Yellows & Greens

(C) 2017 Dale DiMauro

This little watercolor is one of those warm up studies I do to get me going on larger paintings. There truly is little color in this picture. I used a limited palette of aureolin yellow, cobalt blue, payne's gray, ultramarine and burnt sienna.

This is a scene from a day trip this summer near the Berkshire Mountains in western MA. The absence of color in the sky provides a calm and serene quality to the landscape. I tried emphasizing darks in the foreground to give a sense of depth to the rural scene.

All summer and fall, I have been using these Kolinsky watercolor brushes, made by Rhapsody, for both studio and plein air painting. They hold a lot of water and spring back to a fine point when splayed out. I also drag them across the paper so they are nearly dead flat, creating interesting effects.