JOSHUA ELEK: WATERCOLORS

Tag: clouds

  • Cloud Practice

    Cloud Practice

    I decided that the clouds needed shine hard edges, because they were almost entirely soft edged. So, I went in with some more shadow work, not sure if it was a good idea or a bad idea… let me know what you think. I watched a video Liron Yankosky posted about Sergei Temerev, yet another […]

  • Cloudy Sky: #4

    Cloudy Sky: #4

    I decided to try that painting again. I was going to try some exercises with back runs, and water, but before I knew it I was painting. So… here it is. There are some things that I really like here, and some things I definitely want to do differently. But, I think I’m done with […]

  • Cloudy Sky: #3

    Cloudy Sky: #3

    I think I might need to rename this painting. Now at the third iteration, I think it’s more about the rocks and vegetation than it is about the sky. At any rate, I have volunteered to work part-time during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a very strange time in the world right now, and I don’t […]

  • Cloudy Sky: #2

    Cloudy Sky: #2

    Today I tried painting that barn that’s in my memory again. There are some things that worked better here than in the first one, and some that didn’t work out. I feel better prepared now for number 3. Here is the sketch I made before painting this one. I really tried to increase the visual […]

  • Cloudy Sky: #1

    Cloudy Sky: #1

    On my drive last week to Lutz Lock, where I failed at painting the old lock from the Erie Canal, I saw a barn on the side of the road that I remember thinking looked like a nice one to paint. I didn’t stop though, and only have the scene and in my memory. Today, […]

  • Cottonwood: #2

    Cottonwood: #2

    Tonight I decided I would try that cottonwood painting again after all. Once again, I wanted to focus on a limited palette, so I went with Prussian Blue, Yellow Ochre, and Ultramarine Violet. I went with Ultramarine Violet instead of Quin Purple because I figured it might give me more red… not sure if that […]

  • Cottonwood: #1

    Cottonwood: #1

    I wanted to paint something from my imagination tonight, and tried to focus on neutralized colors. One thing my paintings suffer from (among others) is that they often make use of very high key colors, and often don’t have much color harmony as a result. So I decided to make a painting using just three […]

  • Feeling Stuck

    Feeling Stuck

    I started doing this because I saw a video of a master penman who was working on a piece, and he said something like: “People always say how talented I am. They see me write something with one stroke in a few seconds. But what they don’t see are the years of practice, the mountains […]

  • Appalachian Sky: #2

    Appalachian Sky: #2

    This is my second attempt at painting a view of the valley in the Appalachian mountains from our vacation in Elk Banner, South Carolina. In this version, I expanded the field of view considerably, and it no longer matches the field of view that I have in my mind. In my mind, looking at the […]

  • Appalachian Sky

    Appalachian Sky

    I wanted to capture the feel of standing on the balcony and looking out over the mountains in Banner Elk, North Carolina over our Fourth of July vacation. Composition At first, I painted the scene from our balcony and tried to frame the valley with the trees in the foreground. I tried to “zoom in” […]

  • Big Sky: #1

    Big Sky: #1

    I wanted to do two things here: 1) Paint a huge amount of sky. 2) Try out some white pigment. Until now I have steered clear of white pigment because I have heard it can become a crutch, and because I have heard it can counteract the highlights of the paper. I really enjoyed using it, […]