the quality of this watercolor I am excited about some new techniques I have been experimenting with. One is lifting out pigment with both a brush and paper towel. Other techniques included dry brush work and negative painting along the shore where the grasses overlap the water. I have even been blending pigments at the base of the grasses to suggest a more rooted plant then a simple wash can convey.

Ft. Dummer State Park(Brattleboro, VT)

 

                                                                                    (C) 2025 Dale DiMauro

This weekend the state of Vermont offered free access to their state parks. So I took advantage of this offer with a trip to the closest state park to me - in Brattleboro, Ft. Dummer. 

It is a bit of a sleepy park but nevertheless a lovely one. Ft. Dummer doesn't offer any jaw dropping views or attractive beaches but it has some nice jogging or hiking trails in addition to it's camping options. It has a still pond in a stone quarry and a lovely field as it's assets.

This watercolor was painted in the late afternoon in the field from a picnic table. Other than the mosquitoes it was a lovely situation to be operating from.

As my mother has commented I have been painting a lot of greens lately. Tis the season as everything seems to be lush green - which beats the parched yellows and browns of a drought.

I have been experimenting with this Kilimanjaro watercolor block I have been painting on lately. This paper is bright white and good for lifting pigment especially when the paper is still wet. In fact, you can notice some lifting of pigment on the right side where the green foliage is with a palette knife. 

Whenever I lift paint I think of John Singer Sargent and Winslow Homer who were prolific at this technique. My understanding is that they lifted significant amount of paint when necessary in some of their watercolors. They scraped away paint when depicting tree trunks, white caps on the water or to suggest a stucco wall, etc.

Goose Pond

                                                                                           (C) 2025 Dale DiMauro
 

Goose Pond in Keene, NH is a lovely place to take a hike and a dip at the same location. The trail around the pond has countless vistas of beautiful natural scenes and wildlife if your timing is right.

This watercolor is of a view from near the spillway where the transparency of the water is best, highlighting the stony underwater. The cool deep shade of the shoreline is evident with the uninterrupted foliage and strong shadows on the water.

This was painted fast in under an hour with a limited palette and a lot of distractions. For some reason it reminds me of some of John Singer Sargent's watercolors he painted out in the field. He was so direct with his approach to watercolors that I still find it mind-boggling.

Landscape Painting

                                                                                                 (C) 2025 Dale DiMauro
 

Often when time is limited I simply start painting on any single sheet of watercolor paper or scrap I can find. At times this may be on a rough, cold press, hot press or soft press surface. Sometimes I even paint on illustration board.

This landscape was painted on an Arches cold press sheet of 140 lb watercolor paper. It has some texture to it but it is not particularly rough if you draw your hand across it. Recently, I have embraced rougher surfaces as I seem to be able to express a more drybrush affect with the brush and appreciate the advantage of leaving the white of the paper when I can.

The last month or so I have been observing, recording and experiencing as many in our area, here in southern Vermont, much rain and the mist and moisture in the air. I ran out and into the heaviest precipitation with my camera in and amongst the lush green growth and wetland environment.

This landscape painting is derived from memory as rain occupied the West River Valley last weekend with it's all encompassing mist dominating the valley at the foot of the Mt. Wantasiquet basin in the distance.

I wanted to match the dark-grays of the evergreens I saw outside. I was reasonably satisfied with the combination of phthalocyaine blue and burnt umber. In some areas of the dense foliage I even flicked paint with my fingernails.

Cloud Study

                                                                                      (C) 2025 Dale DiMauro
 

Observing the sky is an endless fascination for me as I go on walks. The sky we live under is always in a state of transformation. Sometimes there are no clouds in the sky while at other times they race across the sky.

This watercolor started as a landscape painting along the West River Trail in Brattleboro, VT. However, I keep experimenting by painting clouds in different formations and with new techniques. 

This cloud study depicts high drama in the sky yet makes the landscape rather boring in contrast.The landscape was painted after the sky to tether the ground to some source of reality. At this point the landscape is imaginary.

Memorial Day Plein Air

                                                                                  (C) 2025 Dale DiMauro

Painting outside after painting inside for most of the winter is a challenge. It is not so much the change in scale but the quick decisions one has to begin to master.

This watercolor was painted last week, on the edge of a cornfield in Northfield, MA. It was a wild and turbulent painting session as flocks of birds flew towards and over me. Also, large swarms of mosquitoes hovered around me as I put down washes of pigment.

However, I do see some progress in this painting. My 'cloud' painting is improving but the values of the pinks are still a bit weak which makes it hard to read aspects of the sky. I like the energy and color in the landscape depicted here. Also, I like that I did not get bogged down in details.

The other area I have improved upon is matching the color mixes to the colors I see in nature which is not easy as the light is always changing. Also, I have become much more adaptive with the specific palette I am using on a given day. Some of my palettes are quite small as compared to my indoor one which is much larger.

With spring definitely here, much promise and hope reveal themselves regardless of the political climate.

Rainy Period

                                                                                           (C) 2025 Dale DiMauro

We have been experiencing a rainy period that seems unlike any other. It has been dark and wet nearly all of May. I don't even know if our solar panels are producing any energy this month. Today, would be the exception.

On the other hand, it has become incredibly green and lush, like a tropical rain forest. I paint watercolors outside when I can. To match the colors I see out in nature requires a saturation of colors I have never before had to achieve.

This is a local field between periods of rain. There is a coolness in the colors and temperature which is quite distinct. The longest days of the year are about one month away.

Watercolor sketch

                                                                                   (C) 2025 Dale DiMauro
 

Recently, I bought a used book, Starting with Watercolour, by Rowland Hilder (1905-1993) at the Toadstool Bookstore in Keene, NH. Hilder was an English landscape artist and book illustrator, known as the Turner of his generation. As in J.M.W. Turner, considered by many, to be the best-loved English, romantic artist.

While reading this book and coming upon his discussion on his palette, he mentions one particular pigment combination: burnt sienna and phthalo green.  He mentions how this combination provides a deep, rich green the color of summer foliage.

So I gave it a go as the British might say and started introducing it into my watercolor practice. I find it is quite lovely, particularly when used against a backdrop of warm colors such as yellow or orange. 

When I look at the photograph of the above watercolor, I feel the temperature of a summer day, which I find to be quite powerful.

 

Brattleboro Common

                                                                                           (C) 2025 Dale DiMauro
 

It was wet and rainy this afternoon, but I still got outside and painted in the elements. After lunch I painted three watercolors, all on different papers, and this was the largest (9" x 12") one. 

This was painted on a Kilimanjaro 140lb CP watercolor block. I have limited experience with this paper but learned I could lift pigment readily with a paper towel as drops of rain fell on the paper while I painted.

This was the first real plein air I have done in a while, and was determined to plunge in regardless of the outcome. Today, I became aware of how verdant the landscape truly is.

Fitchburg, MA

 

                                                                                    (C) 2025 Dale DiMauro

Recently I accompanied my wife on a visit to a dental appointment in Fitchburg, MA. It was only a few weeks ago at most and this what the landscape looked like adjacent to a nearby hospital. 

The landscape has changed dramatically since then. It has become green, lush and full of growth.

This watercolor is of an area nearby to where my wife and I parked. We took a hike through the woods of a nearby parkland that at the time looked drab and lifeless. 

Since that visit the landscape has pretty much skipped over spring and ascended into summer.