Raven Talk

Hi from the Stormy Northwest,

Yesterday, we talked about creating enough paint to last for a whole painting. The reason I do this is because you choose a color scheme at the beginning of the painting and repeat the same colors throughout the composition. This is an aspect of … 

                           REPETITION AND VARIATION

…and ensures the creation of a pleasing composition.

The colors in this sky will be the same colors I use in the ravens.

Today, I took the blue and aqua shades in the sky and decided to mix them with an opposite color shade of dark brown to create the body of the raven.

Using opposite colors in each of the spaces gives life to the washes.

With watercolor you must paint each space and let it dry before you paint the adjoining space. You must believe that in the end this will end up looking like a raven. But if your colors are not the same in each section, your animal loses the integrity of its shape. Thus, you must mix enough color in the beginning to make this technique work.

You can see that the raven is coming together.

The viewers mind has the incredible capacity to mix all these shapes together and say Raven to the brain. It’s a little bit like reading, all those letters come together and create an idea. This is just another form of language.

Enough of painting for now. The ravens will be finished next week and I will share them with you.

Let’s have some fun and go riding.

Jody on Mystic.

This is one of my favorite places to ride, near my house on Chuckanut Mountain. I have a nesting pair of ravens that live right outside my studio that were the inspiration for this painting. And you can see the background of the islands, becoming the background of the raven painting.

As you know, I love to ride with my daughters. And I leave you with this darling picture of Jessi riding her thoroughbred, Princeton up to our barn.

Jessi Bergsma on the ranch.

Have a wonderful weekend,

Love,

Jody

~ by jodybergsma on October 9, 2008.