San Pablo Reservoir Watercolor

I wanted to provide some information for those of you who are interesting my process. Once you start painting, you realize that getting there is half the fun. I typically paint with a buddy, setting aside about 3 hours which includes driving to a nearby location, finding a comfortable spot to paint, setting up, painting for an hour and a half to two hours, talking and drinking coffee, and packing up and going home.

In the painting of the San Pablo Reservoir (below), it was early afternoon, but the sun was already very low because it's winter in North America, creating some really nice contrast naturally. I always look for naturally occurring color and/or value contrast.

The underpainting was roughed in with thinned Cad Yellow and Prussian Blue. Working from light to dark, I added dark green. I mix my own greens, with Cad Yellow, Prussian Blue and Sepia. I added little red accents to the foliage in the lower left to break up the strict green/blue palette. Lastly I painted back in the shadow areas with Permanent Red and Sky Blue gouache (light over dark). Then I painted the bark detail on the light side of the tree with thinned white gouache (light over dark).