Today I am sharing how I painted this Stream in the Woods watercolor painting.
This painting was inspired by a backpacking trip. We were out in Oil Creek State Park, Pennsylvania hiking the Gerard trail. We were on a three day trip and the first day was all rain and cold. Though the weather was not great that first day there were some really pretty sights off the trail. It was mostly just a woods trail but just off the trail and sometimes running right through it there were these really pretty small creeks and streams that all had water through them because of the rain. What I really loved about them was that there were these big rocks in them that were covered in a bright green moss. It was a welcome pretty sight as we were trudging through the mud. Thankfully the weather let up right when we got to our campsite and there was a pretty sunset through the trees.
This painting has a combination of watercolor paints and black ink. When I am doing a watercolor painting/pen-work combination I start out by drawing the line work with my pen. I use this Pentel Brush Pen which is not water based so there is no issue with the ink bleeding when it gets wet by the painting process.
I use this 140lb watercolor paper and I tape it down to my Painting Board so that it doesn't warp.
Here's the page after a couple layers of paint. You can see I've done a light wash over the whole thing and I've started to add details to the rocks.
A little detail.
It was a beautiful day for painting in the studio.
This is after several layers of painting, building up colors and textures throughout the scene. Certain parts are starting to come to life while others still look nearly untouched. It's really cool to see the layers come to life.
It takes so many layers of paint to get this far. Each part of the painting I've labored over and considered whether it needed more or whether I'd over-done it. I have a hard time with decision-making and I often don't know when to call it quits on a painting. I thought I was done with this one and left it alone for a couple days, then went back and gave some more depth and color to the leaves.
This is where I left it for a couple days.
Here's the finished painting. I added some more color and also some white ink to some spots of the painting. I used this Winsor and Newton Calligraphy Ink for the white accents.
I hope you've enjoyed seeing the process of this painting. If you'd like links to all my favorite supplies check out my Kit page here where I list all the art supplies and products that I love and use on a regular basis.
You can find the original painting here
And prints of this artwork are available here
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