Sunset lane -

I have days where I don't have a clue as to what I'll paint for my daily painting. I started out thinking, if I were teaching someone how to paint a sunset how would I do it... Hmmn ... First, I laid down a wash of pink, then added orange, then pink again,going down the paper from top to bottom but I didn't quite think it was right in terms of value, so I added a bit of darker color, it was a wine like color. I blended this into the top portion. The sunset sky was nice but I had no idea what would come next. Of course I thought to myself, If I were teaching someone, I certainly would show then how to lift out an object, so a tree would be a good thing to paint using that particular technique. I waited till the shine had left the paper but it was still damp,& I pulled out the tree branches and trunk with the bottom of an aquarell brush and allowed this to dry. Then, I did direct painting, with brown, and blue, and also grey (made form the blue and the orange). I left some of the pulled out branches to serve as the light hitting the branches.

Next, I laid down a yellow green all around the base of the tree. While this was still wet I laid sepia over the top of of the green, while still wet, I used my pin knife to pull out the grasses which cause the green to pull out of the dark sepia and gives variation to the grass all at the same time. For the tiny tiny grasses, I used my pinky nail. I then used a combination of the wine color and the sepia color to paint in around the grass and the road leaving the original 1st wash to be the actual road. A little more green mixed with the sepia for grass at the top of the road and then soften the leading edge and everythings done but the birds. The birds I painted with a number 2 round thinking about their movement and flight pattern and how their placement would help the painting.

This painting is 5.5 by 11 inches. It's for sale for $40.00 shantmarie@aol.com