The yearly tradition of my urban sketching group is to sketch at the old city cemetery each October. It seems to be a favorite outing of most of the group, likely because the quality of light there is invariably brilliant on an October morning like this.
I was instantly drawn to the sun lighting up the bright orange leaves of this tree, in front of a complementary blue house.
As often happens when I’m painting with gouache, I got lots of questions about the medium. I love it for its opacity and worry-free cleanup.
Today I tried for the first time a new mixing palette, the Pocket Palette with Mini Palette from Etchr Lab. Etchr sent me this palette free of charge, to test during my painting outings; I’ll be posting a full review of it in the coming weeks.
I was quite happy with how this painting turned out. Despite having only an hour, I focused on a few strategies which I think improved my result:
- Simplicity: I narrowed the scope of my subject until the composition was made of only a few major forms.
- Instinct: I forced myself to work quickly, trust myself, and not overthink too much.
I didn’t let myself evaluate “how is this going” until the painting was practically finished. I think that made the biggest difference in helping me to avoid overworking sections too early, and to avoid unwise experiments. I stuck to the fundamentals, and it feels like that paid off 🙂
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