The Art of Blandscape Painting 101

This is not the really awful painting I was talking about, although it decidedly has its flaws. The horrific one will be in the next blog entry. This one came about because I thought I should challenge myself to try something different, so I watched a landscape painting tutorial and tried to do everything the artist was telling me to do. It is definitely a different style of painting than I am used to, though I don't really have a style of my own yet. Of course, I can no longer find the tutorial. If I locate it later, I will share the link. I had a few problems:

• I was watching the tutorial on a Nook reader in a really bright sunroom. So, small screen, washed-out image. I could see what he was doing, but I definitely could not discern subtleties in the colors he was using. 
• Every color he described as he was mixing sounded exactly the same. He did specify two different blues, but aside from that, it all sounded like: "Take some blue, mix in a little yellow, add some white, and then just a little dab of red, which neutralizes green." I knew when I was supposed to be applying a dark color or a light color, but I was not sure how dark or how light.  
• I was doing the painting in a much smaller size. He was doing it on a canvas on an easel, and I was painting on one of the last 9x11 inch sheets in a watercolor paper pad. 
• The shoreline continues too far and runs right through the first tree. 
• I ruined the trees by not stopping when they were good enough. 
• The water does not accurately reflect what is above it because that is all kind of a blotchy mess.  I should have been more definitive with the patches of color.

I DID learn a lot, and I think it was a good tutorial, but I could see what I was doing wrong, even as I was doing it. I would dab dab dab, scrub scrub scrub, fill in, scrub some more, and it all just looked like it was running together into one soupy mess. I do think, however, that you can tell which things are supposed to be closer, and which are farther away. So that's something.

NEXT: When the fence looks better than the animal standing in front of it