A New Painting

Last week we started adult watercolor class again after more than a month break. The time off has become tradition near the Christmas holiday. It was supposed to be time off from class only, not from painting, but you can guess how that went. No one- me included- did any painting during the break from class.

To be honest a little panic set in when class started up again this month. "Faces" were on the schedule and I, the teacher, hadn't even picked up a paint brush in many weeks. This week I set out to make sure I still knew how to put the paint on paper before teaching the class.


I painted this before teaching a lesson on monochromatic value portraits (which will post next week).

"Buffalo Bill" Cody is after a photo ripped from an old National Geographic magazine years ago. I couldn't find personal reference material with value contrasts as nice as this and had no live models to work from so the photo was perfect for this exercise.

The painting was created with only Burnt Sienna. Although it stayed in the ugly stage for almost two hours before it started to come together, I am happy with it- except for a few small areas I might tweak. The painting time was long overdue therapy.