MAG Artist’s Blog

This impressionist 15 x 22 Watercolor of San Diego’s Balboa Park was finished on Christmas Day. I spent a few days looking it over for areas to improve and am finally happy with it. One of the hardest things to do with any medium is to loosen up and paint just enough to convey the correct emotions and feeling of the scene. I did this from a photo I shot during a visit last summer. The quality of the photo and the lighting did not correctly convey the mood I wanted so much of the painting and color choices were done by gut feeling and memory. Sometimes, painting what you want to see works better than painting what you actually see.

I also spent a good deal of care preserving the skips and other white spaces, which I think add character to any painting. Lastly, I used an 8B pencil to add some intense contrasting dark lines and hard edges.

Rob