April 2023 – Bill Fulton Watercolors

Barn on Big Valley Road

5 Comments / April 21, 2023

In my imagination this barn was built many years ago by a frugal hardworking farmer as he and his family carved out a homestead on Big Valley Road. He built the main barn first, then added to it over the years, patching shed to shed, until it became this sprawling structure backed up to the fir trees.

In our last watercolor class, Eric Wiegardt challenged me to paint on a bigger scale. So I painted the barn as a quarter sheet (11 x 15 inches), followed by a half sheet (15 x 20 inches). You have to use a big brush and lots of paint and water to cover so much paper. For the barn and the meadow I painted three different colored washes on top of each other to produce variation in the color. I was undecided about the large expanse of grass in front of the barn. It seems like it needs something. Texture, maybe? Shadows? A piece of farm equipment or a pickup truck? Or maybe it’s fine as it is.

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Sasby Island in Southeast Alaska

6 Comments / April 17, 2023

Last summer when I visited friends on Kupreanof Island in Southeast Alaska, I took a photo of nearby Sasby Island. It lies just across the Wrangell Narrows from the town of Petersburg, and has exactly one house on it, complete with a dock and boatshed. The dock is tucked in behind a small point so that it’s completely protected.

I made a series of watercolors to see how best to capture this scene.

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Willapa Bay estuary

2 Comments / April 5, 2023

At high tide, the creeks that run up into Willapa Bay come right up into the trees. In our watercolor class last week, Eric Wiegardt made a demonstration painting of one of these creeks, and today I made a copy of his painting. First I did a black and white version, then I did a color version.

The goal is to create a painting that draws the eye to the area of dominance, in this case the point where the trees and the water meet. I put in the most detail in the edges of the trees, and I painted a red slash of brush below the trees to draw the eye there. I de-emphasized the lower portion, especially the lower corners, to not distract from the area of dominance above. Eric’s watercolor was much more lively because he painted without stopping, letting the washes flow into one another, and he kept his brush strokes loose. I was only partially successful in copying him.

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